Last week, I said the the wife, "Honestly, I think if any political party came out tomorrow and said, 'we're going to spend money fixing the roads, the schools and the hospitals before we do anything else' they would probably win the next election". That is, of course, if people believe anything politicians say any longer. I cannot remember a time in my 60+ years when politicians and the people have been so far apart. The divisions highlighted in this country in 2016 have widened to the point where certain political parties are branding people who want peace and unity in the world as extremists and when something like that happens you kind of realise you're on the wrong side of history.
The talk is we're headed for a General Election in November, but it could be May, depending on whether Rishi Sunak wants to oversee the destruction of the Tory party or the complete annihilation of it. Things have gotten so bad even a poor Labour party looks destined to achieve an overwhelming landslide victory - something, once upon a time, I would have welcomed with open arms, but now fear it almost as much as an unlikely Tory victory. The reason is simple, Keir Starmer's Labour doesn't appear to be offering anything apart from Tory policies that were unpopular 14 years ago, but seem far more palatable than policies the Tories are offering now.
We all live in bubbles; we surround ourselves IRL or on-line with likeminded people (which is a generalisation for some people, but is largely the case) and therefore we have our beliefs confirmed by people who agree with us or we agree with them. That doesn't mean there aren't many people out there who vehemently disagree with what you or I might believe in. I had a conversation about this with a right leaning friend recently, about how Britain is broken and his opinion was that people moan too much; that we live in a country where people have been given too much freedom to complain and therefore they complain about everything, even if it isn't broken as much as they claim. This is one of those intransigent cover-all sweeping generalisations that is difficult to argue against in a way that doesn't lead to more divisions. The problem I see is that people moan more because the country is in a far poorer state than I can remember it being in, even in the dark days of the 1970s.
My friend isn't a free market, modern Tory by any stretch of the imagination, but he is set in his ways and is as immovable in his beliefs as I am in mine. Whereas I see a broken country riddled with divisions, he sees a problem that needs overcoming. The dilemma is he votes for a party that has no desire to fix things because malcontent is, in many ways, a vote winner especially for the disenfranchised who still put an X on a ballot paper. It's why the 'Red Wall' became blue in 2019. Boris Johnson told unhappy voters that he would make it better for them by getting Brexit done and because they'd been fooled once they allowed themselves to be fooled again. The dilemma for the rest of the country is whether Labour has any desire to fix things or do they intend to just make people feel a bit better about themselves while pandering to the highest earning 10%?
The truth is simple - you turn on the news, read a newspaper or listen to - so-called - politically savvy people and all you see is misery, hopelessness and people trying to make the best of a bad thing. Do we deserve life to be like this in 2024? Surely we want nice roads, good schools, functioning hospitals, public services, less crime, less prejudice and blame - it didn't seem that long ago that we were on the cusp of a bright future, but over the last 14 years that future has been whitewashed over with hate, mistrust and division.
The future, at least the immediate one, doesn't appear to be optimistic. Labour talk like the Coalition talked in 2010 about there not being any money, about tough choices needing to be made all the while shifting their position from a party of hope and optimism to one that is gaslighting us into realising that they're not bringing anything to the tables apart from not being Tories. This simply confirms the old adage of it doesn't matter who wins the election, the government always gets in. A Labour government appears, at the moment, to be promising more austerity, more support for wars, more marginalisation, the same for London while the rest of the kingdom has to tighten its belt buckle. Fewer green policies because we have too many voters who simply don't believe that the climate crisis is anything that can't be solved by the next generation of scientists - if it exists at all - and so what if its a few degrees warmer, we all like a barbecue or a bit of sunbathing.
To be even handed, even the Green Party are beginning to look like politicians. The Libdems are largely anonymous, lurking in the wings hoping to pinch Tory seats from voters who can't hold their noses and vote Labour. The SNP, if you believe the press - which you probably shouldn't - appear to be suffering from having been in power too long and the Reform UK party - formerly UKIP - appeal to racists, bigots and people who like a fight after the pub on a Saturday night. The kind of people who want smoking bans lifted and people who aren't white deported to another country as long as it isn't "are country". We have a political landscape that feels dystopian...
And I'm sorry, but I haven't got a solution for you. This isn't going to be a long list of what's wrong and here's a way to fix it - not that it would make an iota of difference anyhow. We're a poorer country because of Brexit. We'd rather our politicians play whataboutery than fix things; we're happy with them blaming everything on everyone else and some of us are even happy for the Tories - in POWER for 14 years - to say the country has been taken over by Islamist extremists, woke lefties and whatever this week's insult for people who still care about others is. The people who like this kind of rhetoric don't appear to have the emotional intelligence to ask the question - if this is really the case, how come the Tories have allowed it when they've been in power for so long? Whose fault is it?
