It's Christmas

I am not a Christmas super fan. I mostly enjoy it but I would never have it in a Top Ten Highlights of the year selection. Not that I'd ever get asked.

But Christmas this year for me is a bit of a washed out affair. And it shouldn't be. My son has returned home for a while and my daughter is home for the festivities from New Zealand. Even so , family problems ( on the wife's side) and the trouncing Labour got at the election has put a real downer on this year's celebrations.

This isn't the place to go into my wife's soured relationship with her parents and her sister and her husband but it has been a long time coming and the blame lies on all sides. I am just a sometimes bemused bystander thinking that if they only kept their opinion to themselves they would still be talking to each other, like my family. I have little time for my older brother and only occasionally speak to him, normally at times of crises with the parents. I speak to my younger sister more but not regularly. I speak to my Mum ( Dad never answers the phone) about once a week and see them about 4/5 times a year that's all. Politically and culturally we are miles apart, but we all skirt round each other in conversation and I rarely challenge them, except on their casual racism and ignorance on refugees and asylum seekers and the NHS and Housing which I do know a lot about. They know this so rarely bring the subject up. Is that hypocritical?.Yes of course it is but at least we all still talk to each other on the couple of occasions a year we get together. Unlike my wife and her family who aren't speaking at all since last Christmas..

I didn't campaign for Labour at the election , there was little chance of Newcastle Central going Tory and work and lack of holiday precluded me from campaigning in the marginals in the North East. My son did campaign here and in London and said from Day One Labour would lose. Brexit and Corbyn being the main reasons and to a much lesser extent (and ONLY in the seats on the outskirts of London) anti Semitism in the party. This leaves all of us who rejoined the Party to get Corbyn elected with a dilemma. Do we stay and fight for Corbyn MKII or do we just quietly cancel the Direct Debits and move on back to the wilderness licking our wounds. In the last 40 years there has only been 13 years of a Labour Government and I can't help feeling that this election it was a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas here in the North East. But you can't think like that.

The conclusion I draw from the defeat , and the one I have been drawing for myself since 1979, is that our electoral system is not fit for purpose. I hope the Party's review of their failure leads them to accept this and we ( if I stay a member) start to campaign for proportional representation. Sign the petition at The Electoral Reform society website and give us a chance of having a Government that represents everyone not just a minority.