Owen Smith: Acting and Sounding Tough When You're A Small Man Wearing Glasses Rarely Works....Trust Me

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Brexit was supposed to be a precursor to civil war within the Conservative party but no. after about a week of backstabbing Macbethian style they seem to have settled down under the new Prime Minister Theresa May.

So instead it has been the Labour party that has carried the cause of gazing at its own navel and then proceeding to rip it apart. Whilst the country expects the main opposition to actually oppose (perish the thought) instead it's going to be busy fighting a leadership contest between the incumbent Jeremy Corbyn and his challenger Owen Smith, a man hardly known outside of his native Wales and let me tell you only a little better within it.

I first recall him properly in the Welsh TV debates during last year's general election. He represented Welsh Labour and to fair he represented it very well being smug, big headed and conceited. It seemed to me at the time the subliminal message he was trying to convey was "VOTE LABOUR.....ISN'T THAT ENOUGH?"

But to be fair here is the man who it appears as taken the main chance to challenge Corbyn when the people who have engineered that situation didn't have the courage to stand. Or the other one person that did, Angela Eagle, showed herself to be surprisingly thin skinned and easy to beat. He is just a heartbeat away from controlling a party ill at ease with itself and potentially in permanent decline. Good luck with that.

But let's not talk about that....well not today anyway.

Instead let's talk about what happened yesterday. When in a political gathering Owen Smith set out his policies, some of which were a clear attempt to be more left leaning than Corbyn. Policies that must have caused some of the anti Corbyn Labour MPs that caused this crisis in the first place to lacerate on their lattes.

But let's not talk about that either...for whether it was a genuine so well hidden commitment to pure socialist policies that it had to be brought up from some metal tomb or just some cynical ploy to sway some of his opponent's supporters...well I'll let you decide.

No I want to chat about something specific that Owen Smith said. When he mentioned that it upset him that Labour didn't have the power to "smash" Theresa May "back on her heels".

Let me stress before I go on that I'm in no way mocking violence towards women. For it I believe is one of those cancers in our society which is far worse than people might believe. I'm personally aware of one couple where the wife has told my wife her husband hits her when he's drunk. This woman, for the record,would deny any such claim if the police were involved so it's impossible to take the matter further. Furthermore, in case you were thinking in cliche, they are so middle class it should be branded on their arms.

So I'm not mocking violence towards women...I'm mocking Owen Smith.

When you are small man wearing glasses acting tough rarely works simply because you're wearing glasses. Everyone can see that you have a weakness. That you cannot start a fight without putting those specs down first. That for most cases you would be confronting someone face to chest and you have to be angry looking up at that person whilst he/she would be looking pitifully down at you.

Speaking as part of the oppressed minority of small men wearing glasses I can tell you that I rarely got involved in fights unless heavily provoked. Indeed the last real fight I had was aged fifteen with a boy the same age who also wore specs, so everything seemed fair enough. I remember it well, throwing my opponent to the floor, getting on top, hitting him and then thinking "I've won this but what the hell I do next?". As finishing a fight seemed so much easier on TV.

Owen, let's face facts, if this was a school and you confronted Theresa May,Nicola Sturgeon or Leanne Wood they would laugh, throw your glasses to the floor before proceeding to step on them with those heels you appear to be so obsessed about. After which they would give you a good slap before walking off laughing even more whilst you find yourself looking at the world with cracked vision before running off to the nearest teacher.

So Smithy, if there is a piece of advice I can give you (as if I truly care) it's that leadership is not in having a penis. It's in having a vision that people will follow. As far as I can see it, your vision is just in obtaining power...and that's not enough.

Until the next time.