By Ben Pensant

Am I the only person wondering when the Labour government is going to start, y’know, governing? Two months have now passed since Jeremy Corbyn trounced the Tories by winning 55 less seats than them yet still the vicar’s squatter refuses to budge. Meanwhile, Britain is crying out for strong left-wing leadership to deal with the really important stuff: foiling Brexit, tackling hate crime and shaping a golden future in which a short-arsed middle-aged man with a hairy kite will be legally entitled to wander around female changing rooms as long as his passport says he’s a leggy 21-year-old sex goddess.

Not that I’m don’t have faith in the Dear Leader. On the contrary, I’m in no doubt whatsoever that before we know it he’ll be using the iron fist of the state to crush dissent wherever he finds it, ie the BBC, The New European and that big balloon in the sky where Richard Branston lives.

In short, if Cool Corbyn wants to bide his time that’s his business: there’ll be ample opportunity to turf May and her four-eyed husband onto the street once Labour take control. (Let’s how they enjoy shopping at food banks and dying of frostbite like those hypothetical junior doctors I keep hearing about.) I’m more concerned with the great unwashed; those wretched bricklayer folk too wrapped up pulling off hijabs and drowning their children to realise the world changed irrevocably when Jezza won the election by coming second.

Because the fact is, while we await Corbyn’s inauguration the dumb plebs are carrying on as if they still live in a free society where people can swan around buying and selling what the hell they like. And there are already distressing signs that it’s the youngest in society who are most at risk, blissfully unaware that what was accepted pre-Corbyn will no longer to be tolerated.

Take the five-year-old daughter of Andre Spicer, reprimanded last month for selling fresh lemonade to Tower Hamlets festival goers in the kind of fragrant assault on left-wing principles not seen since the dark days of Thatcher’s Britain. To anyone who thinks we live in a world where tiny children are yet to be brainwashed into blindly embracing the twin evils of capitalism and sugary drinks, think again.

If this wasn’t disturbing enough, it came mere weeks after 15-year-old tealeaf Nathan John-Baptiste was caught running an illicit tuck-shop from a filthy toilet in his Walthamstow comp. As if blatantly disrespecting socialist ideology wasn’t reprehensible enough, the dire health and safety implications of dispensing Wham Bars and Space Raiders in the same confined space where teenage boys compete to see who can piss the highest doesn’t bear thinking about.

Thankfully, both were shut down before they got out of control. Within an hour of Spicer launching her empire brave council jobsworths said ‘enough’s enough, bitches’ and swooped, reading her the riot act and demanding she cease trading immediately or pay a £150 fine. Similarly, thanks to sterling intel work by commendable snitches, John-Baptiste’s teachers were made aware of his grubby enterprise and he was ordered to shut up shop. Personally I’d have thrown the book at them and I’m certain once St Jezza takes office his first priority will be re-opening both investigations and pushing for the hardest punishment possible.

Still, according to Spicer’s father his poor, money-hungry snowflake of a daughter sobbed all the way home. And with a bit of luck the incident has left her so traumatised she’ll think twice before embarking on such dissent again and instead focus on being a normal child: sucking her thumb, playing with gender non-specific toys and counting down the days until she celebrates her 18th birthday by hanging herself.

Sadly, having read John-Baptiste’s brash statements about wanting to become a millionaire it appears he may well be damaged goods already. But I’ve a hunch this is mere youthful Tory bravado. Let’s hope the humiliation of witnessing his black market cottage industry reined in by the state has destroyed his self-esteem. And who knows, now Nathan’s stock’s been seized and the debts are piling up he may even feel a pang of remorse the next time he’s hanging around a freezing cold gym waiting for Tom the caretaker to arrive and start dishing out bubblies for hand-jobs.

But at least the rest of us can sleep easy knowing these two dangerous neoliberals have had their wings clipped, sparing future generations another Michelle Moon or Count Alan Sugar. And make no mistake the grizzly Apprentice ghoul and his perverted knicker baron fuck-buddy are prime examples of what happens when impressionable idiots are duped into believing hard work and financial rewards are inherently good. Because we all know Glaswegian women and common-as-muck cockneys are equally incapable of making their own luck as teenage boys and five-year-old girls who still believe in Santa.

The question, however, is how many kids are getting away with this sort of behaviour as we speak? And how many sinister Joe Fagins are pulling the strings? For all you know the cute girl with the pigtails across the road is currently terrorising gullible pensioners by hawking freshly-picked raspberries around care homes. And don’t be surprised to see her big brother prowling the local park flogging out-of-date Chomps to fat kids and spasmos. We need eyes and ears to defeat this, people, but defeat it we will. At least until PM Corbyn takes inspiration from his beloved Bolivia and decides to crack down on child labour by legalising it.

But Allah only knows what the teenagers of today will be like ten years from now if they’re already prepared to allow a jumped up con-artist to open an illegal business without alerting the authorities or braying him behind the bike sheds. Thank god some brave soul had the balls to grass him up. Because as the far-left’s proud history shows, snitching on people is as much a hallmark of socialist societies as cancelling democracy, murdering trade unionists and starving people to death.

