Wrapped in his fantasy world of a Labour party ruling the country in accordance with the diktats of those of its members who support him, Jeremy Corbyn reminds one of Plato’s image of humans trapped in a cave, able only to see the wall in front of them. Behind them, at the opposite end of the cave, is a fire, and in front of that, a puppet show. The shadows of those puppets, cavorting on the wall in front of him, are man’s reality. And Corbyn’s. His MPs are right to want a party connected to the real world, but is a leadership battle the right way to go about it?
The contest should be a purely rhetorical one, though Corbyn’s followers will not hesitate to use force instead. So much for their understanding of democracy, which ancient Greeks invented in order to defuse violence and allow decisions to be reached peacefully, by argument, among the whole citizen body, in assembly, and not a self-selected few.
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