Memento Tory

I was watching Christopher Nolan’s ingenious film, ‘Memento’, again but with the sequences edited so I could see them in the actual chronological order. As those of you who know the film (for those who don’t but hope to watch it one day, beware of spoilers), we thought Leonard had managed to shoot the person who murdered his wife, until it was finally revealed that the person he shot had nothing to do with the death of his wife at all. Leonard’s inability to retain new memory meant that however much he tried to make notes to remind himself of potential friends and foes, he would often be confused, manipulated by others, and even deceived by himself when he was in a vindictive mood.

The most significant discovery in re-watching ‘Memento’ was that Leonard was ultimately his own worst enemy. Unable to form any coherent view of what had happened to him and others, he devised a self-deluding process to give himself a meaningful mission – to kill the man who took his wife away. But since it was Leonard whose memory lapses led to his wife’s death from insulin overdose, this mission was in fact a pointless endeavour in self-destruction. Seen in the correct order, all the characters who on first viewing appeared to be nasty in one way or another, turned out to be imperfect souls who nonetheless tried in their different ways to help Leonard find closure to his tragic predicament, and move on to something which had real meaning. But Leonard, repeatedly forgetting what he had learnt from painful experiences not so long ago, would embark over and over again on a futile quest.

Sadly, for our country, the Tory Party under Cameron is not unlike Leonard. It fixates on some hated enemy to be blamed for seriously harming the economy and damaging people’s lives, but it forgets that it was its own Thatcherite obsession with deregulation that brought about the financial crisis; and there was no other cause other than its unshakable addiction to cutting down the state that led to the rise in poverty which wrecked so many families. With no memory or any sense of culpability, it launches into making more of the same mistakes.

Perhaps deep down, the Tory Party could not face up to what it had done in the past. So it projects its unforgivable guilt onto others to whom it could direct its indignant scorn. But all the while, it’s out there hurting more and more victims totally innocent of the dreadful misdeed that it alone has perpetrated.

Don’t forget that the Tories, having allowed their banker friends to destroy the economy, are letting them off the hook again. They widened income inequalities in the 1980s and 1990s, and are embarking on exactly the same pernicious course once more. Where Rousseau had long ago warned of the danger of the wealth gap, their motto seems to be the exact reverse, namely: “the rich should get so powerful that they can buy the servility of other people, and the poor should have so little until they have to sell themselves into perpetual exploitation.”

68 Places to Change the Government's Mind

After our 26/3/11 March in London to rally resistance against the decimation of public services, it’s time to turn our attention to targeting key constituencies so that enough MPs rethink their support for the Conservative-led coalition.

We need to persuade voters in those constituencies (where the incumbent Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs could not take for granted the retention of their seats at the next election) that Cameron is savagely cutting down the capacity of a supportive state, and its net effect would be more leeway for the rich and powerful to do as they please, while the rest of us bear the burden of their callous irresponsibilities.

So how would it work?

Discounting the effectively neutral Speaker and Deputy Speakers in the House of Commons, Cameron and Clegg currently rely on 362 of their MPs to give them a majority of 83 against the other 279 MPs who might vote against them. Thus we need at least 42 of the Con/Lib MPs to help stop the Government over their massive programme to incapacitate public services or hand them over to the profit-led sector as they are planning with the NHS.

These MPs would probably put their Party loyalty first, but if they fear the loss of their seat, they would think twice.

I have drawn up a list of 68 constituencies below where the Conservative or Lib Dem MPs would be particularly receptive to citizens’ reminder that their refusal to vote down damaging policies would cost them their seat. Others may have a slightly shorter or longer list with a number of different names, but the purpose of putting forward my list is to encourage protest coordinators to target their efforts where they are most likely to put real pressure on MPs and get them to engage with the deep suffering caused by the Government they have hitherto been backing. This could then begin to turn the tide against Cameron’s phoney majority.

Here’s my suggested list of 68 places where peaceful protest and persuasion could change enough MPs’ minds to help prevent the destruction of the backbone of our decent society:

Aberconwy (Con)
Amber Valley (Con)

Bedford (Con)
Bermondsey & Old Southwark (Lib)
Birmingham Yardley (Lib)
Bradford East (Lib)
Brent Central (Lib)
Brentford & Isleworth (Con)
Brighton Kemptown (Con)
Bristol West (Lib)
Broxtowe (Con)
Burnley (Lib)
Bury North (Con)

Cambridge (Lib)
Cannock Chase (Con)
Cardiff Central (Lib)
Cardiff North (Con)
Carlisle (Con)
Chester, City of (Con)
Corby (Con)
Croydon Central (Con)

Dewsbury (Con)
Dunbartonshire East (Lib)

Ealing Central & Acton (Con)
Edinburgh West (Lib)
Enfield North (Con)
Erewash (Con)

Gloucester (Con)

Halesowen & Rowley Regis (Con)
Harrow East (Con)
Hastings & Rye (Con)
Hendon (Con)
High Peak (Con)
Hornsey & Wood Green (Lib)
Hove (Con)

Ipswich (Con)

Keighley (Con)
Kingswood (Con)

Lancaster & Fleetwood (Con)
Leeds North West (Lib)
Lincoln (Con)
Loughborough (Con)

Manchester Withington (Lib)
Morecambe & Lunesdale (Con)

Northampton North (Con)
Norwich North (Con)
Norwich South (Lib)
Nuneaton (Con)

Pendle (Con)
Plymouth Sutton & Devonport (Con)
Pudsey (Con)

Redcar (Lib)
Rossendale & Darwen (Con)

Sherwood (Con)
Stevenage (Con)
Stockton South (Con)
Stroud (Con)
Swindon South (Con)

Thurrock (Con)

Warrington South (Con)
Warwick & Leamington (Con)
Warwickshire North (Con)
Watford (Con)
Waveney (Con)
Weaver Vale (Con)
Wirral West (Con)
Wolverhampton South West (Con)
Worcester (Con)

Long live the spirit of '68.