Where Once We Fought
Christ. What is there to say about the election? What is the point? There are empty spaces where the battlefield once stood...just a few trees bending over in a howling wind of imagined sound and fury. Indeed; the Great Debate is taking place in few homes tonight.
The passing of this campaign was swift and brutal. It came during the night when most of the electorate were asleep. Those who were awake – the night shift, pushing their hospital trolleys around and answering phone calls from lonely old women with fictional banking needs – may have glanced upwards and saw the great cloud pass overhead. It was dark and thunderous but silent as a corpse; it sucked out all the fun out of the political process, emptying heads to the New Labour standard of one part independence per million of dead air.
We are used to our present government and, as with the Rise of the Idiots explored in Nathan Barley, we can point and laugh until the sun goes down, but the Idiots will always Win. This is not as much to do with the Tory opposition as first impressions may lead us to believe. Their record in opposition has been poor, but they enjoy the position of being the default party of a deeply prevalent English mindset; and the memory of their last few years in power spent thrashing around in their own accumulated filth is fading. We are used to New Labour now and the new enemies we see under the bed and behind the nearby trees have obscured the old.
Some of these enemies are simply deformed shadows of those we once knew and were told to love in the eighties. They are the rotten chunks of capitalism that have spent many years decomposing in the sun, and are now being mashed up and served to us on a grinning plate...why do we suffer this? The filth accumulated by the Tories smelled repulsive and was hosed away in 1997 for a damn good reason. Now Blair has come to believe that we voted them out because they took a shiny, nice set of free market ideals and fucked them up, rather than the original ideals being corrupt in the first place. Blair thinks...no, he knows he can get these ideas to succeed, and wants to convince us that this business-centred approach to government is in our interests...and if a bunch of lobbying companies make a profit in the process, who gets hurt?
Well...we do. You give a scorpion a ride across the river and you will get stung.
It is unhealthy for both major parties to unquestioningly follow the free market faith because it effectively destroys all barriers to the pursuit of unlimited power and control. Without the debate, the balance between left and right, we lose any chance of questioning the power of big business; it is a Surrender. Our ethics now goes no further than whether companies are being treated fairly...the individual does not get a look in. Forget right and wrong...the only morality that matters is that it is Not Right that a perfectly adequate service has not been put out to competitive tender.
Sure, it is perfectly reasonable to allow freedom in the marketplace on a purely business level, but it is wrong to unleash the marketplace onto legislation and politics designed to keep us healthy, educated and treated ethically and fairly by society in general. Without any political voice of dissent, we end up divided strictly into those who are wealthy, and those who are fucked with no chance of reprieve. Businessmen do not work for love.
Ah, but we are wandering from the election. We were looking for reasons why Labour will win.
Have they cracked the political process? Is it that simple, that they understand only too well what to say to us and when, including catering for any contingency involving a Tory attack or retaliation? Perhaps not. Labour are still, despite everything, further to the left than the Tories. Howard mined a successful vein of right-wing prejudices when he held court on the subject of immigration, travellers and various other Daily Mail concerns...only yesterday announcing a tax on employers who give jobs to non-British workers. Blair finds it difficult to retaliate to these ideas without alienating voters in marginal seats. Politicians have long since lost the ability to put forward an argument of ethics...the only language they have is finance because this is what has always been most effective in swaying the undecided. And when your nemesis begins to chant the misleading mantra of common sense, how the hell do you put across the subtle ethical fallacies in his argument in a tabloid-friendly set of bullet-points for the ITV evening news?
Perhaps Labour has simply been lucky to have had a surfeit of good political thinkers in the last eight years, especially the ones who constructed the blueprints for the values of New Labour. Whether or not you agree with those foundations, they have proved scarily effective in many ways in these post-Thatcher and Major times. But one by one the Labourites fall out of favour. The party has been in power for longer than they expected and as new people replace the old they are discovering there was never a long term plan...now they are winging it and having to stretch out old ideas to cover the empty spaces.
And empty spaces are what the political landscape has in abundance today. Kilroy-Silk’s Veritas party is one big vacuum of thought with no policies beyond keeping a grumpy pensioner locked in the cellar lashed to the wall with steel cable, whom they prod with sharp sticks and regularly ask what really pisses her off about Britain today. Kilroy then waves his arms about until he gets the attention of a photographer before turning red in a righteous apoplexy on cue. Nothing but empty spaces.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are good people but the mindset they represent is never going to be a majority. And, sadly, their leader is not proving to be an asset. He is a good man but is not the right man in the present climate.
So we are stuck on this empty battlefield, bored and weary with the fighting of old and unwilling to make a stand for ourselves. What are the choices? How can we make a difference if the vote is wasted on manifestos we do not believe and futures that will not turn our way? We cannot all start new parties; most of us are not extraordinary. All we want is for life to work properly, for there to be an NHS and a way to get to work in the morning. But the debate is quiet now...all we are being offered is a month of cadaverous campaigning that say nothing and mean even less.
And all the personalities have been disappeared over the last eight years. It is the Business way...make sure there is nothing you cannot manage, document and control. The concept of loose cannons that voters respect and take to their hearts has been sacrificed on the altar of complete control. And so there is even less onto which we can latch. There is No Way In.
Labour will win. We all know this, and it may even be a close-run thing. But anyone who questions the apathy of the country on polling day should remember that even if you made voting mandatory and managed a 100% turnout, most people are simply tired with it all. They feel like they have been beaten to the point of death by modern politics, and believe that no matter which party wins, they lose.
