Missing in Inaction

There is something oddly wrong with British politics. There has been something horribly wrong for many years now, and for most of that time it was Europe, or Socialism, or Socialism in Europe, but it’s all gone eerily quiet all of a sudden. Since 2010 the Labour Party’s policies, all of them, have been missing in action but now, it seems, the shadow cabinet has also quietly slipped away.

Apart from a feeble and insincere ‘one nation’ statement on Twitter over the Woolwich murder nobody has heard a peep from Ed Milibland, the man who apparently still pretends to be their leader. Ed-the-Balls has been in hiding since his dearly longed-for triple-dip recession never materialised and even the strident feminist tones of Harriet Harperson have been missing from the airwaves.

A few days ago Andy Burnham made one feeble attempt on Radio Four to blame seventy years of compounded mismanagement of the NHS entirely on the coalition’s last three years, but he may as well have been reading from the same script he dreamt up in 2011 when he was moved to health having fucked up education and drawn flak from Mary Beard.

I miss them. It’s all well and good declaring open season on David Cameron and jeering from the sidelines as more proper Tories defect to UKIP from his New Red Conservative Party. It’s all well and good occasionally asking, “Who IS Nick Clegg and what is he for?” but without the principal comedy ensemble that is Her Majesty’s Opposition politics is just no fun any more – they couldn’t even be bothered to field a participant anybody had heard of for Question Time last night.

Neither have we heard any frankly hilarious calls for a general summer strike from the likes of Labour’s puppeteers, the gang of three: Len McCluskey, Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow. At the moment they and the Labour Party are missing a golden opportunity to have a right old go while the Conservatives are clawing their eyes out over same sex marriage. It's an open goal fer Chrissakes! What on earth is going on?

We need a public inquiry but there’s nobody to call for one.

Somewhere, there is a secluded happy valley, a sunny Shangri-La, where Shergar, Glen Miller, Lord Lucan, Amelia Earhart and the ship’s company of the Marie Celeste have been joined by the washed up survivors of a sunken political movement. Should we inform anybody? If you see them, don't call anybody.