Ode to Jeremy Corbyn by Me and My Muse

I woke from a dream on Wednesday night with a song about Jeremy Corbyn, to the tune of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, ringing in my ears. Since it has clearly been inspired by the Muses, I have posted it below after emendations suggested by Professor Ian Rutherford, an expert on ancient Greek lyric metre.

I believe the poem was produced by my subconscious coping with the stress related to joining the UK Labour Party for the third time, having left both when its leaders did not support the miners and when they did support the invasion of Iraq.

The stress is caused by being personally mis-described EVERY DAY in the press, which is frantically trying to identify who all the new members of the Labour Party are. So, for the record, I am not and never have been any of the following except, long ago, no. 2:

 A Member of Militant Tendency Practising Entryism.

A Young Person who Can’t Afford to Get on the Property Ladder.

A Revolutionary Trotskyite (perish the thought; I'm a Bolshevik).

An Antediluvian Naïve Idealist.

A Sinister Right-Wing Fifth Columnist.

 You can find the music to sing the poem (the first I've ever published) along to here. I wish, as Dr Lucy Jackson, an expert on Greek choruses, has said to me, that my subconscious had chosen a more upbeat Beatles song (Drive my Car, She Loves You etc.), but the picture of Corbyn on the night bus, in full melancholia, clearly affected my Muse.

Jeremy Corbyn, lowest expenses

Of any MP, at eight pounds and seventy-three;

Who can he be?

Waits on the back bench, voting against

The Iraq War, the Poll Tax and more.

What's Labour for?

REFRAIN

All the Party Members

Where have they just come from?

Tired Old Labour Voters?

Where do they all belong?

Margaret Beckett, naming the man

She thought no one would ever support

Perish the thought!

Look at him working, planning to give

Britain back to the people, the poor.

He'll fight the class war.

Jeremy Corbyn, principled man

With your straight-talking ways and your beard.

You’ve persevered!

Tony Blair hates you, says you’re a

Loser, a Trotskyite throwback and worse.

Blair's Labour’s curse.