Jeremy and Piers clash at NHS DEMO

THE DEATH OF PROTEST by Karl Trevor

It is often quoted at such events, as Nye Bevan said, “The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it”. Well on Monday 22nd November it appears that that mass protests for the NHS have run out of folk willing to fight against the Health and Social Care Bill. At the Cenotaph, barely 300 ‘folk’ turned up. That’s it then, you would think. If Boris was putting the milk bottles out and smoking a Woodbine by the front door on Monday evening he would have barely noticed this tiny, surreal protest and surely he would have thought “We’ve Won!”

But it wasn’t all doom, there was a strange comedic element to the tragedy of the proceedings provided in no small part by a Piers Corbyn contingent actually heckling Jeremy Corbyn’s speech. And equally surreal was Jeremy Corbyn’s response. Twice Jeremy broke off from his crowd pleasing speech to reason with the Antivax heckling, something along the lines of “Whatever your views, we need to save the NHS!” The third time was a gem. Jeremy showed real anger and screamed “Just Shut Up!”. The tiny crowd went wild, seeing the ‘Grand Zen Master of Kinder Politics’ finally reacting with visceral anger, which was beautiful. The irony being it wasn’t against the Tories, Billionaires or Back Biting Blarites but his own dear brother. Just imagine an Old Testament tragedy acted out by the two old guys from the Muppets, to a script from Monty Python.

When the rally drew to a close four Nurses sang and were drowned out by Piers Corbyn’s posse of Strange. There was a man relentlessly shouting “Harold Shipman!!!” to nobody in particular, who looked very much like Harold Shipman. There was a guy on a bike with a huge Palestinian flag stood next to a man chanting “Oh Tommy, Tommy Robinson!”. Hilarious and Tragic. The sickest joke of the night was later when more than 20 ‘Labour M.P.s’ abstained on the Bill handing it over to the slightly depleted Tory vote.

I always wondered what it would be like to witness history being made. Today I saw the killing blow to the NHS, the death of Labour as a force for social justice and the end of protest. I also saw Jeremy lose his rag, 5years too late and at the wrong people, but none the less it was glorious, funny and desperately heartbreaking