Kids have more sense of fair play than Labour chiefs

W IHEN was a boy growing up in Glasgow, we lived for football. We’d arrive at my primary school in Battlefield at least an hour before the bell, gutties on and ready tae kick a tanner ba’ around that weirdly shaped football pitch, hoping to score an Archie Gemmill-style goal, followed by raucous celebration and the lifting of the Jules Rimet trophy before 9.10am registration with Miss Sweeney. Each term we started by picking two captains. Those captains would then alternate in the picking of players, an experience that has moulded many for life. Luckily I was a keeper, an Alan Rough in a world of wannabe King Kennys ... while I was never first pick, I satisfied myself with a healthy career in the top half of the draw. The pitch we played on had “challenges”. It sloped downhill dramatically, some three-metre difference between goals – it was L-shaped, with one goalkeeper unable to see the other, and Mansionhouse Road, out of bounds, separated from our pitch by only an ineffectual fence. And while the normal rules of playground football applied, there were always new challenges to the perceived wisdom. 1. If the ball went on the roof of the cludgie whoever kicked it had tae get it. 2. If you dinked the keeper, shooting uphill, and the ball almost cleared the line, you got the goal 3. If some eejit skied the ba’ over the ineffectual fence, they had tae ask the joyless Jannie tae get it back. Of course, there was always some bleating, an amount of moaning and the odd attempt to rewrite the rules on an ad hoc basis. We were governed by the universal mantra that “fair is fair”. As eightyear-olds we dealt with these debates and discussions. We decided. Democratically. Just as we did when it came to picking a new captain every term. If you had been a captain the term before you automatically entered the ballot. There were no shortage of young pretenders wanting, wishing, willing to take the armband. But the incumbent always, always had the right to defend his previous term’s record.

We had lived but eight summers, yet no-one, not once, ever thought to challenge this notion; it was unknowingly the exercise of natural law by weans in Battlefield. Natural law originated in the classical age of Greek philosophy, promoted through the prism of political perception by the likes of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke in the age of the Enlightenment.

Nothing could be less enlightening than currently watching the Parliamentary Labour Party, imploding in an idiotically internecine of indulgence. I have nothing to grind, axe-wise. Labour are dead to me, especially after what I witnessed in Scotland during indyref1. Many that share my political passion are either indifferent to the head office antics or gleefully willing the fire to burn higher. I seem unable to keep calm when confronted by the contemptible cavalcade called the contemporary Parliamentary Labour Party. My sense of social justice, like my sense of natural law, is utterly offended as parliamentary politics ploughs into the power of the people.

If the PLP wanted to usurp their leader, a leader who holds the greatest-ever mandate to lead the party, they should have collected 51 names and found a stalking horse. Instead, they attempted to destroy the man rather than simply defeat him. A procedurally meaningless, personally motivated vote of no confidence followed. Co-ordinated resignations, some seeming to have been helpfully organised by certain media outlets, a further attempt to trash the man. The truth? Labour membership has more than doubled under his leadership. Labour has never been more popular. Then this final ignominy, a legal attempt to stop the incumbent defending himself from a leadership challenge. Unbelievable. All I know is that me and my eight-year-old footballing school pals would have definitely let Corbyn stand to be captain again, naturally and without recourse to law. Fair is fair, after all.