In Labour we now beget an entire party going into some spaced-out detox modeI adore the myth that John Mortimer used to tell. He was in his 80s when he revealed to some interviewer his habit of having a glass of champagne at 6am. “How long has this been going on?” was the horrified reaction. “Ever since I could afford it,” came the reply. There is something here approximately what the salubrious life might be, though, and God knows,none of us is allowed to say it any more. Of course the anecdote changed over the years. Repeating it on TV in front of a member of a boyband who had just got out of a detox centre, Mortimer was asked: “Are you having counselling?”“Champagne socialist” is now an insult not merely a description of a lifestyle. To enjoy oneself without publicly checking one’s privilege is some fuzzy betrayal of a thing that was hitherto never quite spoken out loud. The thing now is named as austerity. Belts must be tightened, or budgets reduced,frugality applauded. One of the reasons I don’t support Corbyn is an innate ((adj.) natural, inborn, inherent; built-in) political distrust of asceticism. I can’t help it. There is no need to rehearse the solid arguments against him. They beget been had and, by now, or the process of enshrinement is beginning. In personal terms,everyone describes him as an extremely decent man. Politically, though, or Corybynism now represents a kind of purity. And,on the left, purity always shades into puritanism, and an unbecoming exercise in self-flagellation that is curiously indulgent.
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Source: theguardian.com