The Abstract Election

Needless to say, I didn't watch last night's seven-cornered election debate, having better things to do (like watching some paint dry), but I gather that feisty redhead Angela Rayner and doughty sword-bearer Penny Mordaunt were, in the words of the Daily Mail, 'going at it like fishwives'. In the course of their exchanges, La Rayner had an inspired moment, accusing the Tories of 'fourteen years of abstract failure'. No doubt the prosaic explanation is that she meant 'abject', but 'abstract' is in fact the very word for the past fourteen years, and no doubt for the next fourteen: it might have been 'abstract failure' or 'abstract success' – either way it would look much the same, i.e. very much like nothing. Political discourse now seems to be entirely abstract, bearing little or no relationship to real actions and real outcomes, and still less to the real life of real people. Whatever governments say they are doing, or say they are going to do, in the event it all dissolves into air, and things go on much the same,  as we roll downhill on the hell-bound handcart: only the speed of descent is at issue in the forthcoming election.  The one sure effect of government action/inaction (they are increasingly indistinguishable) is that taxes carry on rising – as they will under whichever government comes next. Taxes seem to be the only concrete reality in all this; the rest is abstract. And of course this is the Abstract Election – Angela Rayner has given it a name.