GET REAL, TOMORROW IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. BY DAN HODGES.

Hi. I’m Dan Hodges. And I tell it like it is.

Like. It. Is.

If you believe everything you read on Lefty Twitter you’d think that time progresses in linear fashion, one day after another, week succeeding week, month upon month.

But hang on. Let’s stop and think for a second – is this really what’s going on here?

No. It’s not.

And I’ll tell you why not. People like me – go on, call me a ‘Tory’ if you like – know that in the real world things like this just don’t happen.

Apparently, when the clocks strike 12 tonight, by some magical process of Socialist metamorphosis, today will just magically turn into another, newer, and different day. When the Earth gets to the end of its daily cycle it will just spontaneously keep on spinning, in a kind of Hard-Left utopia of ongoing movement.

Except it won’t. Not now. Not ever.

Because this is the Real World. Where Real Things Happen. In barely formulated tabloid-ish sentences that have somehow made their way into a broadsheet where they masquerade as incisive realism. With their no-nonsense tone. And their full-stops.

My trick is to take exaggeratedly cynical negative statements with absolutely no intellectual basis and make them seem like bullshit-free common sense. The sort of common sense that just so happens to coincide exactly with the latest Conservative Party policy announcement.

I say things aren’t going to happen. Categorically. End of story.

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. That gives me a roughly 50% success ratio, which is just about enough to insulate my reputation and guarantee my salary at a newspaper for which pessimism and demagogic mean-spiritedness are strategic imperatives.

So for the last time, oh my Lefty comrades.

Tomorrow ain’t gonna happen.

Not now. Not ever.

Not even tonight.

Deal with it.

THE GUARDIAN'S JEREMY CORBYN COVERAGE IN 15 HEADLINES

1. ‘Corbyn is on the ballot for the Labour leadership election: but he’ll never win’

2. ‘Corbyn is doing well in the Labour leadership election: why he definitely still won’t win’

3. ‘Corbyn is doing better than we thought: but voting for him would be childish and wrong’

4. ‘Corbyn has a massive lead in the polls: they must be wrong’

5. Michael White: 'Corbyn would return Labour to the 80s’

6. Martin Kettle: 'Corbyn would return Labour to the 80s’

7. Polly Toynbee: 'Corbyn would return Labour to the 80s’

8. Tony Blair: '[jazz hands]’

9. Peter Mandelson: 'Corbyn would return Labour to the 80s’

10. ‘0.01% of new Labour supporters once voted Green: cancel the leadership contest’

11. ‘Editorial: Please please please don’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn’

12. ‘Editorial: Vote for … Yvette Cooper?’

13. ‘Do you think if we relegate coverage of the leadership election to lower down
the page that will make people forget to vote for Corbyn?’

14. ‘Shit, still not working: so how the hell are we going to cover this political development that seems to, like, mean something to people?’

15. ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s style evolution’

BARGAIN-BIN NAIRN: MY LONDON TOP 10

I'll be leaving London in a few weeks to return to the Motherland (Newcastle), so thought I'd compile a LONDON TOP 10 based on my nearly four years in the capital.

These are tourist or daytrip recommendations I suppose, with the sort of faint psychogeographical ground bass you might expect from someone of my age, gender and epoch.

I will confess at this point that despite strenuous attempts, I do not now, nor do I think I ever will, love London. My abbreviated epithet (epitaph?) for the city is:

DARWINIAN PUDDLE 

By far the best thing about London is its people: their variety, proximity and vitality. This might be a sentimental cliche, but then I love both cliche and sentiment and try to avow these values at every available opportunity.

Most of the places on this list are neither blockbuster highlights nor hipster curios. Rather, I've tended to go for generally popularly celebrated sites from the recent-ish past (often the mid-twentieth century) which have somehow clung on in spite of the topographical atrophy of the neoliberal period, but which haven't (yet) been invested with Sinclairean gothic glamour. Having said that, St Mary Woolnoth is included.

Anyway, enjoy!

1) CECIL COURT, COVENT GARDEN

A street of bookshops just off Charing Cross Road (a street famous for its bookshops which now has very few good bookshops - the best second-hand store as far as I can make out is now Skoob in Bloomsbury). Personal favourites are the place that sells 60s sheet music and the shop selling framed collections of stamps. Still possible to buy something good here, or at least have fun browsing.

2) THE BARBICAN, BARBICAN

An absolute pearl of aristocratic Brutalism. Okay it was always for the nobs, but this has made it difficult to get rid of while most of everything else has been destroyed. An oasis of rigidly good modernist design in a swamp of capitalist decoupage. 10 out of 10.

