Absolute Cynicism

Ben Wildsmith

The death throes of democracy are throwing up some bizarre scenarios as its remaining participants throw everything at the wall in the hope that something sticks before our surrender to tech-bro oligarchy, Idi Amin-style dictatorship, or a worst-of-all-worlds combination of the two like America.

Decades of negative campaigning and hapless governance have engendered absolute cynicism in the UK electorate.

The first casualty of this, quite rightly, is the Conservative Party. They are the habitual offender of UK politics. Given chance after chance, its criminal instincts always win out in the end and now, finally, the judge of public affection has donned the black cap and ordered it be taken to a place of execution and hanged by the 1922 Club tie until dead.

Show trials

It’s a bit of a damp squib, to be honest. I always imagined the Tories would meet a more dramatic end, perhaps involving actual show trials. Their enfeebled dribble into irrelevance, though, might be a worse fate for its perpetually entitled membership.

Keir Starmer, whose political instincts are rivalled only by Orville the Duck, noted the passing of Tory Britain today and opted to officially recognise Reform UK, with its five MPs, as the de facto opposition.

If Nigel Farage was wondering how to acquire Establishment credibility for his ragtag collection of policy-free attention seekers, he need not have worried. Keir Starmer has decided that Lee Anderson is his equal.

The Prime Minister’s speech today was in response to the latest example of politicians espousing the exact opposite of their true beliefs in pursuit of votes.

This is a novel phenomenon that differs from the traditional political bag of tricks. We are used to exaggeration, false promises, misleading framing, evasion, and misrepresentation. These are priced into our evaluation of anything politicians say.

Nonsensical

Now, though, we are expected to swallow changes of position that are so fundamental as to be nonsensical.

Labour started it by deciding it is now anti-immigration, pro-business, transphobic, and resentful of the welfare state.

Starmer’s ‘changed’ party didn’t have a refresh, it became something different altogether. For those who don’t pay close attention, experiencing this government must be like buying a Taylor Swift album and finding that she’s now exclusively performing Motorhead covers.

Every action has a reaction, of course, so Nigel Farage, a Thatcherite to his fag-stained fingertips, now apparently wants to raise benefits and isn’t too fussed about what it costs either.

At our end of the M4, Labour has recently started campaigning against itself.

Passionate

Baroness Morgan’s bit of the party has suddenly become as passionate about social justice for benefit claimants as kindly old Nige. That skinflint in Number 10, who doesn’t have to face the electorate for four years, has absolutely nothing to do with Labour members in the Senedd, who are facing the chop in less than twelve months.

They, after all, are Welsh Labour, which mustn’t be confused with the party whose Welsh MPs recently voted in concert not to capture Crown receipts for Wales.

Whilst it’s true that ‘Welsh Labour’ can’t buy so much as a stamp independently from the UK party, and that it didn’t say a peep about Starmer’s policies until polls revealed what is likely to happen next Spring, we are expected to imagine them separately for the next eleven months, at least.

In a world governed by the bond markets and those who own the technology that dominates our lives, politicians are struggling to make a case for themselves.

Reasoned debate has been reduced to a frantic game of musical chairs, with parties rushing to jump on policies that seem to be popular, whether those policies align with their professed values or not.

The papers are full of speculation as to which of our jobs will be lost to AI. If things carry on the way they are, there is an obvious frontrunner.