George orwell

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeathoftheleft/media.mp3" title="Nick Cohen and Fraser Nelson discuss the death of the left" startat=32] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the fall of Marxist Leninism.

I am writing a play about Dr Johnson and his Dictionary. It will be performed in Scotland later this year. Five out of the great man’s six helpers were Scots (the only Englishman, V.J. Peyton, was considered a fool and a drunkard) and it’s timely to think of all those Scotsmen working away to consolidate the English language while their descendants try to define the general election. As a fully functioning Willie (‘Work in London, Live in Edinburgh’), I am startled by the zeal with which the SNP plans to take its revenge on Westminster after a decisive ‘no’ vote in the referendum.

Let's be fair, however, UKIP have not cornered the market in weirdness. One of the odder elements of the Scottish independence campaign is the manner in which so many Yes voters deny being nationalists: I support independence but please don't make the mistake of thinking me a nationalist. I only support nationalist aims, like.  I suppose this is just about tenable if you are a member of the Green party or if you swim in one of the Yes campaign's other minor tributaries but it's a mighty rum thing to hear from members of the SNP. Which brings us to Pete Wishart, member of parliament for Perth and North Tayside. The other day he tweeted that he has "Never much cared for any 'nationalisms' whether Scottish, British or Whateverish.

No one is as hated as deeply as the apostate. Ordinary opponents are nothing in comparison. They are unbelievers, who know no better. It is not their fault if the light has not fallen on them. The apostate, by contrast, has known the truth and rejected it. There can be no excuses for his treachery, no defence of ignorance the law. The Devil must have seduced him, or to translate old superstitions into language of a secular age, he must have “sold out”. For all the apparent differences between left and right, they share a complacent assumption that only corruption can explain why a believer could reject them, when they are so obviously right and good. The Tea Party, Ukip and the Conservative right cannot have a polite argument with leaders who contradict their views.

Alas, it looks like the return to third class travel won't happen. The papers had got terrifically excited about what seemed like a rolling back of 56 years, when British Rail finally ditched its working class fare. The story was on the back of the privatisation of the East Coast Line from Aberdeen to London, for which it seemed at least one of the bidders had envisaged another tier of fares, though it appears the Department of Transport has been thinking along the same lines for the last year. But of course it wouldn't have happened, a return to third class tickets. At least, not described in that dramatically honest and comprehensible way.