I don't often change my mind, but when I do, I do.

I don't very often change my mind: but when I do, I do.

About big things, I mean. I change my mind about whether I ought to order pancakes or a burger in the Boston Tea Party and whether it would be more fun to head over the road for a pint or stay in with a cup of tea and the new Acolyte several times in a minute.

I recall an pal of mine being slightly miffed because in or about 2000 I recommended that he read Hero With a Thousand Faces, and in or about 2010 I wrote a series of articles saying that Joseph Campbell was a snake oil salesman and charlatan.

I recently wrote an article saying that I had stopped watching a particular TV show that I used to watch rather assiduously, and you'd be surprised how many people ask me what I thought of the last series. "I didn't watch it. I thought I made this fairly clear; I'd decided to make a clean break for the sake of the kids. It's only a TV show, after all."

I've occasionally changed my mind about friends. Not usually after having a catastrophic row: if you can be bothered to have catastrophic rows you are probably still friends. ("You can really only hate people if you love them" as my mother once sagely remarked.) More kind of coming to the conclusion that neither of us are finding hanging out together very enjoyable any more and its probably time to give it up. But you'd be surprised how often people say "I suppose you'll be going out for a drink with Hezekiah when they're next in town" and I'll be, like, "Well no, we're kind of not friends anymore; I thought you knew that." I understand that people who do the romance thing call this process "breaking up" although I think in that case it generally does involve catastrophic rows.

But I think in practice most of us are more like the Pope. Our opinions and tastes and beliefs are not the same today as they were a decade ago: why would they be? But we are inclined to suddenly and infallibly declare that we never liked the restaurant that over-charged us for the undercooked fish, and we always thought the food there was terrible. And we always thought the goatee beard was a terrible idea; and always knew that Neil Gaiman was a wrong 'un and indeed never thought Sandman was very good to begin with. 

I am pretty sure that I thought that Harry Potter was kind of okay but not worth all the shouting before JK Rowling came out as a deeply unpleasant person; and I still think that Harry Potter is kind of okay but not worth all the shouting now JK Rowling is engaged in a race to the bottom on So Shall Mee Jah.

So Andrew: have you changed you mind about Jeremy Corbyn; are you still a socialist; or have you in fact admitted that you never believed in any of that nonsense to begin with?

It's complicated. 

I think perhaps Gloria Swanson summed up my position. I am still a socialist. But the movies got conservative.

Like the Bellman, I have said this several times before. I think that there are two ways of running a country. There is the approach which says that everyone must contribute some of their money to a Great Big Kitty, and that the money in the Great Big Kitty should be used to buy nice things which everyone can share: hospitals, schools, colleges, pensions, prisons, atom bombs, etc. And there is the approach that says that no-one has any business taking other peoples money and putting it in a communal pot; and that people should be free to buy the nice things they actually want with the money they have actually earned. (If one of the things they choose to do with their money is "donate it to help poor people" then that's their business. With great power doesn't necessarily come any responsibility at all.)

Hardly anyone has ever been 100% committed to the most extreme forms of either position. Of course, the Red Party (or the Blue Party, in America) are going to claim that the Blue (Red) Party think that taxation should be zero, that poor people who get sick should be shovelled into communal graves and kids whose parents can't afford school fees should be handed over to Jonathan Swift's new chain of landlord friendly fast food joints. (Look it up.) And of course the Blue Party (or the Red Party, in America) are always going to claim that the Red/Blue Party want to take 100% of your money, give most of it to black lesbian sociology collectives and force everyone to eat borscht at communal state funded kitchens while chanting passages from Owen Jones' Little Red Book. In real life the distinction has generally been between people like me who want slightly higher taxes, and slightly more nice things and the majority who want slightly lower taxes and are prepared to live with slightly fewer nice things.

That's the answer to the question about "have you ever had tea with a socialist?" and "would you ever kiss a Tory?" If by "Conservative" you mean "someone who would cut the Higher Rate of Income Tax" and by Socialist you mean "someone who would increase the Basic Rate" then of course the Plowboy and the Cowman can be friends. There are very good people on both sides. Not all socialists are Kobynites and not all Konservatives are Kunts. 

God help me, last time around I knocked on doors on behalf of Thangam Debonaire. And from what I can tell, she was a perfectly nice person and a perfectly hard working MP. (I am sure people who pay attention to these things will now send me letters pointing out that she was too far one way or the other way on Gaza and not far enough one way or the other way on Gender, but the point stands.) I knocked on doors because I wanted Jeremy Corbyn to be prime minister, or, failing that, to be the strongest possible leader of the opposition.

This never happens.

I fairly quickly formed the opinion that it could never have happened. I do not exactly say that Jeremy Corbyn -- and Tony Benn and Michael Foot and indeed Harold Wilson -- were errors which should never have occurred; and I definitely do not think that Tony Blair is right, or even intelligible, on anything at all. But I do now think that there is no point in campaigning for socialism (on any definition) in this country.