3) THE BLUE POSTS, BERWICK STREET

A slightly dilapidated pub in Soho, for those who like that sort of thing (me). It's a good shape, is not overly hyped, doesn't get too full, and sells Snyders Jalapeno Ptretzel Pieces, an ineffably good American snack that goes very well with a Stella or a Kronenbourg 1664 (another thing in favour of this place is the absence of both real ales and craft lagers).

4) ACE CAFE, STONEBRIDGE

A biker's cafe just off the North Circular. Sells cheap hearty food and always has some sort of shindig going on in the carpark. Jon Savage probably loves this place. A living embodiment of Richard Thompson's '1952 Vincent Black Lightning'.

5) CRYSTAL PALACE PARK, CRYSTAL PALACE

The dinosaurs are incredible, and you can see the countryside in the distance. Modernist sports centres alongside Victorian non-ruins. A profoundly haunting and fun day out.

6) AREA AROUND CROMER STREET, KINGS CROSS/BLOOMSBURY

There's a really weird topographical lacuna just south of the British Library bit of Euston Road. Lots of genuinely grimey pubs here, one of which has gaelic football memorabilia on the walls and serves the Worst Meal I've Ever Had in London: a fucking unspeakable ploughmans lunch. They may have shut this place down by now. Difficult to believe these forlorn streets are in Zone 1.

7) ST MARY WOOLNOTH, BANK

A dark and terrifyingly powerful building, with a claustrophobically beautiful interior. Belly of the beast, and certainly nothing Christian about it. Ian Nairn's liver.

8) ALL OF SOHO

The one part of London with any discernible civic atmosphere. A pretty unbeatable place to walk around on a summer's day. Humanity amid the hieratic callousness, though not without its own dark side, of course. I would recommend a trendy eatery but to be honest I think Chipotle is the place here that has given me the most pleasure. Actually, Wrapchic near Golden Square does a pretty amazing curry burrito. Go there.

9) PAOLOZZI MURALS, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD STATION

What has become of them? Genuinely worried. On a related note, will there be anything left of central London after 2018?

10) HIGH ROAD LEYTON--HOE STREET, LEYTON/WALTHAMSTOW

My best period in London was June through August 2013. I'd finished my PhD and was writing the Oasis book, which I now realise was probably a once in a lifetime gig for a writer in terms of sheer self-indulgent enjoyment. I would walk 30 mins each morning from Leytonstone to Walthamstow tube and thence to British Library, walking through Bakers Arms and the Pakistani stretch of High Road Leyton, past the Romanian enclave on Hoe Street and the place where William Morris was born, ending up at a Walthamstow just beginning to ride the crest of gentrification, but still in this section pretty working-class. It was a bright, hot summer after a long, cold winter. I listened to Definitely Maybe most days, and was grateful to be alive.

ELECTION 2015

At the very least, the 2015 election is an interesting rebuttal to Peter Mair's notion that Western democracy is 'hollowing out'. In fact, after a couple of decades of hollowing, it seems that the British system is starting to grow bulk again.

This is the third time I've been able to vote, and the first election in which anything resembling actual analysis of the parties and candidates has seemed desirable/possible.

As far as I can make out, in my consitutency (Leyton and Wanstead), there are three choices:

1) Greens
2) Spoil me ballot paper
3) Labour

About which I am thinking thusly:

1) The Greens are tempting, but the candidate is a former The Bill actor called Ashley Gunstock. Not necessarily a beyond-the-pale transgression, I know, but it seems to chime with my impression of the party as a whole as bit middle-class and vacuous. The policies are pretty sound, even courageous. But do they have an inkling about the working-class vote in the North, Wales, etc? I'd say probably not, but please feel free to disabuse me.

2) Did this in the council/European elections. Also very tempting, and I don't have any underlying ethical qualms about it. In fact, anyone who tries to tell me ballot-spoiling is apathetic and nihilistic can fuck right off and vote Lib Dem.

3) Which leaves Labour. A few months ago I would have said not in a million years. But then the candidate in my consitutency is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group and Left Platform, and now there is this prospect of a Labour-SNP alliance, perhaps with the Campaign Group MPs holding some sort of balance of power ... Increasingly, this is looking like it might not be such a terrible option.

But can one really vote for a party that will put Ed Balls in charge of fiscal policy?

Why aren't the SNP standing in England?

What's a brother to do?

See, it's exciting.