Agree with most of that, especially the presentation of disparate themes and events in a way that urges the viewer to consider, or reconsider the wider picture, for themselves.
However that process took me to a very different conclusion on Corbyn.
I’m currently reading and excellent book recommended by
@droodzilla on another thread, Jack Shenker's book,
Now We Have Your Attention, that the two sources appear to overlap.
It seems to me that in Curtis’s first episode at least, he was making links between the anger of ruling elites towards those that are no longer able to dominate, and the anger and resentment of those once dominated.
Shenker delves into those tensions and the complex relations ships within those tensions that have led to recent social divisions and upheavals, namely the tension between
“an organising principle based on free markets, movable money and competition and an ever-growing rivalry between people, companies, cities and regions,”
“In 2008, the economic system that had been constructed around that principle imploded. It did not die altogether, not least because those in power moved heaven and earth to stitch it back together, using audacious innovations to drive it forward, harder and faster than ever before.”
“Basic protections that many had come to expect from the state were stripped away; for some, the fundamental components of a decent life–a secure job and home, a sense of one’s place in the world–drifted further and further out of reach.”
Corbyn stood against that continuum, that narrative, not for it. What’s more he was the only politician who did stand against the continuum of stripping away state protections and a decent quality of life. He might not have been the best politician, or the most able, but he was the *only* politician saying what needed to be said.
Shenker suggests that at the 2017 general election, “the propensity of young people to tell positive stories about themselves (on social media) helped Labour’s campaign messages–which focused on optimistic visions of an alternative future.....in contrast to doom-laden warnings about the consequences of tinkering with the present”
Shenker also says that there was a “failure of political leadership to offer a meaningful critique of the rise and rise of markets [that] has left the door open for the far right to offer an alternative narrative about what has gone wrong and who is to blame”
Now I know you blame Corbyn for the rise of the far right, but the truth is that Corbyn was our best chance of offering that alternative narrative to the far right, but that alternative narrative was sabotaged by the right wing within the Labour Party itself supported by the many centrists outside it.
Curtis and Shenker present a view of a narrative presented by our ruling elites and invite us in their different ways to question that narrative. It seems to me that Corbyn was also one to question that narrative and what’s more the only mainstream politician to question that narrative. He came within a few thousand votes of winning with that narrative in 2017. The right wing fought back and with the help and support of the centrists, took us back to where we are now and where we’ve been for far too long.