Thankfully, the demographic who really matter – millennials – have their heads screwed on. And there are few better twenty-something clickbait queens working today than Ms Abi Wilkinson, who recently pissed off Tory trolls and white supremacists by daring to float the idea of 100% Inheritance Tax. Which – coming weeks after her post-Grenfell support for the requisitioning of empty houses – proved the timeless adage that Stalinism is so much more palatable when it comes with a pretty face

A long term supporter of the state having first dibs on people’s property and possessions after they die, unlike normal people Abi’s only quibble with Inheritance Tax is that the government don’t take enough. So rather than carry on pointlessly debating how much should be taxed she’s settled on ‘all of it’, with the extra revenues to be handed over to the state. And where would she like it re-deployed? The NHS? Education? Housing? Don’t be daft: she wants to encourage even more people to choose benefits over getting a job by ploughing it into the welfare state. Bingo. It’s telling that for someone who hates the government so much she’s remarkably keen on giving them (other people’s) money.

That the only people likely to bear this brunt would be those who either die suddenly or can’t afford or give away their worldly goods while they’re still alive is immaterial. Ideology always trumps logic, which is why she ignores the fact that the rich people she wants penalised (in Abi’s world it’s the only the well-off who leave money to their children) tend to be somewhat adept at hiring accountants and lawyers to think up ingenious ways to avoid paying tax. Just ask Gary Lineker, Ken Livingstone or The Guardian.

But it’s precisely because of this admirable reluctance to address the flaws in her grand socialist plan that Abi is so cherished. For she reminds us that, despite the efforts of underage entrepreneurs, the ultra-regulated socialist powerhouse envisioned by Corbyn is tantalisingly close. And few are looking forward to it more than our Abi.

Why, only last week she was promoting regressive values with gusto, penning a heartfelt piece in which she defended those tolerant liberals on social media who wished death upon Republican Senator John McCain, recently diagnosed with brain cancer. Abi’s reasoning was that because every vote in favour of repealing the Affordable Health Care act would inadvertently contribute to people dying, if McCain were unable to vote by virtue of being dead it could go the other way, particular as the vote to debate the bill in the first place was passed on a narrow margin of 51 to 50. All of which was rendered meaningless later that day when McCain voted against the bill. Ah.

But whatevz: she’s a socialist not bloody clairvoyant. And anyway, who’s to say McCain didn’t suffer a momentary episode of morality due to the tumour in his head? It’s a knocking bet if he’d been of sound mind he’d have voted in favour of the bill before cackling all the way to the bank. Which he probably owns because all rich Republicans own banks. And cackle. Even the ones with brain cancer. It’s what they do.

Of course, if McCain had died on, say, the morning of the vote, his death may well have resulted in the repeal bill going through. Thus by Abi’s own logic, McCain’s death would’ve been indirectly responsible for the deaths of people without health insurance. Which to most folk would kind of demonstrate that perhaps wishing politicians dead to even up each side’s guilt is not really a useful position to take in grown-up debate. But most people are pussies. Because to the rest of us it demonstrates that, like Abi says, ‘this is no time for civility’. And as all good regressives know, while calling people names and hoping they die contributes precisely sod all to political debate it’s a shit-hot way to win an argument on Twitter.

And should any Tory trolls point this out simply blow their minds and watch them squirm by reciting Freddy Engels’ definition of ‘social murder’. (While simultaneously ignoring the fact that by his logic every single socialist state ever is responsible for quite a lot of social murder.) Because like Abi, whenever I’m struggling to define modern legal terms I always defer to the wise words of crackpot philosophers who died 122 years ago

Thankfully, Abi’s not alone: check out the glorious riots that hit Dalston last week; encouraging signs that traditional socialist pursuits are back with a vengeance. And not before time. Because CRAPitalism gets everywhere and infects everything: my phone, my iPad, my poxy fucking Segway. In such a grimly materialistic climate it’s a travesty educated liberals aren’t applauded from the heavens for resisting the lure of commerce.

Luckily, while the sheeple may be too stupid to realise they’re being brainwashed, I knew fine well what I was doing when I applied for a credit card to buy a ten grand Smartwatch. It’s those uncultured folk with their Wonga loans and kebab addictions you need to worry about; I’ll just stick to selflessly fighting capitalism thanks all the same. That we Western liberals who selflessly fight capitalism tend to be the ones who’ve benefited from it most only adds to our righteousness.

And its this righteousness that allows us to wish people dead without the merest hint of hypocrisy. Because as Abi says, the time for civility is over. Unless of course that lack of civility is found in people she disagrees with, in which case it becomes a stark reminder of the abuse women receive online and the nasty right-wingers are only picking on her ‘cos she’s a girl and if they don’t stop right now she’ll thcream and thcream and thcream until she’s thick!

Oh, hang on. She already has.

(Photo: Hans Hillewaert)