It’s hard to measure how elated I feel.
A rabble rousing propaganda piece – deployed to great effect in mentally numbing the drones at the Labour Conference – has been chosen as Labour’s new Party Political Broadcast. This news has been met with cheers of delight by all sections of the political bubblesphere.
The video is called, “Against the Odds” and recounts the heroic struggle against reality by Labour over the last 100 years – a battle, it seems, they’ve won. Epic won.
See, Labour’s spent the first ten years of their current period in office waiting for Gordon Brown to take over so they could do some ‘real’ Labour stuff. They knew, or at least believed, that by keeping to the moderate, centre ground (or, “keeping the fucking beardy weirdies off the telly”) they could stay in power. While they weren’t getting everything they wanted it was still better than the Tories.
Now, with their doom inevitable, Labour are now beginning to reflect on their time in office with a sort of dewy eyed nostalgia. It’s been a triumph, a golden era – we are, it seems, extremely lucky to have had them.
Do you see the problem, though? During Blair they bemoaned the lack of progress. Now, with Brown, they’re celebrating all the progress they made.
So the decision to use this video is a significant one. It’s not aimed at Liberal Democrat voters, or Conservative voters, or SNP voters, or Plaid voters, or swing voters or undecided voters. They’re trying to prevent Labour voters dragging the Government down in their suicidal malaise. They’re trying to motivate the core, the True Believers.
The language is that of war – the constant repetition of the word, “fight” and “fighters”. They’re fighting us. They’re fighting you. They’re fighting me. This is a war and they’re motivating their troops to do battle against Labour’s enemies. This sort of rhetoric does for Labour what Sarah Palin did for the Republicans -sending everyone else screaming and running in the opposite direction.
It’s nauseating, profoundly partisan stuff. There’s a schmaltzy Sean Bean-a-like narration invoking the old Hovis advert vision of a simple and pleasantly prolitarian Britain filled with ordinary, common working folk that need to… er… fight against our enemies and the system that denies us what we deserve, Comrades! Swing voters, beware.
What effect will this Party Political Broadcast have? Absolutely none, obviously – no-one watches the bloody things anyway. It apparently reduces certain Labour activists to tears. For hardened, embittered cynics like me, Against All Odds reduces me to tears of laughter – it begs – no, it demands mockery, it demands parody.
What else could I do? Cue several hours of relentless mockery in one of Labour’s little corners of Twitter. Their celebration of Labour’s triumphs became a hotbed of ego deflating irony and sarcasm:
The Labour Party also abolished slavery, put a man on the moon, started the Enlightenment and – AND – killed Hitler.
Mr Kipling’s exceedingly good cake recipes were stolen from Ramsey MacDonald.
Gordon Brown was immaculately concieved by himself. He *is* the Manse!
We had fun with this one. It went on and on, lots of people got involved and came up with their own brilliant little gems.
As long as Labour’s only strategy for winning back the hearts and minds of the British people is boasting and bragging about their achievements, I think it’s safe to say that this sort of irreverent mockery is how the rest of us can stay sane.
UPDATE: Sara Bedford has done a wonderful fisk of this video here. Highly recommended.
