AFTER THE LABOUR ELECTIONS: WHAT THE FUTURE SHOULD HOLD

Listening to predictions and reactions from the Labour leadership election, I've been impressed by the many weasel words explaining how British 'democracy' needs an effective opposition. Nowhere in any of those discussions did I hear anyone even mention that the current government, with its Parliamentary majority, commanded the support of 36% of the voters in the last general election, and that the other 64% opposed them.

Look (to borrow a form of address oozing sincerity from the former Labour PM): Bliar won three elections because he could be sure of the Scottish vote and the vote (albeit decreasing in each election) from the Northern Industrial Wasteland (aka Powerhouse), and then he was able to draw away some (again, a decreasing number) of the disaffected voters in the otherwise solidly Tory English south.

Neither Brown nor Miliband could hold that English vote, and lost (Brown) the NIW and ('Red' Ed) the Scots. Labour's first task now, regardless of the leader, has to be to win back their core support from the SNP and UKIP/Tories, not try to become a more serious LDP. There is little middle ground available for them in southern England outside the cities.

They have to do this with policy first, presented in unity, fighting the Tories on areas where they should be vulnerable: offshore wealth, Brexit, the NHS, schools. By time the next fixed election comes (thanks again Nick Clegg for that one), to be fought on newly gerrymandered boundaries, and  without proportional representation (thanks again Nick Clegg for that one) Labour ought to know not only if they are in with a chance, but also who should lead them....

THE SELF DESTRUCTION OF THE LABOUR PARTY

I don't care whether youre a Corbynista, Blairite, Millibandito, Blue Labour or whatever. The UK has just gone through the most turbulent three weeks in 70 years. 52% of the country has voted to leave the European Union; the leaders who lied and played the fear card to engineer that triumph have jumped ship; the prime minister who gave the country a referendum as the price of placating his own MPs and holding off a UKIP who gained at Labour's expense, not his, is gone.

There is a new Tory prime minister, chosen by a handful of grandees; there is the most frighteningly ideological and inept cabinet I have seen in my 40 years in Britain. In the face of all this, the Labour party has been silent, not even a squeaking opposition, being more concerned with ousting their own leader and marginalising their members who elected him. This is a godsend to the largely Tory media, who play Labour's internal division up above all the other problems, but don't blame the media for their biases, they are something you have to live with.

Labour achieved power under Tony Blair with a Bill Clintonesque third-way strategy based on Clinton's core precept: where else do they have to go? Thus you focus your appeal on the undecideds, swing voters, independents, marginal seats, and you treat your core voters with a kinder gentler version of the abandonment of a conservative government. Which worked until Labour's tepid response to six years of austerity under the Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition allowed the SNP and UKIP to give those ignored voters alternatives. Tory scare mongering on immigration worked a treat in pushing Labour votes to UKIP in England and letting Tories win parliamentary majority with barely more than 1/3 of vote, but it invited the no vote that won the Brexit referendum.

Labour has been waiting for someone to stand up and marshal the opposition to what was going on--offer the country a viable alternative, help the country make sense of the disaster that is going on. Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader by party members who saw that traditional Labour values and policies were an answer, but, villfied in the press as a nutter and abandoned by many in his party as a, uh, socialist, he was not the leader to marshal the sane part of the country, not the person who could gather opposition and perhaps force a vote of no-confidence once the public schoolboys (and girls) have finished ruining the country they see by right as their playground.

My guess is a figure who was able to do that with any level of articulation and energy might have been chosen Labour leader by acclimation once the dust had settled. If a majority of the parliamentary party and their big donors wanted Corbyn out, the sensible way to do it would be for someone to step up and lead opposition to Tories, not opposition to Corbyn. Filling the gulf of leadership for the country outside Westminster, and indeed outside the party, would make the point self-evident. But who stepped forward? Who presented a vision of anything for the country, anything except a party not led by Corbyn? 

By abrogating their responsibility to the country in a cheap effort to re-establish their control, they have moved Labour closer to a split, and nullified themselves not only as an opposition but as a potential government. The lesson of the Gang Of Four in 1982 was two more election wins for Thatcher, and political wilderness until Nick Clegg's craven deal with Offshore Dave Cameron. Putting self before party, putting party before country, and ignoring the best opportunity to present a united face of sanity in the wake of the past three weeks of chaos was the only sane thing to do, and the opportunity has been pissed away. Like a pack of rabid hyenas they turned on themselves, while a lame sheep strolled past uneaten. Shame on you, Labour.

