How to run a whelk stall

 If you are not from the UK, you may not be familiar with the expression, "Couldn't even run a whelk stall," but I am sure you will instantly understand the humorous contempt it intends.

In Hastings where I live, there's a café I like very much. The family who runs it is pleasant and friendly, as are the people they employ, the vegetarian food they serve is wholesome and delicious, the building is light and airy and attractive, and the seating is comfortable. I especially like the tables by the big windows, which often stand open to let in the sea breeze; just outside on the little balcony there are plants growing in pots. The café is upstairs, and downstairs there is a gift shop selling a variety of well-chosen good quality odds and ends — ornaments and toys, bags and scarves, china and jewellery, gift cards, toiletries; you know the sort of thing.

On the day we went to the lunchtime concert, we first went and ate actual lunch at this café. Afterwards, still having a little time to absorb before the concert was due to start, we browsed in the gift shop. The café had not been as well-populated as it used to be before the pandemic, and I am conscious that just now our small businesses need all the custom they can get, to pull through these uncertain and challenging times. So I looked round for something to purchase, as much to support the shop as because I needed anything. I found some nice cards for friends with forthcoming life events, and a couple of packets of pretty paper napkins. I'm looking for a bag, and they had a display with some on, but it was not possible to get near it because the proprietor of the shop — the father of the family who runs it — was deep in conversation with an elderly lady customer right in front of the shelves with the bags. I waited a while and then gave up, contenting myself instead with waiting patiently at the check-out counter for them to finish setting the world to rights.

Their conversation was on the topic of UK politics, and followed a track with which I am more familiar than I ever wished to be. It went like this: 

• The country is in a mess
• Poor old Boris (our Prime Minister)
• What a time to become Prime Minister
• He's done his best, hasn't he, all things considered?
• He's made some mistakes, but imagine how awful it would be if we'd had Jeremy Corbyn
• Oh yes, Corbyn would have been dreadful
• Think how much worse a mess we'd have been in if we'd had Jeremy Corbyn.
• Jeremy Corbyn couldn't run a country.

This legend has achieved a popularity I find very disappointing.

My own vote is primarily given to a politician whom I perceive as being a person of integrity. A good person. I am not wedded to the politics of any particular party, though some I find more attractive than others. Mine has been a socialist vote, but I'd vote for a good and wise and honest Conservative over a corrupt and self-serving Labour candidate, any day.

In the UK at the moment, we are struggling with the aftermath of Brexit and the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister, has played a key role in both. 

This we know for certain: he has lied, and lied and lied. The Brexit campaign, led by Boris Johnson, was largely won on the basis of his intentional and knowing lies. Brexit has been very damaging for the British economy as well as for diplomatic relations with our European neighbours, and has made Britain the laughing stock of Europe. We have lost the good opinion of those who once were our allies, our team-mates. How could anybody see that as a good thing?

We also know, as a matter of certainty not conjecture, that the pandemic has offered an occasion for billions of pounds of public money to be deliberately misused, paid out in back-handers (of eye-watering magnitude) to dodgy firms run by the friends and families of Conservative politicians, and channelled into funds specifically designated to promote Conservative party politics. 

In the meantime, of course, the Conservative programme to dismantle our National Health Service has been quietly progressed, the poor and struggling have been increasingly abandoned, and our treatment of refugees has been more than shabby (until public opinion on the matter nudged our government into a little upsurge of good nature in respect of those who helped us and worked for us in Afghanistan). But that is just business as usual for the Conservative party, so let's set that aside.

Whatever views one might hold about public health and movement of refugees and support of the poor, I hold firmly to the view that in national politics integrity really matters. And whether or not one's politics lean to the left or the right, our present government has been demonstrably and repeatedly shown to be a) routinely, profoundly dishonest and b) corrupt.

Then there's Jeremy Corbyn. Never was a man so unreasonably scapegoated. He is used in public discourse as a bogeyman. "Yeah, but think how much worse things would be if Jeremy Corbyn had been Prime Minister," is the irrational formula produced at every end and turn.

Corbyn is left-wing, yes, but not terrifyingly so. He is intelligent, moderate, informed — and he is a man who listens to others. I personally do not think he would have been a wonderful Prime Minister; he is more of a prophet than a king, if you see what I mean — I think his critique may be of greater weight than his ability to govern. But of this I, and everyone else, can be entirely certain: he is a man of absolute integrity. He is honest. He is trustworthy. You could rely on him to work tirelessly for the common good.

What puzzles me is why a large body of popular opinion would hold in contempt a man of real integrity, vilifying and scapegoating him, holding up for public scorn the way he would conduct himself in an office he was never given the chance to hold, while lining up in support of a man we know for sure, without a shadow of doubt, is a serial liar who steals public money on a colossal scale. Something has gone very, very wrong with our judgement. 

It's like those who shouted for the release of Barabbas shuddering over how awful it could have been if they'd let that Jesus go.

But beside all of that, nobody runs a country on their own, do they? Jeremy Corbyn would have had John MacDonnell, an equally honest and intelligent, principled man, as his chancellor, and a whole cabinet to work with him and advise him. The steady work of legal people in the Good Law Project has uncovered corruption in one after another of the cabinet currently in government. It is rotten to the core.

In the same way, the proprietor of the café and gift shop doesn't normally run it on his own. His son and daughter work upstairs in the café, and downstairs in the gift shop a lady usually checks out purchases; but on this occasion she wasn't there.

When the proprietor of the shop finally tore himself away from his discussion with his friend about how awful things would be if we'd had Corbyn (yawn), he came to check out my purchases (which would have been doubled in value if he hadn't been personally blocking access to the thing I wanted to buy). But, since he usually has a woman to do this for him, he didn't know how to operate the electronic checkout, and was unable to give me a receipt.

And I asked myself why I would accept the view on the eligibility of Corbyn to run the country, of a man who votes for a liar, obstructs the sale of goods in his own shop and can't even work his own till.

I don't think I'll be going back there in an almighty big hurry. There's a very nice café in the shop next door and I can get a perfectly good bag (same make, same styles) secondhand on eBay. I only wanted to help him out, but he made it impossible; and this seems to be the general trend of our politics — we have got too lost in our own opinions to simply choose what is straightforwardly good. The very farmers and fishermen who have been ruined by Brexit voted for it, primarily because of the lying yarn spun by Boris Johnson. And what do they conclude? "Think how much worse things would be if we'd had Jeremy Corbyn."