it's a beautiful morning. if horsemouth sticks his head right up by the window he can just about see the sun at the end of the street rising over the marshes. horsemouth is up at a decent time. he has a (mild) headache. he has his coffee and he's about to take some paracetamol. the night was clear and cold. today will be warm in the sun.
the sun will progress down the street over his house and sink into the badlands of upper clapton (or lower clapton depending on the season).
horsemouth thinks he will do a run to the supermarket (probably check out the aldi bookbox on the way over).
diane abbott (the neighbouring MP) is in trouble.
horsemouth hesitates to discuss this (he just thinks it is trouble - it is the kind of topic he usually avoids).
she has sent a letter to the press (one she now claims was a draft not intended for publication). it has caused offence. she has made an apology 'for the anguish caused'. she has had the labour whip removed from her (she is no longer one of their MPs and must sit as an independent) while she is being investigated for racism.
there can be little doubt given the text of the letter that they will find her guilty of racism.
her essential crime is one of mistiming (the labour party has accepted criticism of itself as anti-semitic, has apologised and has attempted to move on but diane's statements risk undermining that apology)
but it is also one of honesty - it would not surprise horsemouth if many black people did feel that they are more discriminated against in british social life than jews, irish people, and travelers. (horsemouth has not had the conversations so he can't tell you if this is a well founded view or not and, to be honest, he would probably not raise this in conversation). and yet horsemouth thinks that is what many black people think and frankly that's the way it looks to him (when was the last time you heard about jewish youth being beaten to death by police? or stabbed to death by racists? or deported despite in fact being a british citizen).
(somebody will no doubt now give him an example for each)
it's not that there isn't anti-semitism (there is) and anti-irish and anti-traveler racism (there is). but if horsemouth's we (other white people - where horsemouth would classify himself) are honest about it, it does not limit the life chances of people half as much as being black. the racism against black people, their negative media construction is pervasive. it is a long bad dream of empire and scientific racism which people struggle to free themselves from.
(here horsemouth is speaking for himself. his brother's kids (raised in the london suburbs) seem excellently free of these bullshit prejudices).
and then there is the history - the holocaust or the atlantic slave trade or black 47 or the lives lived under the colonial regimes and frankly racist policies in the UK itself.
diane is accused of trying to construct a hierarchy of racism but do people actually believe that all racisms are equal in their institutional and psychological depth and actual historical effects? this is clearly a nonsense. people clearly think one history is more horrific than another, the only real question is which.
except this is a question that mustn't be asked - but diane (being ill-advised) has asked it. (did no one in her office think to tell her not to send the letter?).
of all the unproductive fault-lines in politics this is surely the least productive, the most divisive.
and yet the unity that results from this is hollow and tactical
horsemouth thinks there is no way back from this for her. he was never a fan (ok ok his heart did warm to her when she was caught brown-paper bagging a can of gin and tonic on the train back to dalston after work because this is what tens of thousands of people from hackney do every day).
that said he is not a fan of the starmerite labour party either - (elect labour? elect labour for what?). for horsemouth it will be a 'hold your nose and vote labour' election (and repent at leisure of their neo-liberal, sub-tory shit after).
horsemouth sees little chance of creating a fresh party to the left of labour, or even some independents, with appreciable support (the barriers to entry are just too great). neither does he see much hope for a parties founded round ex-labour MPs (like galloway's respect, or a putative corbyn split), nor lutfur rahman style labour breakaways
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