I fear it's time for my biennial excursion into the increasingly depressing world of politics. During the course of this fatuous and interminable election campaign (six weeks?! Who needs six weeks of this?) I've done my best to avoid the day-by-day news coverage and keep my mind on the big picture. And what a 'big picture' it is! Call me a sentimental nostalgist, but I never thought it possible that in this country a Tory government (or any government) would be facing a main opposition party led by quasicommunist antisemites and a second opposition party whose stated aim and principal policy is to overthrow a clear democratic mandate. Even if I had managed to envisage such a scenario, I could never have foreseen that said main opposition party might be in a position to steal the election and form a government with their quasicommunist antisemitic selves at the helm. And yet the tone of most of the coverage of this election has been much the same as for any other, with a carefully maintained illusion of equivalence between the main parties, and no serious discussion of the national catastrophe that would undoubtedly follow such a 'victory'.
In these dismal circumstances, I have dutifully cranked up Old Nige's Prognostickation Engine yet again – and I'm happy and relieved to report that it's predicting a fairly comfortable win for the Tories, with an outside possibility of something more like a bluewash. Of course, I might not have done quite enough work on recalibrating the imbecility filters after the last time... But I remain confident that, in the end, the electorate (apart from that London lot, of course) still have more sense than to let the likes of JC anywhere near the levers of power.
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Sometimes I wonder if politics has always been this dire, or I've only started noticing as I got older. It seems one only votes these days against some perceived disaster, as opposed to something positive.
ReplyDeleteToo true, Craig – and I'm sure it wasn't always like this.
ReplyDeleteThe same feeling here in Brazil, Craig. How sad...
ReplyDeleteThe least worst? Your friend Bryan Appleyard is similarly dragging himself into the blue corner with a 'heavy heart' appalled, as most of us are, by the track record of the bearded one, and none too excited either, by the blond bomber or any of his appointees. As the Bard reminds us 'There's small choice in rotten apples'
ReplyDeleteSmall choice indeed, Mm – but so lamentable are the alternatives that BoJo seems almost Churchillian (which of course he is emphatically not).
ReplyDeleteLet us hope that the EU can get on with its planning for a union without the United (for now) Kingdom. Speaking of unity and unionists, are the latter now dispensable and too dispensed with?
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