NOTE: I don't often use this platform for political party broadcasts, but this morning I wrote a quick angry rant on Facebook, & it stayed with me through the day. So I've filled out the thoughts a little, trying hard not to let my despair poke through too far. 

ROMAN POLANSKI GIVES UP THE GHOST

The most interesting thing about The Ghost is the result of outside events. It's impossible to look at the plight of Piers Brosnan, playing a former British Prime Minister not a million miles unlike Tony Blair, who's facing arrest and extradition for war crimes charges at the ICC in The Hague, and not recall that Polanski was in a similar situation while the film was being made, as California sought his extradition from Switzerland for jumping bail rather than face sentencing on his plea-bargain for drugging and sodomising a 13 year old girl at Jack Nicholson's house back in 1977. It's hard to think the director himself didn't see a certain parallel.

In fact, Polanski's adaptation of Robert Harris' novel is pretty faithful; a little less concerned with the internal working of the Labour government perhaps, and indeed with the mechanics of the plot itself, and more concerned with the situations he found in the book--the setting, in which wintry Martha's Vineyard is turned into something resembling the St Pierre of Patrice Leconte's The Widow Of St Pierre, and into which Ewan McGregor as the politically naive ghostwriter hired to make Adam Lang's (ie, Blair's) memoir readable after his predecessor's suicide, is thrown. In this situation McGregor is not the only ghost; he moves into the previous writer's room, inheriting his clothes, suitcase, and clues. But McGregor himself is indeed a ghost; calling the film The Ghost Writer, as originally intended (see above right--and orignally Nicholas Cage was set for the befuddled writer character) would lose those resonances. The ghost is never named, not even in moments of intimacy or danger, and his ignorance of the politics into which he's been thrown allows the plot to be explained to an audience assumed to be even more ignorant. But that's an odd conceit; the idea that a professor might be a CIA recruiter, and that British pols might well have been recruited, is hardly so far-fetched as to come as the sort of revelation it is here presented as being; when the Ghost finally starts looking ON THE INTERNET he finds the information easily enough, and it's hard to think it might not have received just slightly more attention beforehand.

McGregor is well suited for this role, which plays on his limitations as an actor, much as Polanski played on Harrison Ford's in Frantic. McGregor seems a cross between the declaiming cost-accountant of Kenneth Branagh and the dazed puppy appeal of David Beckham; the actor he most resembles is the frantically ingratiating Jamie Oliver. Sticking your head down the toilet can certainly get you a long way in British film. He's not helped by the even more severe limitations of Kim Cattrall as Lang's personal assistant; she's playing her Sex And The City role, only makes it different by not ever smiling, which indicate she's a no-nonsense player in this political game; it's very funny to watch her and McGregor bounce off each other, over and under playing.

Having said that, Brosnan is terrific as Lang, and Olivia Williams even more spectacular as his wife. Despite the relative predictability of the plot, its ultimate twist is a good one, and it makes both actors' characterisations carry even more depth and more skill. There are also many small touches which make the film enjoyable; Jim Belushi's American publisher beating up on his English counterpart, Eli Wallach's conspiracy theorist on his unlikely Vineyard shack, and best of all McGregor's being directed by his predecessor's sat-nav to Tom Wilkinson, the professor at the heart of the conspiracy.

There are also some weird errors, like the Vineyard ferry offering 'single or return' tickets, or the former British foreign secretary (the Robin Cook figure) McGregor calls in New York for help somehow showing up in Woods Hole by car in less time than it takes Lang's private jet.

In the end it's many of the familiar Polanski touches, including an Oriental gardener who might have stepped out of Chinatown, that make The Ghost enjoyable, if less than totally convincing. There is that Poalnski sense that things happen, out of the blue, and are made to happen by forces beyond your control, and that believing you can control them, while not even understanding they are there, is fatal. It's a flawed movie, and perhaps one imbued with rather too much self-concern, especially if we look at Williams' Cheri Blair character as a stand-in for Emmanuelle Seignet, but it's an entertaining one, a better thriller than Frantic, and it's ending is, in many ways, more satisfying than the novel's.