Britain has never been very good at sit-coms. Ok, there was Fawlty Towers, the best sit-com the world has ever seen, and a few other notables, mainly anything with Leonard Rossiter. And there was Ab Fab. But the rest were and are simply awful. On the Buses. Love thy neighbour.

And then Citizen Smith came along in the late 70s. And it was such a brilliant idea as the Cold War neared its end and communism was seen as a failure generally but socialism still held its rather frayed-round-the-edges hopes at certain points in the Labour party and beyond.

The eponymous anti-hero, Wolfie Smith, was played by Robert Lindsay, now the best actor in the world. According to his agent. And Wolfie led a group of just 4 ‘subversives’ called the Tooting Popular Front. They wanted to liberate Tooting from the repressive capitalism and imperialism that the rest of the country suffered. And they planned marches, which no-one attended, they gave speeches, to 3 old ladies and a dog, who only wanted to get out of the rain, they arranged acts of sabotage, which didn’t happen. And it was funny. Not just because Tooting is unworthy of liberation, but because radical socialism was dead and these four sad and sorry guys just didn’t know. No-one had told them.

And no-one has told Jeremy Corbyn either. So it would seem.

Its not his ideals that are the problem. They’ve never changed from when he watched Citizen Smith. Its the meaningless statements that kind’a grind.

His refusal yesterday to sing the National Anthem. His inability to dress as anything other than a tramp. The deep-seated ‘pacifism’ which prevents him from displaying a poppy for remembrance.

This same pacifism that sees him a lifelong defender of very un-peaceful groups of nutters. Like the IRA. Like Al Quaeda. Like even ISIS, who he defends as being no worse than the Americans invading Iraq.

Like Woolfie Smith, Jeremy Corbyn is just an ‘anti’-man. Whatever is accepted, often acceptable, respectful or decent, if it in any way is part of the ‘establishment’ then he’s against it. Whoever is reviled by normal people, Jeremy courts as his friend and ally. Like Hamas. Like the IRA. Because they, like him, are big on causes, big on underdogs.

I wonder if he’s going to Manchester today to visit the underdogs there?

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

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