We at XYZ always suspected Jeremy Corbyn was yesterday’s man, but we were more inclined to think summer of love ca. 1968 than the height of the “greed is good era” ca. 1985. But if someone offers you a perfectly good speech written thirty years ago that every leader of your party since then has rejected – why the hell would you not use it?
The most incongruous thing in this otherwise entertaining report on the UK Labour leader’s latest embarrassment is not that the speech is a decades old rehash of Socialist fantasies, but that the journalist is actually asking why Mr Corbyn did not cover the European immigration crisis or the looming referendum on the EU. Well duh! That would be because the speech was written in 1985 of course!
We expect Jeremy Corbyn’s next effort to be a reworked version of the “Dear Mr Vernon” oration that closes out ‘The Breakfast Club’, or perhaps, if he is dragging himself into the 1990’s, a fairly free borrowing from the President’s “we will not go quietly into the night” speech (invoking Dylan Thomas) in ‘Independence Day,’ or perhaps, if he is wanting to really bring himself really up to date to like the year 2000, Hugh Grant’s “we’re a great country too” monologue as the British PM in ‘Love Actually.’
Long may the British opposition leader be a bearded hipster belonging to a different decade – it’s good for Britain and great for the Tories. So bugger Prince and his invitation to party like it’s 1999 – it’s still the early 1980’s in the British Labour party. Cheers comrade, and may the revolution (and colour TV) come to the proletariat soon!
In honour of Mr Corbyn’s thirty year old speech, XYZ has reworked the lyrics for Bowling for Soup’s one hit wonder ‘1985’ (singalong here if you will https://youtu.be/K38xNqZvBJI)
Jeremy just hit the wall
He never had it all
One protest a day
he was a member of CP UK
His dreams went out the door
When he turned twenty four
Only been with one fan
What happened to his plan?
He was gonna be a radical
He was gonna be a star
He was gonna shake his fist
On the hood of Churchill’s car
Margaret Thatcher is now the enemy
Looks at his average life
And nothing has been alright since
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana
There was U2 and Blondie
And music still on MTV
These new kids who vote UKIP
They tell him that she’s uncool
Cause she’s still preoccupied
With 19, 19, 1985
Woohoohoo
(1985)
Woohoohoo
Source: Jeremy Corbyn embarrassed after it emerged passages of speech were written in the 1980s