Arrived in Remain-on-sea (also known as Brighton) for Labour party conference. As an old-fashioned trade unionist hailing from a working-class heartland who supports Brexit, opposes mass immigration and doesn’t believe someone with a penis can be a woman, I feel about as welcome as a hedgehog at a nudist colony. The conference centre and fringe mills with the usual throng of delegates and activists. Many are unquestionably decent people fighting for a better world. But it is largely an army of the woke, liberal middle-classes and young toytown revolutionaries — as though the social services department at Camden council and the Labour club at the University of Sussex have arranged a joint charabanc trip to the coast. In other words, unrepresentative of large chunks of Britain — particularly those parts that were once the bedrock of Labour support. Too much Hampstead, not enough Hartlepool.
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The week kicks off with a People’s Vote march, patronised by the patronising. ‘Trust the people’ runs the slogan on the banner at the head of the procession. Er, I thought we did — back in 2016. One wonders what that doyen of democratic socialists George Orwell would have made of such doublespeak. Front and centre is Emily Thornberry, flanked on either side by fellow Labour MPs. Thornberry appears, in her choice of attire, to be recreating the EU flag: she sports a bright blue blouse and is garlanded with some kind of necklace of golden stars. But hold on. Is this not the same Emily Thornberry who while out canvassing in the Rochester and Strood by-election some years ago spotted a house adorned with a St George’s flag and thought the spectacle so peculiar as to be worth tweeting a photo alongside the caption ‘Image from #Rochester’? For the liberal left, patriotism is an evil, of course.
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