So Jeremy Corbyn has back-tracked on his ‘promise’ to ‘sort out’ student debt. When he shouted and screamed about it for 3 months of electioneering he sounded pretty convincing. When he repeated it at Glastonbury a month later, the implication was not only that he continued to campaign against tuition fees but that student debts would… well what? Vanish? Disappear? Be written off?? Then he did the sums.

11 billion quid. Hmmmmm. That might dent the exchequer a touch. He needs 35 billion to pump endless funds into the health service, 27 bil for re-nationalising half the country, 122 bil to increase public services and workers’ benefits. But he can count on at least 4 billion coming in from raising tax on ‘the rich’. That adds up nicely. In Corbyn’s mind.

Austerity doesn’t work; let’s try bankruptcy

So faced with that figure to wipe out the debts of a generation of students, he’s changed his mind. Or say: “I never said that”. Actually, you did Jeremy. And repeated it to the point where it became boring.

Never mind, he’s restructuring his party. Or, kicking out the deputy leader, as its known.

Tom Watson, the incumbent, was never Corbyn’s choice. When he was surprisingly voted as party leader, it was decided from on high that he was so unelectably left-wing that the party needed a bit of ‘balance’. So it chose fat Tom to appeal to the old New Labourites who found Jezza’s neo-communist ranting somewhat unpalatable. All things are indeed relative as during the Gordon Brown era, Tommy was considered pretty hard left. Ironic as he’s now deemed the party’s very own Nigel Farage and surplus to ‘the cause’. They want to replace him with Emily Thornbury who follows the staunch hard-left line. Like Diane Abbot does but Emily can string a sentence together with a degree of coherence and also probably passed her maths GCSE.

Changing of the guard. It’ll be the KGB next.

Happy Monday

A xxxx