So now what?
The passing of this campaign was swift and brutal. It came during the night when most of the electorate were asleep. Those who were awake – the night shift, pushing their hospital trolleys around and answering phone calls from lonely old women with fictional banking needs – may have glanced upwards and saw the great cloud pass overhead. It was dark and thunderous but silent as a corpse; it sucked out all the fun out of the political process, emptying heads to the New Labour standard of one part independence per million of dead air.
We are used to our present government and, as with the Rise of the Idiots explored in Nathan Barley, we can point and laugh until the sun goes down, but the Idiots will always Win. This is not as much to do with the Tory opposition as first impressions may lead us to believe. Their record in opposition has been poor, but they enjoy the position of being the default party of a deeply prevalent English mindset; and the memory of their last few years in power spent thrashing around in their own accumulated filth is fading. We are used to New Labour now and the new enemies we see under the bed and behind the nearby trees have obscured the old.
Some of these enemies are simply deformed shadows of those we once knew and were told to love in the eighties. They are the rotten chunks of capitalism that have spent many years decomposing in the sun, and are now being mashed up and served to us on a grinning plate...why do we suffer this? The filth accumulated by the Tories smelled repulsive and was hosed away in 1997 for a damn good reason. Now Blair has come to believe that we voted them out because they took a shiny, nice set of free market ideals and fucked them up, rather than the original ideals being corrupt in the first place. Blair thinks...no, he knows he can get these ideas to succeed, and wants to convince us that this business-centred approach to government is in our interests...and if a bunch of lobbying companies make a profit in the process, who gets hurt?
Well...we do. You give a scorpion a ride across the river and you will get stung.
It is unhealthy for both major parties to unquestioningly follow the free market faith because it effectively destroys all barriers to the pursuit of unlimited power and control. Without the debate, the balance between left and right, we lose any chance of questioning the power of big business; it is a Surrender. Our ethics now goes no further than whether companies are being treated fairly...the individual does not get a look in. Forget right and wrong...the only morality that matters is that it is Not Right that a perfectly adequate service has not been put out to competitive tender.
Sure, it is perfectly reasonable to allow freedom in the marketplace on a purely business level, but it is wrong to unleash the marketplace onto legislation and politics designed to keep us healthy, educated and treated ethically and fairly by society in general. Without any political voice of dissent, we end up divided strictly into those who are wealthy, and those who are fucked with no chance of reprieve. Businessmen do not work for love.
Ah, but we are wandering from the election. We were looking for reasons why Labour will win.
Have they cracked the political process? Is it that simple, that they understand only too well what to say to us and when, including catering for any contingency involving a Tory attack or retaliation? Perhaps not. Labour are still, despite everything, further to the left than the Tories. Howard mined a successful vein of right-wing prejudices when he held court on the subject of immigration, travellers and various other Daily Mail concerns...only yesterday announcing a tax on employers who give jobs to non-British workers. Blair finds it difficult to retaliate to these ideas without alienating voters in marginal seats. Politicians have long since lost the ability to put forward an argument of ethics...the only language they have is finance because this is what has always been most effective in swaying the undecided. And when your nemesis begins to chant the misleading mantra of common sense, how the hell do you put across the subtle ethical fallacies in his argument in a tabloid-friendly set of bullet-points for the ITV evening news?
Perhaps Labour has simply been lucky to have had a surfeit of good political thinkers in the last eight years, especially the ones who constructed the blueprints for the values of New Labour. Whether or not you agree with those foundations, they have proved scarily effective in many ways in these post-Thatcher and Major times. But one by one the Labourites fall out of favour. The party has been in power for longer than they expected and as new people replace the old they are discovering there was never a long term plan...now they are winging it and having to stretch out old ideas to cover the empty spaces.
And empty spaces are what the political landscape has in abundance today. Kilroy-Silk’s Veritas party is one big vacuum of thought with no policies beyond keeping a grumpy pensioner locked in the cellar lashed to the wall with steel cable, whom they prod with sharp sticks and regularly ask what really pisses her off about Britain today. Kilroy then waves his arms about until he gets the attention of a photographer before turning red in a righteous apoplexy on cue. Nothing but empty spaces.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are good people but the mindset they represent is never going to be a majority. And, sadly, their leader is not proving to be an asset. He is a good man but is not the right man in the present climate.
So we are stuck on this empty battlefield, bored and weary with the fighting of old and unwilling to make a stand for ourselves. What are the choices? How can we make a difference if the vote is wasted on manifestos we do not believe and futures that will not turn our way? We cannot all start new parties; most of us are not extraordinary. All we want is for life to work properly, for there to be an NHS and a way to get to work in the morning. But the debate is quiet now...all we are being offered is a month of cadaverous campaigning that say nothing and mean even less.
And all the personalities have been disappeared over the last eight years. It is the Business way...make sure there is nothing you cannot manage, document and control. The concept of loose cannons that voters respect and take to their hearts has been sacrificed on the altar of complete control. And so there is even less onto which we can latch. There is No Way In.
Labour will win. We all know this, and it may even be a close-run thing. But anyone who questions the apathy of the country on polling day should remember that even if you made voting mandatory and managed a 100% turnout, most people are simply tired with it all. They feel like they have been beaten to the point of death by modern politics, and believe that no matter which party wins, they lose.
So now what?
posted by Jamie at 4:19 PM
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