I speak to people all the time about politics and am constantly in a state of bewilderment as to how we got where we currently are. At the last election but one, a friend said they don't vote Labour because "they're just a joke, aren't they?" I was dumbfounded. I don't know how to counter opinions like that, but I do know where it comes from. We hear those kind of words everywhere, every day. I can't even listen to satire anymore, because they treat the steaming pile of sh*t option as roughly equal with the badly cooked one. The Labour Party isn't perfect, we have a stupid parliamentary system that encourages the wrong people to join it, and it's not immune from having had those kind of people in its ranks. And unless you indulge in an exhaustive vetting procedure of every member, they're bound to have examples of people you don't really want to be rubbing shoulders with; the corrupt and the prejudiced and the self-seeking. But overall they're a billion times better than the current alternatives.
Corbyn looks incompetent because that's, for some reason, the image the media want to project. Go watch an interview or a debate or a speech by him and you'll see he's anything but. He's also been previously stabbed in the back by MPs of his own party, jealous of his ascendancy when he refuses to play the spin game, MPs that have now either mostly left, or whom you are free not to vote for now if you really feel that strongly about a person rather than policy. That's supposed to be the point of our parliamentary system, and of course you are free to do so.
We have a chance right now to vote in an actual left wing socialist government, in a way we haven't since the 50s. Lots of countries have them without the alleged economic disaster the media are desperate for you to believe they will be. Lots of independent studies, and even some right wing commentators, have commented on the pro-government media right now. It's a huge problem in a way I don't ever remember seeing before. Even the BBC takes its centre-right bias as the "right point of view" and talks over anything else, because they've made up their mind about Corbyn from the start. Of course he's not perfect, he was inexperienced and unsupported for a long time, but he's learnt on the job.
People get information from the media and I would be very surprised if that didn't inform opinions the negative opinions. I've genuinely sought out examples of all the criticisms and failed to find them, so I'm left with the choices of telling people either a) you've misinterpreted what you've seen or b) what you've seen was a lie, or some combination of the two. Or asking for some example of the incompetence, which usually just leads to some form of both (a) and (b). I have refrained from volunteering for much electioneering because being accused of being patronising by people who never bring anything new to the table (no offense intended) gets me either angry or upset in my frustration. But what the hell are we supposed to do?
People keep asking for change, this is an actual chance for it. Don't pass over it. Give a fair and just Britain a chance. Sorry if that seems patronising. I just don't know how else to say it.
