Animal Farm

Several months ago, apropos of nothing, I decided to re-read George Orwell's Animal Farm.

It was written as a satire on Soviet Communism, but an uninformed reader could be forgiven for thinking that it was actually intended as a satire on today's PLP.

You need to read the whole thing to appreciate the many parallels (and I encourage you to do so if, like me, you haven't read it since your school days - it's short and easily digestible). But consider the extracts below.

First, how the pig Squealer would persuade the other animals to support their autocratic leader, Napoleon:

"Discipline, comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today. One false step, and our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?"

"Jones" refers to the animals' former master, the farmer that they rose up against and ejected from the farm, so that they could run the place themselves. Sound familiar?

Second, how the sheep would stop the other animals criticising their leaders:

"Frightened though they were, some of the animals might possibly have protested, but at this moment the sheep set up their usual bleating of "Four legs good, two legs bad," which went on for several minutes and put an end to the discussion."

Both are recurring themes throughout the book.

The final sentence of the book is one of the most well-known, but no less profound for that:

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

The PLP doubtless started as a principled party. And the UBP doubtless deserved to be kicked off the farm in 1998. But is today's PLP under Ewart Brown the same PLP? If the UBP were to come back, would things really be worse?

While the PLP's core supporters continue to bleat, "PLP good, UBP bad", moderate voters need to look from one party to the other and ask themselves if they can still tell which is which.