Enough! E-fucking-nough. Whilst the idealistic leanings of my mind strain and yearn for Jeremy Corbyn to deliver on his mandate with the ruthless efficiency of Ronseal, I feel like a child caught up in a messy divorce who has come to expect little more than disappointment for Christmas when it comes to politicians. I doubt I'm alone in saying that I had what now seem like unrealistic expectations of Nick Clegg or Tony Blair. For all my wanting to believe that Corbyn has the power and will to make this life a wonderful and beautiful adventure, a large and irrepressible part of me is bracing for the venomous sting of dismay that so often accompanies the sweet tang of expectation. We've been all too happy to ride the wave of optimism in the past only to find ourselves beached on an island surrounded by the kind of fish that swim up your urethra and devour your genitals from the inside out.
Our most recent general elections saw sword-diving enthusiast Ed Miliband stumble out of the political arena looking like a shamed schoolboy who'd been stuffed into a shopping trolley and locked up outside a supermarket by some bigger kids, but when he fell on that particular sword he dragged a lot of our hopes down with him. Courtesy of social media, shady pollsters and a ubiquitous desire for some vague notion of change Miliband's hopes were inflated before bursting like a cheap condom that eventually spawned the mutant Tory majority. Anti-abortionists must be double-thrilled. On a side note at least Cameron's lined up a lucrative career following his inevitable exit from politics as the star of some of the most harrowing Durex adverts ever to grace celluloid. Keep your eyes peeled and washed for that one. Somehow watching Cameron extol the virtues of an extra safe ribbed condom whilst skull-fucking an array of decapitated barnyard animals is still less existentially jarring than Tony Blair's tuxedo-clad peace envoy role in the Middle East.
Hog-hole proclivities aside, the fear of being let down by another proclaimed political messiah is too much for me to bear. As much as I want to join the Corbyn conga line and bang the drum made of Osborne's skin in tune to the beat of the idealism, I still feel that it would be placing inhuman expectations on a man who is, like all of us, distinctly human. It happens all the time, we no longer harbour scepticism any more - everything now is 'awesome' 'literally insane' or 'totes sick' or else it falls into the category of 'meh' and is disregarded on account of it not being broken down into a hashtag that can be easily digested after a long day of being a cunt.
I'll make it clear now, I support Corbyn, he can count on my vote much in the way that Lord Ashcroft can count on being bumped off quietly by a well-spoken hitman. I'm just anxious that placing Jezzer on such a high pedestal will either starve him of oxygen or set him up for such a colossal fall that he won't even hit the ground before the 2020 elections. Any attempt to become more than a man leads to the creation of something far less than a man. If we continue to idolise Corbyn with the same dogged fervent edification then we risk overlooking his inevitable limitations. Like all of us, he's still at risk of eczema, is just as prone to being stung by wasps as the rest of us - doubtless from time to time he liquidates his assets in a public toilet on the way home from a vindaloo. Yes, more subtle coprophilia - I know - but we've done it before with previous politicians who we expected to wield a powerful sword and cut through the smog of apathy, greed and mundane horror that shrouds British politics. Nick Clegg famously misplaced his spine the moment he was elected. Tony Blair entered politics with arguably noble intentions and left it with the moral superiority of a policeman raping a confession out of a burglar. Just the fact that Corbyn is now abbreviated down to JC sends a shiver down the spine, although I could picture Osborne feeding liberals to the lions with the same passive look of a man who's ordering a Big Mac.
The thing is when a politician receives this much public support at an early stage of their rise to prominence; it's a bit like falling in love. First you're infatuated with idea of it all and the possibilities for the future seem endless, but then inevitably you start to notice the all too human tells that belie a more grounded reality until eventually you catch them fucking their personal trainer on your sofa. Beyond the swaggering meatsacks, Corbyn's potential trajectory is probably more akin to Pac Man after he's eaten a cherry - all flashing lights, exciting music with a different tempo and then the cherries wear off leaving him to the expressionless mercy of a single-minded conglomerate of spectral ghouls who keep blathering on about us all being in it together whilst simultaneously dividing us with a money-shaped wedge.
It's happened on the right too, Nigel Farage probably represented to a lot of ignorant pig-fuckers a real shot at having their voices heard, but then Cameron went and nabbed those votes. Perhaps there's a sub-conscious understanding between that particular demographic of the electorate and our prime minister with his porcine persuasion. Arguably though, despite winning the hearts and minds of the heartless and mindless, Farage was eviscerated at the polls and so the political champion lays like a burned out firework in the cold gutter of a November the 6th morning. There was a certain level of stigma attached to UKIP that thankfully spread like gangrene and rotted the whole party out of a fighting chance. To an extent the same is true of Labour's new Corbynistas, but being branded an idealist is far less toxic than being branded a racist so I doubt that same fate awaits - besides UKIP supporters had the Tories to fall back on, with Labour it's all or nothing. I'd rather eat a pine cone a day and nothing else than give my vote to the Liberal Democrats again and the Greens are about as useful as a second asshole although infinitely more lovable.
Still, in an era where every politician is as deep as a puddle and real as a shadow that masks the intentions of far more questionable machinations, I feel that Corbyn stands out as someone with a dense layer of integrity still wrapped around his bones. No-one can say that he's in it for the money, nor is he looking for a career boost in the form of people-pleasing votes. He's old enough to tell you to fuck off on that front. Like a second term president, he's got little to lose and so he can calmly fight the battles he wants to fight rather than scrambling to kiss the nearest metaphorical baby or crawl up the ass of the next George Bush. Given that our current crop of political leaders seem to have stepped straight out of a life insurance advert and into the House of Commons, this is a rare and precious gift that Corbyn has stashed deep in his wrinkles.
Whether you long to see whatever life-altering operation Corbyn might perform on British politics or if you just wished he'd shut up and let you live back in the good old days where you could beat a pauper for the same price as a leading daily, there can be no denying that the man has brought something new to the mix. Admittedly the mix itself was a fetid pot of bumwash to start with and no amount of lentils and organic spinach can mask the scent of chronic, long-term decay, but it's a start - so long as we remember that it is just that; a start. Maintaining this level of energy, enthusiasm and guiding that vitriol of the media will be Corbyn's real challenge. That and lopping off George Osborne's head with a mythical sword that is presumably buried hilt-deep in a rock somewhere near Merseyside or wherever the Northern Powerhouse is these days. So I'll bear my load of scepticism rather than whittling dildos shaped like political heroes because idol-smashing starts at home.