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Losing my voting cherry

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Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not a political person. Or rather, they would have until the EU referendum was announced (full disclosure, I voted in the referendum, so I’m technically not a vote virgin – more an election virgin). Since then, I’ve been somewhat more political; I opened my bedroom window at 5am on June 24th and yelled ‘YOU STUPID TWATS!’ out of it when the referendum results came in), and I frequently berate Donald Trump (each of those three words is a separate link!) and his supporters on Twitter.

But for the most part, I still couldn’t stand politics – because I’ve always hated politicians. They are self-serving, bullshitting morons who don’t give a toss about those they’re paid handsomely to represent. And the huge paycheck never seems to be quite enough, so why not claim expenses for everything from Duck Houses to Remembrance Day wreaths? Already own a property in London? No problem – just rent it out for profit and rent yourself another one at the taxpayers’ expense. And this isn’t a partisan dislike of MPs – I’ve always had a deep distrust of them all, regardless of their party affiliation.

MPs have been all kinds of people: marital traitors, sexual deviants, the easily-bought, even pig worriers. All in all, they are untrustworthy, self-serving shitstains. They lie constantly (they are the least trusted profession in the country), they spin questions all over the place, they’re completely out of touch with the people they’re supposed to work for. They’ve always been absolute arseholes, and I’ve never wanted anything to do with them. They’re not right, nor honourable.

Until now.

In September 2015, an old guy with a beard shook things up a bit. A fairly normal bloke who lives in a fairly normal house became leader of the Labour Party. Every time I’ve seen or heard him speak, he seems like a genuinely decent human being – a trait sadly lacking in any other British politician. He’s spent his life campaigning for those less fortunate, and consistently championed causes in which he believes.

Now, I’ll get this out of the way: I’m aware of the IRA/Hamas/Hezbollah thing, and that did give me pause, so I did a little reading. He has, at times, had lapses in judgement in some of the things he’s said and done. Introducing members of Hamas as ‘friends’ was one such time, but he’s explained it well enough to satisfy me (and also gave a grandad-bollocking to Krishnan Guru-Murthy in the process, which is always a bonus). It’s not as if he’s had them round his house for a sleepover; he was trying to help engineer some kind of peace – something for which he’s always advocated – and, in order to do that, was trying to treat people like people. Same for the IRA thing – yeah, he invited Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and Gerry ‘crazy tweets‘ Adams for meetings, but he also met plenty of Unionists like Ian Paisley as part of his attempts to bring about peace. You can’t have peace without peace talks. Do I agree with all of his decisions in the past? No. But has he been photographed sniffing coke off a hooker’s tits? Also no.

I like Jeremy Corbyn.

There – I’ve said it. He strikes me as the closest thing to a normal human being that British politics has seen in a long time. And for some reason, this is why a lot of people seem to dislike him: “He’s not up to the job” – why, because he’s not devious enough to ’employ’ his wife and claim her wage back from us? “Even his own MPs don’t like him” – well that’s fine, because I don’t fucking like any of them; they don’t like him because he makes them all look like the grifting tossers they are.

Now, in doing this, I’m having to vote for Yvette Cooper (my local candidate) which I’m not exactly happy about. She falls into the category of shitty politicians (albeit slightly less so than many others) – I once wrote to her about the fact that someone was poisoning cats in the area, and asking why there wasn’t a bittering agent in antifreeze, and she basically just fobbed me off. So I’ll do that part holding my nose, knowing that I’m actually voting for Corbyn.

I’m aware that my vote probably doesn’t really make much difference; there’s a reason Yvette Cooper is my local candidate – ours is one of the strongest Labour seats in the country. But then again, so was Morley & Outwood. And with the number of people I’ve seen on Facebook chanting about UKIP, it’s just not worth the risk. I also know that Labour beating out the Conservatives is a long shot – especially as the Tories seem to have employed the cheap, misquoting, context-abandoning, vilifying smear tactics seen in the recent US election (which, let’s face it, has resulted in the absolute worst president that country has ever seen – ironically, after the best president it’s ever seen) and in the EU referendum; carefully selected sound bites, designed to mislead the easily-led. Or just plain lies, apparently that’s also a thing.

But I’m hoping beyond hope that the polls are wrong (again) and we wake up on Friday with a new Prime Minister unlike any we’ve seen before. He might not deliver once he’s in there, but hell – none of them have up until now, so why not suck it and see? It’s time for something different.

jezwecan

Oh, one more thing: The Sun ‘news’paper has endorsed Theresa May. So yeah, there’s that.

 

 

 



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