I Daniel Blake

As part of the Belfast Film Festival, tonight I went to see a Q&A with Ken Loach, director of I Daniel Blake, an angry film about the Tory government’s austerity program and how it dehumanises and degrades vulnerable people.
Loach has made films for 50 years about many social issues. Up the Junction (illegal abortion), Land and Freedom (Spanish Civil War), Kes (a bullied child), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Irish Civil War), The Price of Coal (miners’ strikes) are just a few.
One of the things he is energised by is how well Labour did in the last election. He said the left has lost ground all over Europe but gained ground in the U.K. He said that is because Corbyn has staked out traditional leftist positions, rather than tacking to the centre to crib Tory votes. Corbyn has left me wholly unimpressed--mainly due to his affect. He doesn’t inspire confidence in me at all. There’s something about his body language and manner of moving that just seems uncertain. But maybe I should pay more attention to what he says and less to how he says it or how he looks. There’s also the theory that the media go to great lengths to present him as a bumbling professor type. Then you have Theresa May, who comes across as very certain of her brief, yet seems incapable of making her mind up about something and sticking to it.

April 17