I thought I'd put my rage behind me.
Lately I've stopped picking physical fights with pavement cyclists and started smiling at babies in buggies. All is well in Wilkieworld.
One of the main reasons for this improvement in my attitude is my concious decision to reluctantly stop taking an interest in politics. I found being a trade unionist, socialist, anti-fascist campaigner instead of giving me a sense of agency and satisfaction was instead more like repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall. A brick wall in the middle of nowhere. I was frequently exposed to some of society's ugliest, most cancerous personalities - on my own side as well as the enemy, and got sick of watching the amazing, courageous, salt-of-the-earth people I worked alongside get screwed over and abused - again by my own 'side' more often than by the 'enemy'.
So I stopped watching Question Time. I unfollowed a number of twitter accounts that I too often found myself drunkenly getting into late night fights with (the abyss was certainly staring back at me). I was still a member of a union, still went on strike, but I stopped being an activist and campaigner. At first I thought I would hate myself, I thought I'd become ignorant and out of touch by not keeping as close an eye on current affairs. In fact, I've never been happier in my life.
But, like an old boyfriend you never got over, politics still from time to time pulled on my heartstrings. When Tony Benn died I read the tributes, listened to him reading from his diary on Book of the Week, and became a messy puddle of sentimentalism. Inspired by his chosen epitaph, "he encouraged us" I sent of my money and rejoined the LRC. It's just a tenner, I thought, I won't go to any of the meetings. I went back to my blinkered, blissful existence.
But then, like an old boyfriend who just won't stay dead no matter how many times you stab him in the chest, a spectre arose from my past. Now first I have to explain that when I went to university a few years ago as a mature student, I did what a lot of people do and got involved in some embarrassingly badly advised politics. I joined the Labour Party. I also joined the SWP, but during Fresher's Week the SWP held a lecture while the Labour Party offered a cheese and wine evening, so I stuck with the mainstreamers. I actually don't regret my time in Labour at all, I made some excellent friends, saw how the party works at grass roots level and up, got ridiculously drunk and well fed at two party conferences and met David Miliband OMGZ!!!
But with the university's 'Labour Club' it was impossible to avoid student politics as the club had very successfully infiltrated the Student Union. I was already a long time cynic of the NUS from my time as a trade unionist in higher education, having seen student politicians fail to support industrial actions time and again. Lancaster's student union was a particularly toxic, incestuous, self-important and pompous example. At its head was a president who was nominally a member of the Labour Club, but was about as popular skidmark amongst its current lefty, well meaning cohort. In my short time at Lancaster (I lasted 18 months) I came to see why.
In my politics-free bubble I'm now one of those people who hear about news stories first via social media, in with all the twerking videos and personality quizzes. So last night an old comrade from Lancaster (who's gone a bit rogue, admittedly) excitedly posted that there is to be a by-election and Lancaster's finest gobshite, Michael Payne, would be the Labour candidate! I expressed my dismay, and told him that I would be hiding his posts from my feed, as any positive spin and propaganda about a shitstain of a bully who made three of my friends cry, whose arrogance and self-importance 'prevented' him from supporting any political campaign with a slightly lefty or liberal bent, whose politics made Tony Blair look like Leon Trotsky and whose ugly ambition oozed from every square metre of his podgy person, would be detrimental to my blood pressure.
At Lancaster I was exposed to things I'd not really had to deal with before, coming from Bootle: Tories and middle class, educated, entitled Labourites. The Tories didn't disappoint: popped collars on their polo shirts and cheating at Laserquest. It was the Labourites who let me down. Their belief that if they went to university, joined the Labour Club, got elected to the Student Union, spent a year or two working for the party or in some related field that they would be entitled to a seat in the House of Commons before they were thirty would have been laughable if it wasn't a reality. In addition to Michael Payne (President of the SU for two years, David Miliband volunteer, local councillor for a couple of year, Parliamentary Candidate while still in his twenties) there was also Cat Smith. Now Cat has the right kind of politics, an ardent feminist who has worked for Jeremy Corbyn - but her immaturity and lack of self awareness was very evident to me (I'm not still bitter about the time she tried to get me to dress smartly at conference, sweetly offering to lend me some of her SIZE 10 clothes, though I do still cringe about the time she celebrated her election to the House of Commons admin union with a resolution to buy the canteen workers a vegetarian cookbook as their polenta was appalling). Another Labour Party candidate who has never worked outside of politics, never sent their kids to school, signed on, been part of a workforce...
Other, older Labour Party activists would wearily roll their eyes at me and tell me to get used to it when I would rant about careerists. My friends in Lancaster will surely still remember my apoplectic reaction to the selection of Luciana Berger as candidate/MP for Wavertree. But this is not some insidious, natural, culture change, this is the result of blatant ambition, greed, entitlement and selfishness that I have seen happening in front of me with my own eyes. The Labour Party is - right now, over there, look! - being wrestled from the hands of the working classes by wet-behind-the-ears bright young things (I will not call them precocious as this implies they have talent) with West Wing box sets, dubiously grounded politics and in some cases, dubious personalities.
Those of us not in awe of Michael Payne's bombastic personality in Lancaster would console ourselves that 'out in the real world' people would see him for what he was and he would not succeed. But the Labour Party isn't the real world. It will be interesting to see, if he becomes an MP, what the real world makes of him.
