Podcast audiences don’t win elections. Petitions don’t win elections. Political parties win elections in first part the post in the UK elections.

For the first time in my lifetime, I think the era of mass civil disobedience is coming faster than a Labour government. I wonder if you remember the saying that ‘millions of people are relying on the election of a Labour government’. This was also true for the 2019 general election, dubbed the “Brexit election”. It was pretty easy to identify that Boris Johnson was a repellent liar at the time, even pre pandemic. It was obvious that the arrangements in Northern Ireland were a fudge, and that the trade barriers would be pretty ruinous to the macroeconomy of the UK. Labour had the ‘worst performance for many years’, but it is impossible to untangle from that how monstered Jeremy Corbyn was by the media, from James O’Brien to the Guardian, from Alasdair Campbell to other prominent has beens. On offer were ‘far left’ policies, such as a national care service, national education service, ‘free’ broadband – and what you got was Dido Harding, Matt “Jungle Fever” Hancock and Michelle Mone.

I don’t want even to contemplate what degrees of shit will be voted in next time around. One looming disaster is withdrawal from the European Convention of Human Rights – the perfect ‘get out’ clause to allow flights full of legal asylum seekers to fly to Rwanda, or to do other odious activities with cross-channel dinghies as there are no legal routes to enter the United Kingdom. While the Labour Party appears to have big corporate sponsors now, its Union support is dwindling. Labour cannot offer unequivocal support to the workers, some of whom are affiliated through the trades unions. Labour won’t offer to repeal the mercenary anti-Union legislation heavily signposted for the new year, and seems to wish to do its own form of austerity. Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves of course are past masters in their activities with welfare benefits, as most of us from that vintage will remember.

I think Mick Lynch is putting it a bit mildly when he calls ‘Keir Starmer’. At least vanilla ice cream can be soothing or tasty. Starmer’s rhetoric does not give me any confidence that he is the man to get Britain to a state where it is proud of itself. Far before the pandemic crisis or the Ukraine war, it was very obvious that England was in decline. Nowadays the right wing loons are forced to pillar Meghan Markle and her curtsying to detract from the disgusting state of the country. The UK Labour Party doesn’t seem to care that being in England is positively risky to you and your health. Because of a sustained campaign of underfunding, to fork out billions for pointless projects such as Brexit, there is ‘no money left’ for any of the emergency services. If there’s a fire in your flat or house, run and escape for the hills. You’ll be lucky to get a fire engine. If you have a stroke, take a cab to your local hospital as you might be waiting some time for an ambulance. If you have a burglary, kiss goodbye to your property, and buy lots of cheap tat to replace them with off Amazon. The water and gas are nationalised, owned by private equity from abroad. We’re in the process of getting rid of all the EU safeguards, so we can relentlessly pump sewage into the sea. And so it goes on.

The facts are that Labour doesn’t have a hope in hell of getting many seats in Scotland in the 2024 general election, and that some voters still wouldn’t want to touch Starmer’s Labour due to various factors including lack of policy. Depending on tactical voting, and on various outcomes such as whether Sunak can ‘smash the strike’, we’re looking at Labour possibly being the largest party in a hung parliament. If you want Labour to offer something different on austerity, supporting strikers, net zero, HS2, and so on, forget it. Listen to all the podcasts and sign the petitions all you want, but still prepare yourself for eternal opposition. And don’t even rule out an unprecedented re-election of a spanking new Tory government.