What did you think defeating the online right was about? Newsnight? Op-eds? Planted PMQs? Losers.

Labour Diaries

Make Labour Men **** Again

I am in the Anacta lounge holding a free beer and chatting to a millennial Labour man who doesn’t know what a cuck is. Ambassador, you are really spoiling us. There are sensitive young men who’d pay good money to get mentioned in my Substack this quickly.

I explain to our Labour man, let’s call him Tom, that, traditionally, a cuck refers to a man whose wife is unfaithful, but its modern, i.e. online, use is a weak or servile man, often used contemptuously for a man with moderate or progressive views.

The current make-up of the party is definitely a bit cuck-y. We are impotent at defending what’s ours.

I mentioned this to Tom after reading a pamphlet from one of the Labour societies about the “menace” of men who impose their company on younger members. The piece warned against using positions of authority to bask in the attention of someone who might feel obliged to engage. Yet it struck me that the likely readers were polite, slightly awkward boys already avoiding eye contact, while the men who most needed the advice would assume it didn’t apply to them. I would later bite my tongue at criticising the author when I went around the lobby trying to avoid drunks looking to pull. Also, once I was done being flippant about it, I came to approve of the decision of this man to at least try to talk to men about being nuisances and develop self-awareness.

Tom looked confused when I pointed number 3 to him “Why exactly are you texting someone at least ten years younger than you about what party they are going to? Stop it.” He mumbled something about not dating 20-year-olds. Erm, who said I was talking about you.

Jealous, bitter, millennial men need to stop trying to get between millennial women and Gen Z men. Ten years is a healthy age gap because, as we all know, women age more slowly, die older, and only reach their sexual peak in their 30s. Men, on the other hand, get heavy and depressed past the 25 age mark. That’s because their frontal lobe famously takes that long to mature, but once it’s up and running, they realise the full weight of their existence, their responsibilities as men, the degeneracy of their sexuality, the intrinsic shamefulness of their gender, and they flop. No point fighting FACTS and LOGIC, cougars flourishing is what God intended. I am sorry if millennial men are past their due date and left on the shelf. Maybe they shouldn’t have wasted their pretty boy years on their career (what career lol). “I needed to work on my self!!!1!1” What, like in the gym? Why are my lady biceps bigger than your calves then?

if you see a woman with a man with over a decade age gaps leave her alone, she is right where she wants to be.

Tom gave me the “deer in the headlights look” so I stopped being self-indulgent. I am a professional Commentator and Campaigner. There are people out there who drop four figures for a Labour staffer’s digits (Russian spies, telemarketers, etc.).

I need to finish writing the previous night's diary so I can do my favourite thing in the world, which is ignore people chatting amongst themselves around me while I type out my drivel. I am in the lobby of one of the conference hotels, and lobbyists, hacks, and political bag carriers are swirling around. I wear my AirPods - noise cancellation on- and put on Ode to Joy- the EU anthem. I am soon consumed by the cacophony of jokes and sexual innuendos I want to stuff into this substack, but I know better, so wipe the smirk off my face and type some normal notes.

Reform voters hate a Karen

I wrote for the New Statesman about my main grievance with the party, their banning journalists halfway through the conference without any good reason I can see:

The reason I identify with Blue Labour as much as I do with the soft left of the party is because, as someone born and raised in the blunt communitarian culture of Greece, I have a visceral need to fight politics like a man. Only cowards throw the rulebook to nullify their enemies. Real men don’t run away from a fist fight.

Keir Starmer’s conference speech finally gave the party the narrative we needed to hear. He did so by being self-deprecating and sharing his actual personal story, not the fake-sounding one we were fed last year. Oh, and he smiled more. Well done Mr Darcy, your troops were craving a wink.

But Andy Burnham is right about the climate of fear. The word I would use is “vibe”. Labour is giving off insecure, petty vibes. The party’s National Executive Committee may say it has good reason to exclude certain MP candidates, journalists and members, but the average member marinating in a semi-permanent environment of safe-space proclamations senses a stifling vibe. The details of each case don’t matter; time isn’t taken to investigate them.

Plus, as the Tories are finding out, and as Nigel Farage knew all along, negative attention is better than no attention. The Labour movement is sorely lacking media stars. We used to have Jones. Despite the current rift, his presence alone at conference could inspire media-savvy Labour zoomers. Bobbing around with a mic and camera crew, Jones could show our youths what it takes to become a big name and attract a followership of millions. If you worry that his presence there is so powerful it disrupts, or worse, turns members away from our party, then the problem is not with the space Labour allowed Owen, but with the space Labour vacated. If his arguments are as weak as some say, then how weak are we if they cannot be rebutted? If our MPs can’t answer questions about Gaza without looking flustered, is there a problem with our policy on Gaza?

If Labour wants to win over Reform voters, we need to understand that Reform voters hate a Karen (a pejorative term for an entitled middle-class woman). If you think Owen Jones is a disingenuous weasel, tell him to his face. It’s manipulative to use the word “threatening”, when the more accurate word is “annoying”.

Obsessive factionalism needs to become a socially stigmatising offence. Some people in Labour, with the self-awareness of a chatbot, will reassure you that their wing is the decent, dignified one. By now, I have been close to all of them for long enough to know it was Dad buying the presents all along. It’s called growing up.

The right – and lefties outside the Labour tent – are thriving because they have the freedom to experiment with their online presence, develop shared, humorous language, and harness shock value. How many Labour Party members can shitpost with immunity? We can’t even call racists racist these days without being asked to apologise. No wonder X, where the British media establishment still gets its news, is dominated by the right. If Labour really believes winning is more important than moralising, it needs to give commentators linked to the party free rein, and MPs need to get used to taking part in confrontational and organic comms.

What did you think defeating the online right was about? Newsnight? Op-eds? Planted PMQs? Losers.

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