My late father used to remind me that I had a habit of ‘doing’ before ‘thinking’, which is why he repeatedly said to me shortly before he died in 2010: “The problem with you, Shibley, is that you always ‘do’ before you ‘think'”.

I began today, about eight hours ago, with a tweet which summed up how I felt on reading that David Lammy could not support striking action. Lammy is the one who effused about Jeremy Corbyn, before he shoved the boot in. Last election, there was plenty that I could vote for, in preference to a person who referred to Muslims as ‘letterboxes’ or gays as ‘tank-topped bumboys‘.

Clearly some racism is acceptable to the voting public – some isn’t.

I could’ve voted for policies such as: national care service, improving broadband, for example. I did vote Labour in 2019.. It was ridiculously apparent that the NI protocol was totally unworkable with a border down the middle of the sea. Johnson with an impeccable record of lying, and getting away with it, was clearly fraudulently telling the UK public, “Get Brexit done!”. He has literally lied for his livings, and treats his Party in the same way his former lovers, one can assume by telling them distorted versions of the truth, allegedly. We are all now suffering due to the lies told by him and others over Brexit, and it will all unwind massively once the European Union takes the UK to court.

I might suggest that this is all ‘ancient history‘, but Johnson says he got all the big calls right – I think what he meant was he got the big culls right, with pretty disastrous policies as would be expected after decimating public health as his Party had done so for a decade. He ‘got Brexit done’, in contrast to Gordon Brown’s much flogged image of ‘dithering’. Remember when the media had a frenzy about how Brown couldn’t decide whether to dunk his biscuits or not? Johnson and pals have been sitting on the reconfiguration of social care for a very long time, and the NHS is in tatters (frustratingly for the very talented people who work in it).

So riddle me this. RMT, the union, disaffiliated from Labour a long time ago. Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey from the RMT have made abundantly clear what the arguments are for organising collective action against lies from the Govt and other railway parties. When asked about the allegation of ‘resisting’ change, progress and innovation, Lynch points out that they’re not using Stephenson’s “Rocket” any more. When Lynch is compared to a ‘dinosaur’ by a swivel-eyed loon during Question Time, Lynch calmly points out the dinosaurs were around for 130 million years, from which he deduces that they had a ‘very good innings’. When Dempsey is then threatened with why he opposes ‘compulsory redundancies’, Dempsey politely points out, ‘If a worker has an old spanner, you don’t sack the worker, but you buy him a new spanner’. It is ludicrous that RMT is expected to take the revenues when certain organisations have made much profit: e.g.

“In 2021-22 Q1 passenger revenue was £999 million, higher than the £184 million in 2020-21 Q1 but still lower than before the pandemic (£2.8 billion in the same quarter two years ago (2019-20 Q1).”

The Government haven clearly colluding to shaft RMT members, and Starmer/Labour refuse to give RMT any support. More than that there is talk of ‘disciplining’ those picketing. An odd reaction given that the Unions founded the Labour Party to re present working people in parliament. David Lammy, as a future foreign secretary, he wishes, can’t wait to distance himself from the Unions defending workers’ rights, for example striking BA workers.

I think Sir Keir Starmer has been abysmal in pointing out last year that inflation would be a problem this year. He was pretty useless in saying where he could ‘improve’ Brexit – even Nigel Farage and other Brexiteers wish that Brexit were going better.

Hence my tweet, which provoked a huge reaction within 8 hours.

I consider myself left wing, as a lifelong Labour voter. I probably wouldn’t want to vote LibDem, as they oppose the strikes (and have a proud history of opposing Labour), despite my pro EU sympathy.

There is a sense of ‘plague on your houses’.

‘Femi’ played the line that it is people like me who are the real problem, more left wing than is possible. So, riddle me this, how come these are actual data? I don’t recall people voting for mega right-wing policies like we’re currently enduring.

The current Government is pretty awful, and so are their echo chamber allies obsessing with Pride “swastikas”, transsexual athletes, racism as an overblown issue, Starmer not being able to define a woman, and so forth.

In the absence of sensible policies, defence of workers and Labour values, and convincing leadership, it is pretty hard for me to vote Labour. As a matter of ‘necessity’, it has been argued that I should simply vote to ‘get the Conservatives out’ – and there is some truth in the notion that my plan not to vote for Lammy, Starmer or Labour is both unpragmatic and totally unhelpful – facilitating a Johnson government. Johnson has already made it clear he intends to go a full three terms, with his ruffled hair ‘virtue signalling’ that he will ignore the critics. He already has called his record ‘outstanding’.

Johnson is outstanding at being ‘full of shit’. I am clearly not the only one able to vote for Labour, and this could turn out to be a big problem if Starmer felt that obliterating the Left would secure him office.