Polly Toynbee is 'optimistic' again. Won't end well ...

 … it never does.

Over the years I’ve tracked the barometer, nay, the roller-coaster of Polly Toynbee’s agonisingly optimistic takes on her successive political crushes.  Once the SDP was well and truly dead, she had the highest hopes for Blair – until he let her down.  Who can forget her swooning over fellow ’70s soft-leftist, anti-nuke Patricia Hewitt when she became Sec of State at the DTI (whose brief then included Energy) and the ever naive Polly wrote: Get that: no new nuclear power stations!  Only to have Blair overrule her – and fire her – shortly thereafter.  Then Brown became even more of a hot fixation, an object of her wish-projection.  We know what happened there.  Then Miliband (in various incarnations).  Then John McDonnell !  (True.  I told you I follow these thing.)  Then Starmer.  And whenever a GE looms at a moment when her hopes for the incumbent leader have already waned, she always dusts off the ‘nosepeg’ formula for voting Labour anyway.  

And now, from today’s Graun …

We must believe!   Yes, it’s heart-wrenchingly pathetic.  (When was that mugshot taken..?)  Anyhow, as a weekend Blast From The Past, back to those heady days of Gordon Brown and how he, in turn, dashed her hopes – one of my doggerel efforts, from from 2007.  Apologies to J.Milton Hayes and Mad Carew, and a good weekend to all.

There’s a one-eyed yellow Scotsman of a dour and sullen hue
There’s a stench of pious bullshit all around
There’s a broken-hearted woman dreams of socialism true
And the yellow Scot forever lets her down

He was known as Red McBroon, and he made the Party swoon
Though his cowardice had long begun to smell
But for all he was a wanker he was feted by the bankers
And Polly Toynbee smiled on him as well

He’d been stringing her along with his socialism strong
She’d swallowed all he put into her head
When she judged Blair’s time was short, she said Broon had her support
Provided he would prove himself True Red

He wrote to ask what promise she would like from Red McBroon
They met for lunch as many times before
And fervently she told him then that nothing else would do
But his vote against Blair’s mad Iraqi war

On the night of the debate, Red McBroon was in a state,
His followers could bring mad Tony down
But he’d never in his life had the balls to wield the knife
For he knew the wielder never wears the crown

When it came to the division, courage gave way to ambition
And his scruples failed as surely as his balls
When she heard them read the vote, fury welled up in her throat
And ‘betrayal!’ was her cry around the halls

Now Hell it hath no fury like a jilted Polly Toynbee
First Blair and now McBroon had sold his soul
As she stomped off in the night, for her op-ed piece to write
She vowed vengeance on the yellow Scots arsehole

There’s a one-eyed yellow Scotsman of a dour and sullen hue
There’s a stench of pious bullshit all around
There’s a broken-hearted woman dreams of socialism true
And the yellow Scot forever lets her down.

ND