Listen up!

Heard on a podcast: Nadia Whittome, MP, talking about Labour and what they want. Turns out it’s decent homes for all, well-funded public services, fairness, security and the chance for everybody to prosper. She then rather betrayed her shallowness of thought by adding that, in contrast, the Tories [boo, hiss] wanted to sow hatred and division and send poor, desperate asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Brava Nadia, the next election is in the bag, for sure. But perhaps, for balance, she might want to listen to the wishes of natural Conservatives (not the current, soft-palmed LimpDem version, obviously). I bet they are security, trust in the police and the courts to be fair and even-handed, prosperity for all, and efficiently run state-funded services. After all, why throw away a well-established manifesto? The Tory voice may then have gone on to say that Labour has a naïve view of the world founded on Marxist dogma and a certain amount of suspension of disbelief.

The point is, of course, that both sides want substantially the same aims but just have different views on how those aims may be achieved. But when it comes to knowing their enemy, both sides could do with a good read of Sun Tzu and a generous slap on the head. Slagging off the Tories is how Labour think they appeal to their base and pitying Labour’s need for victimhood is how the Tories appeal to theirs. But what about appealing across the board?

Nigel Farage’s success – for it was a monumental achievement in the face of all that was levelled at him – was, by any measure, remarkable. 12.6% of the votes went to a party that many were afraid to even mention for fear of being reviled by the parties they had abandoned; abandoned because they no longer felt represented; a supposition which we later found to be absolutely true.

There is no debate any more in the UK. Parliament has no more a plan to listen to the voters than it has to cycle to the moon… or listen to the other side. Discussions in the house are reduced to name-calling and one-upmanship which, while these are long established techniques to wind up the other side, without substance are meaningless and petty and turn ever greater swathes of the electorate away from politics.

It has long been my contention that the majority of the population broadly agree on what outcomes are needed, but that almost none of us have the first practical idea how to bring it about. We repeat slogans and soundbites, we cleave to positions we have never really thought about. If you are poor and feel deprived and somebody tells you this is because the Tories took all the money and bathed in it, why wouldn’t you hate the Tories? And if you are in a decent job, receive no state benefits and are all the time besieged by rhetoric that demands you surrender ever more of your hard-earned to feed the feckless, why wouldn’t you look down on those who vote Labour?

The two sides of this divide appear to have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of division when in reality the gap between left and right is quite small. But we only ever seem to hear the extreme positions – usually promulgated by the extremists on the opposite side. Much as with the trans-malarkey, which statistically affects virtually nobody, all the oxygen in the room is used up by activists and the moderate voices are not heard.

I long since gave up hope of seeing proper, in-depth discussions of the very real concerns of the population, conducted with empathy for the opposing view and with the intention of arriving at a solution. Instead, we get these adversarial shouting matches which end in acrimony, the only beneficiaries of which are the commentariat who now get to write searing indictments of each side’s argument. And what of the poor and homeless, the immigrant invasion, the cost of energy, the parlous state of education…?

For what it's worth, this is where I am, yet 

the left would call me a far-right extremist.

We have not made progress in any direction other than that vision of the New Labour government, which was to transform the UK into a broiling, bustling melting pot of competing cultures. Presumably, there was no plan of how to manage the utter turmoil into which it has thrown us; we would adapt and integrate and be grateful, I imagine. Well, we haven’t. It is getting worse, and the political class seems to have become ever more detached from the reality on the ground.

It doesn’t much matter who takes the helm as the next Prime Minister, the job they have ahead is monumental and will take more than the evidence suggests they are capable of. But something has to be done. The Tories don’t have the answers, but neither does the Labour Party. And neither do the rag-taggle gang of chancers in all the little parties, but if they don’t really listen to each other, when a party which speaks with a single coherent voice comes along, no matter how abhorrent what they say, they will sweep the board. Listen up Westminster, when your palace becomes a mosque your chattering voices will be silenced forever.

Pushing your Buttons

Coke or Pepsi? They taste the same to me and they are both just gassy, sugar-filled teeth-rotters, but millions swear by one or the other. Wine experts in blind taste tests can’t tell the difference between red wine and white wine dyed red, yet supposed connoisseurs hang on their every pronouncement. And the vast majority of ‘energy drinks’ contain nothing more exciting than lots and lots of sugar... and are consumed mostly by fat kids and gullible fat adults who presumably need the supposed energy boost to enhance their sofa surfing experience. It’s not what you sell, it’s how you sell it... which is part of the problem.

You no longer go on a day trip, visit a museum, or just potter about at home; you are under pressure these days to undergo an ‘experience’. Even when you are experiencing almost nothing; marketing indolence as achievement you are invited to ‘hang out’, or ‘chill’, ‘de-stress’ or reward yourself for your industry by indulging in ‘me time’, thus making a virtue out of what would once have been openly derided as sheer laziness. What happened to filling the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run?

Every wasted hour is an hour you will never see again; every wasted day, another day closer to death. I’m not saying you should make yourself sick with worry that you haven’t achieved some goal today, but don’t kid yourself that lolling about on the sofa is taking you one step nearer to your nirvana. Tell it like it is. And there’s your problem; whether it is a fizzy drink, a toilet roll, or a political party you are in competition with other providers; and considering that one arse-wipe is much like another it is little wonder that choosing a party to back is fraught with confusion.

Party politics, I believe, is undergoing its ‘Ratner Moment’ with the two main parties no longer sure what they are selling, but everybody admitting that, at best, it’s cheap crap. Both have resorted to attack ads, unable any more to sell the positives. But branding ordinary people as bigots, racists and too stupid to know what’s good for them is never a good look; especially when they do that to each other anyway. So what do we have left?

Identity politics is so risible as to appeal pretty much only to eternally blinkered and narrow-minded; that ramshackle, rag-tag army of LGBTQI-plus-plussers and their hangers on. Allied with the ultra-feminists, the islam appeasers, the Jew-haters, various-shades-of-lives-matter and the look-we’re-so-not-Nazis-we-even-called-ourselves-anti-fascists agitators, the sheer contradiction of their multiple stances makes for an ugly coalition that should ensure the Labour Party remains in the wilderness for a generation or more.

It’s not even certain that Labour could unseat Theresa May any more and in any case the Conservatives are quite capable of doing that all by themselves. Schism is in the air and as for branding, the Tories have long since lost the seal of approval as far as running the economy is concerned (and for quite a long time that’s all they’ve had). Nobody watching with any interest can seriously believe that the current crop of politicians has the first clue about running, well, anything, really.

The new consensus?

So, your serious choice right now is ‘none of the above’. I’m guessing that come the next election nobody is going to see a majority from a derisory turnout. But when big brands disappear the gap in the market is soon filled and in the true spirit of enterprise, expect to see a plethora of new offerings to dilute and dissipate those votes. Single issue parties, ultra-minority collectives, freak-show candidates and voters so fed up to the back teeth that they’ll vote for anybody but the same old brands. Regardless of Brexit, politics is broken and this time there is no happy status quo to protect. Coke or Pepsi? It might just be Irn Bru. Or Tizer... or Umbongo.