The political commentator said:
\nThe new leader of New Labour
\nwill just have to make himself
\nmore acceptable to Middle England.\u2019<\/p>\n
Being a traveller, a geographer even,
\nI searched my atlas for Middle England.
\nI could find no such place so I wandered
\naround the post-industrial Midlands instead.<\/p>\n
Without luck I wondered if my Scots \u2018Hullo\u2019
\nwould be better if I tried the English \u2018Hill-low\u2019,
\nI tried it out. Got nowhere. Silence and laughter
\nmet me in equal measure. Was there such a place?<\/p>\n
I thought maybe it all harked back to Tolkien
\nand his Middle Earth with all that business
\nabout the Shires. I tried them out. Got nowhere
\nuntil some bloke whispered candidly in my ear:<\/p>\n
\u2018Look Jock, there\u2019s no such bleeding place.
\nNever was. It\u2019s a huge con trick by the Beeb.
\nThe perpetuation of a myth, that\u2019s what it is.
\nIt panders to an imperial past with all that stuff
\nabout Rule Britannia and Johnny Foreigner.
\nYou\u2019ve got it up in Scotland too, mate.<\/p>\n
It is designed to hold back real change to keep
\nall these creeps in power. Brainwashing clap-trap.
\nYes, there\u2019s toffs, but they\u2019re few and we\u2019re many.
\nJust get a load of it here. What\u2019s great about this?
\nReality is tough for people these days they believe it.
\nNeed something to hold on to. Love the accent.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The political commentator said: The new leader of New Labour will just have to make himself more acceptable to Middle England.\u2019 Being a traveller, a geographer even, I searched my atlas for Middle England. I could find no such place so I wandered around the post-industrial Midlands instead. Without luck I wondered if my Scots…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1863,1000],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-16298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-celebration","category-issue-20","tag-author-jim-aitken"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":1318,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16299,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16298\/revisions\/16299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}