No Words

There is nothing quite like a national tragedy to highlight the paucity of vocabulary that afflicts post-traumatic-state-disorder. It’s as if there is some laid down glossary of acceptable terms to which all public figures must adhere: Together we stand. We are united. They will not prevail. The litany goes on... and on... and on. We must not let hate win, they say, hate having won, decisively, on the day. We are not afraid, they say. But wait, it’s not the hatred that delivered the Manchester murders that is on trial here, but the natural fearful reaction of the bereaved.

You can do vigils, you can do candles, you can even do angry poetry but until the hysteria calms down and we strike back, in cold blood, nothing will ever change. The message being sent to the world? Bomb us, murder us, rape us and rob us for welfare and we will simply lie down and let you do it all again. Yes, we’ll look at you pleadingly and utter the mealy-mouthed borrowed phrases of political simpletons, but we will not lift a finger against you. Come, we are easy meat; our country is yours for the taking. No wonder Christians get persecuted in some countries – they practically beg for it.

Rather than actually fight we will cynically use that word to mean something different. We will fight to understand your pain, empathise with your plight, open up a ‘dialogue’ with your emotions and find a way to your heart. And it doesn’t matter how many of us you kill and how many times you actually tell us that our death is what your ideology demands, we will ignore the simple truth and continue to fight to discover a reassuring way of blaming your actions on ourselves. It must be my fault that daddy keeps hitting me; it must be. He does it because he loves me...

Of course, the authorities are fighting back. Oh yes. They are fighting against the backlash of islamophobia; they are policing imaginary hate crime; they are poised and ready to punish you for your horrified response to horrific events. Bomb a venue, kill 22 people and you need to be understood, but express revulsion at the act and post a social media message of antipathy and you must be sanctioned. Pre-meditated murder is bad, this says, but knee-jerk condemnation of it is worse.

How many more empty words?

‘Don’t let hate win. Embrace. Come together. Stand strong. My heart goes out. My thoughts are with. We pray for. Solidarity. The lost vocabulary of official responses finds its apotheosis in the hollow phrase ‘there are no words’. If that’s the case then tell me, why are we still just talking?

A conspiracy of incompetence?

I was going to write today about the issue of competence in government and the utter lack of it shown by the various parties contesting the election. I was going to explore how it is that with access to all the expertise of all the country’s thinkers and strategists and all the experience of reaction to former policy announcements, Theresa May managed to set her own trap and then u-turn straight into it. Didn’t she know that any move, whatsoever, to reduce the amount of free stuff, will be seized upon and dubbed a tax.

Over the years we’ve had Poll Tax, Pasty Tax, Bedroom Tax and now with the gift of the ‘Dementia Tax’, the mechanism for going into reverse once more grinds into gear. Andrew Neil also managed neatly to expose exactly why she would not participate in a televised debate. Fortunately for her, the Labour Party are in such disarray that she will recover from that mauling and the other parties are wedded to ideologies so barmy only a complete fruitcake could vote for them. Sadly, we do seem to have a few million of the permanently bewildered that they would even vote for the Greens; it’s little wonder they are so fixated with dementia

But why is it that our leaders and would-be leaders are always so unprepared? Could it be because in trying to appeal to everybody they appeal to nobody? In setting a course they imagine to be straight down the middle they end up veering wildly from bank to bank, churning up the river bed and frightening the wildlife? So frequent and so appalling are some of the gaffes that in the wilder regions of the press they mistake simple incompetence for grand conspiracy: there has to be a reason surely? They can’t be just... you know... stupid?

But suddenly, all this is irrelevant. Following the nothing-to-do-with-you-know-who attack in Manchester last night, all hands are on deck and the virtue signallers are out in force. “We must not make political capital out of tragedy!” goes the cry, as they all concoct soundbites to suggest greater compassion than the next. “My heart goes out”, “My thoughts are with”, “My prayers go out”... notice how they all start with ‘my’. Little, mini-pledges to show how much more they care than *insert main rival party name here*.

But after the platitudes we need something more. We need action. Not vigils, or silences; not pleas to ‘come together’, nor understand. We understand it fine; the west is under attack and whether or not we ‘learn lessons’ we want to see something being done. We want a highly visible armed response, resulting in arrests, detentions and deportations. We want recognition that our supposed leaders have the first idea how to combat this war on our on soil and most of all we want the source of the violence – islam itself – called to account, or called on to leave the west.

As it happens, this latest atrocity has the potential to become Theresa May’s finest hour. What leader, besieged by blunders over bungled policy announcements and embarrassing climb-downs on national television, wouldn’t welcome this very real test of true character? What a vote winner a Churchillian call to arms could be right now. How welcome might a public rejection of ‘islam is the religion of peace’ be to a population drowning in the ordure of electoral claptrap? This could be May’s Falklands War. I can already hear Guardian contributors queuing up to call it a conspiracy.