The Daily Mail or Express will try and say it's Labour's fault for not being effective opposition (they've done this before, accused Labour for why the Tories are failing) while simultaneously gaslighting their readers into believing that brown people or Europeans or Remoaners have brought the country down; to say the UK is led by blame culture now is pretty much accurate - no one takes responsibility any more, they just blame others for it and if they can't blame others they make them pay. Look at it this way, the Post Office scandal has been going on for over 20 years and despite everything we've seen and learned, the Post Office is still trying to avoid responsibility. In a half decent world this mess would have been sorted out as a priority, but subsequent governments - who own the PO - appear to be doing everything in their power to ensure that nothing is done.
Take the Grenfell fire? Nearly eight years after the event there are still 15 tenants living out of suitcases in hotels and temporary accommodation and the only accusatory fingers being pointed are at firefighters and the fact that many of the tenants were extremely poor. No landlords or councils have been implicated, no cladding firms sued and no justice has been served, because you know... people. People don't deserve proper justice, especially ones who have ethnic or other religious backgrounds - the people who made the country tick are the least important - you need to realise this.
While politicians stoke the fires of racism it allows them to ignore problems that need solving; to strip mine communities of their resources, because they know that eventually people will get used to or accept there is no safety net and create one from volunteers rather than rely on governments and councils for support. All David Cameron's Big Society idea amounted to was 'we're taking money away from things the poor need and we're hoping philanthropists will fill that financial or work time gap' - but, don't despair, you can feel good about yourself for helping keep your local library open by volunteering six hours a week - think of the money that can be saved for shareholders and PFIs?
We have so much poverty now in sectors - fuel and food specifically - yet companies are paying so much in profit dividends it's amazing we haven't had some kind of revolution. Supermarkets have benefitted from mega inflation and are posting profits that are eyewatering and insulting to even well off people - yet still ask customers to donate to food banks. Energy companies are the same, yet we don't get people asking why the average price increase in Europe for energy bills was just 4%, but a staggering 54% in the UK? This figure is also staggering because Europe depends on Russian gas and oil, whereas the UK gets most of its gas and oil from... Norway. The problem is you don't see journalists asking MPs questions like why is it like this, because we don't really have journalists any longer; we have people who are told what and when to ask things. The absurdity of it all is that if a proper journalist asked an MP why energy prices are so high in the UK as opposed to the rest of Europe, they're likely answer will be to blame someone else - probably Russia, despite Russia having no discernible relationship with our energy usage. It's probably Islamists or Just Stop Oil supporters driving the prices up and gammons will lap this kind of fantasy bullshit up because it makes far more 'sense' than the actual truth. All we get is dog whistling and whataboutery because politicians don't want to upset the rich; they can't afford to upset any applecart because, arguably, they are in thrall to them all.
And there in lies a huge dilemma for the country as a whole; if we do not hold governments to account then they do things like the current one is in the process of doing. With the knowledge that only a seismic miracle will see the Tories retain power, they are deliberately making it difficult for Labour to solve issues and install some optimism, especially for the poorest in society. Every decision that has been made since the autumn of 2023 until the dissolution of parliament three weeks before the election has or will be to make whoever wins have such a problem that the voters won't trust them with anything but a single term. How can we allow a situation where our duly elected MPs can make life so difficult for everyone and prevent their successors from making life better and not be held to account?
The national debt is three times higher now than when the coalition came into power in 2010; we have seen public services decimated, corruption go through the roof, the country's infrastructure falling apart and MPs suspended or sacked for breaches of rules; in fact, we've seen unprecedented levels of incompetence since 2014 to the level had it not been the Tories in power, we'd be suffering an onslaught of headlines and TV coverage demanding the government are removed, yet despite the lives of the majority of people getting worse over the last 15 years, the Tories have not only held onto power, they've increased their number of seats! The party of fiscal responsibility is anything but, yet we're told almost every day that they're the best we can expect so we need to keep hold of them and still there are many hundreds of thousands of people who will vote for them because they seriously believe that under someone else it would be worse...
Let's be straight about this - the country is broken, almost beyond proper repair; no political party could have caused so much havoc and division in such a short time; not even a communist takeover. We have lived through an era where the poor have become not only poorer, they've been joined in their ranks by people who 15 years ago would have considered themselves financially secure. Yet we have idiots trying to blame this affront on humanity on anything else but the sitting government. If it isn't the disabled or immigrants, it's people not being positive enough about Brexit. Single parents, woke lefties, Islamists, atheists - if the charlatans in power can tell you it's someone else's fault but theirs they will and in a lot of cases they will be believed. It's amazing that after nearly 15 years in power, our current government has been powerless to stop all these things that have ruined their plan for a better Britain and if it has been everyone else but them, they couldn't have been that good to start with if they allowed all of this shit to happen on their watch.
The bad news is it isn't going to change. The more disillusioned the public become with politics the lower the turnout, the fewer people decide the fates of the many. The UK hasn't got a political party waiting in the wings to do radical progressive politics, it has different cheeks of the same arse.
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