Why bother joining the Labour party?

Now that there is yet another chance to vote for a leader of the Labour party, if you are prepared to pay £25 next week, lots of my friends, none of them Labour supporters, are joining up. Their idea is to vote for the Corbyn ‘continuity candidate’, who seems to be Rebecca Long Bailey, thus ensuring, they think, continuous Conservative rule. As someone who is not a member of any political party, and is therefore eligible to join Labour, I am thinking of following suit; but something gives me pause. There is a real question whether the extremists in Labour are any worse than the moderates. The Corbynistas are, for sure, nasty, stupid, narrow and wrong. But that is visible to anyone aged over 25. They have not behaved worse over Brexit than they have over anything else. The Labour moderates, on the other hand, traditionally considered respectable, have been unprecedentedly disgraceful over Brexit. I don’t think the worse of anyone for backing Remain, but I do think very much the worse of people who claim the centre-ground in British politics but worked night and day for nearly four years to nullify the referendum result, especially when they cloaked their refusal as a desire to hold a second ‘People’s’ vote. Sir Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry are just as great a menace to the public weal as Ms Long Bailey and less likely to be found out by the media in time. So if I do join, I am not sure who I’d vote for. So I think I won’t.

In a rare visit to the cinema recently, my wife and I much enjoyed Knives Out, a whodunnit which makes you laugh, as on-screen murder often does. Nowadays, the certificate at the beginning issued by what used to be called the British Board of Film Censors (now ‘Classification’) gives a warning of the content e.g.