If the issue had been Jeremy's personal electability then things would be a lot muddier. Sadly, Labour didn't lose the 2019 election because Jeremy was telling Romanian spies about Mrs Thatcher's preferred breakfast cereal; or because he wore a donkey jacket to the National Anthem or didn't sing the words of his bacon sandwich. He didn't even lose the election because he was an existential threat to all the Jews in Europe. (Whenever I hear something referred to as an existential threat, I imagine a threat in a black polo neck jumper with a French accent which shrugs a lot, but that is probably just me.)

If any of that had been the case the Fight Would Go On. It would just be a matter of finding a Better Jeremy. My New Labour Friends ("of whom I have none") still believe that I, and everyone else who thought that Jeremy was in with a shout of getting the through the doors to 10 Downing Street, were bewitched by his magnetic personality. We apparently have a Thing about old beardy guys with cardigans. No one can look into their own hearts or see there own secret motivations. Probably some 1980s Tories really did support radical monetarism because they had a thing about being told off by strict nannies. Maybe a certain number of Starmerites would run screaming into the arms of any charismatic prosecutor with a knighthood.[1] But at any conscious level, I supported Corbyn because Corbyn was putting forward the kind of policies which I agreed with an have always agreed with. Charge people more and buy more stuff with it. I would no longer support Corbyn because I no longer think we can have a country where the rich pay more and everyone shares the nice things. Unlike the Right, I don't think there is a sinister anti-woke mob who control everything; I don't believe there is a cabal of Cultural McCarthyites hidden away in a secret base in Frankfurt plotting the upfall of civilisation. I do think that the press, including the supposedly unbiassed elements of the press like the BBC and the supposedly left wing elements of the press like the Guardian all presented Corbyn in the worst possible light. 

But mainly, I think that the Labour Party is a loose coalition of left wingers and social democrats; and that the Tory party is a loose coalition of right wingers and social democrats; and the social democrats in the Labour Party would much rather the Tories got into power for a bit than that the left wing faction in their party should get into the ascendency. There was never any point in getting a newer and shinier left wing standard bearer to replace Jeremy. All the moderates would have upped and formed their own party which would have split the opposition vote and kept the Tories in power. There is certainly no point in the Left breaking away and starting a new party; that party would not win any elections, and it would make it easier for the Tories to win them. Even Jezza himself -- who did win his own seat as an independent, god bless him -- talks in terms of starting a movement, not forming a government.

I voted for Darren Jones, the official Labour candidate, who not only won, but celebrated his victory by making a quite good joke. I'm fine with that. We voted the Bastards out and that's the main thing. Darren Jones is a suspiciously working class name. I wonder what he's really called?

But I am left in an uncomfortable position. 

("That's because you've been sitting at the Mac typing since eight o clock this morning, Andrew. Why not get up and walk round the room for a few minutes?")

During every election debate, Rishi Sunak accused Kier Starmer of believing in the exact things I think he should believe in, and during every election debate, Kier Starmer denied that he believed them, and indeed, insinuated that saying that he believe them was a vile slurs. Don't vote for this man, we kept hearing, because if he gets in he will put up taxes and spend the money on welfare. 

And I did beat my chest and wail exceedingly and cry unto the TV screen saying "I would to God that that were true."

Maths and logic and ideology tells me that you can tax more and spend more or you can tax less and spend less. 

Or you can borrow. I am not clever enough to understand who countries borrow from and where the money goes; but it is generally considered to be not a great idea because you eventually have to pay it back and the only way you can pay it back is by taking money out of the Big Kitty and replenishing it with more tax money. 

However, there is now a consensus around a third position that you can not put up taxes and still have money to spend on nice things Because Growth. To that extent we're all on the same page as Liz Truss's cabbage. If everyone makes more widgets and sells more coffee (and especially, I think, builds more AI Net Zero Windmills) then money will money will flow into the kitty and we can have all the nice things we need.

I do not not want this to work. Kier Starmer absolutely seems like a competent guy and I think he's sincere when he talks about service and making the country better for everyone and his Dad being a toolmaker. I want there to be schools and libraries and roads and eventually student grants and tuition fees and trains you can travel on for less than three figures. I want the poor to be a bit richer and the rich to be a bit poorer: I have always assumed that the Tories are happy for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, as in good Queen Margaret's golden time. Starmer has gambled 2029 on it being possible for the poor to get richer without the rich needing to get any poorer. 

And if he's right, I'm wrong: from each according to his ability to each according to his need was never a desirable goal. Indeed, if he's right, either Jesus Christ was wrong, or else Jesus Christ was right at a personal level but there is no means of applying Christian ethics to the economic or political sphere. If only we made the needles eye wider the poor would no longer be with us. And that would represent quite a radical change of mind on my part. 

See you in five years, God willing.

[*] Did you hear about the lawyer who had a fetish for jurisprudence? He got off on a technicality.

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