In Place of Hope
"We should treat the 2017 manifesto as our foundational document, the radicalism and the hope that that inspired across the country was real." --- Keir Starmer, January 2020. EXACTLY seven years ago this week I was stood in the city centre getting - what the kids might describe - as "low-key pissed on" with a pretty big smile on my face. The "get out the vote" rally was organised on the eve of the eve of the election it's generally hoped we've forgotten these days. If only because the shock surge in support for Jeremy Corbyn might give the strange impression that socialism can be quite popular actually. A few thousand people - most of them young, many of them with more interesting haircuts than mine - had flocked to Birmingham city centre to see the then Labour leader speak. Every poll going was predicting a Tory landslide, Corbyn himself had been traduced and abused as everything from a terrorist-sympathiser to a Jew-hater to the most dangerous al