Counting chickens, Jeremy Corbyn, Freud, and slips of the tongue
Name calling is a political weapon
I shall be at Jeremy Corbyn’s end of campaign rally in London tomorrow night. It should be a celebration. A celebration not only of a victory against those who see the Labour Party’s role to serve merely as an ameliorating voice against the worst of Tory policies but also against those who sought to employ undemocratic and self-defeating tactics to undermine Jeremy Corbyn himself and then the party members wanting to vote for him.
And now that victory seems assured, the guns of spite are being turned against Momentum. Some within the PLP seem to confuse Momentum with Militant. The capital M is obviously frightening them. It’s quite feasible that in private they call Momentum ‘New Militant’ and garner knowing smiles from their colleagues.
Mixing names and making deliberate ‘mistakes’ when referring to political opponents and scapegoats has a long and dishonourable history. It is one of the least appealing aspects of the briefings against Corbyn carried so willingly by the media.
But then, as Freud taught us in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, lapsus is significunt.
