The State Of The Polls

My second alma mater (yes I have two undergraduate degrees, hence the massively witty title of this blog) today played host to the launch of the Labour Party Manifesto. It is Birmingham City University of which I speak. A couple of days ago all post-graduate students (of which I am one) were warned that access to certain buildings would be denied today and that memo seemed to relish informing us that the nature of the event causing such closure could not be revealed 'for security reasons'. What a load of old bollocks - I immediately guessed what it was going to be. After all the Lib Dems had already sounded their pootling fanfare and the Tories presumably have more sense than to show up on a modern university campus. Anyway I just hope we charged Labour through the nose for the privilege.

I've been reading said manifesto this afternoon. It is, on balance, a dire document born of Old Labour shibboleths and bearing the imprimatur not so much of the dreadful Corbyn (or Magic Grandpa as Rod Liddle so aptly styles him) but of the gimlet eyed Most Dangerous Man in Britain, John McDonnell. McDonnell is deadly serious and deadly clever. He hates enterprise with a passion - for him it is the immoral extraction of surplus value created by and belonging to the proletariat. Many years ago I had and kept a copy of the 1983 Labour Manifesto, 'the longest suicide note in political history' as it was described. We could afford to laugh about it because there never was a hope of Michael Foot (another clever man - though more decent than McDonnell) becoming Prime Minister. It is harder to laugh these days because Labour can win. McDonnell's acuity is ranged against a tired Conservative Party led by a dilettante with no moral anchor.

You pays your money and you takes your chance. Last one out, switch the lights off.