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.
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We were offered an opportunity to fix democracy in 2011 and 67% declined. The majority only have themselves to blame.
Would the sole alternative option of AV which was on offer in 2011 have provided a real ‘fix’ with the potential to create a healthier democracy? Personally, I don’t think so.
It would have supported smaller parties, breaking the toxic duopoly that FPTP gives us. This would mean permanent coalitions, in which governments can only exist through cooperation and collaboration, punishing the destructive and the antagonistic that create such poor governance. Coalition governments that lose their way can be stopped at any time by one party pulling the plug which prevents a new leader taking over 6 months into a 5 year term, ripping up the manifesto and doing whatever they want for the next four years. A second preference vote would let people vote first for what they want before… Read more »
I voted for it back then pretty much for the reasons which you set out, and because, despite its deficiencies, it would have been better than the status quo.
But it wasn’t what I was really looking for, and I suspect that I wasn’t the only one and that this was at least one of the reasons why voters failed to back it.
And anticipating that was, I suspect, one of the reasons why the Conservatives stipulated that AV should be the sole alternative offered.
What were you looking for?
For looking at a newspaper or trusting the BBC, for the multitude social media has been a mass Moral Maze as trialed by Buerk, Gove and co while Andrew Neil and his Harpies trashed the little grey cells nightly…credit where it’s due, the Fat Shanks Effect tm…
The spectacle of Starmer banging on about Reform’s fantasy economics, unfunded promises, and lies, was the most stunning example of Labour gaslighting since he woke up one morning and decided mass immigration was, after all, a problem. He’s like a 1990s Windows PC onto which you just load up whatever today’s dodgy software happens to be. He’s out of his depth, failing, and he has absolutely no idea what to do about it. As for the Welsh lot..they’ll be gone in 12 months so they hardly matter any more.
Labour got immigration down before in the early naughties so this isn’t new or surprising. Who told you they supported unfettered immigration? It’s libertarians like Johnson that support open doors because they don’t want their taxes paying government officials to say no to anything.
Bring back Jezza and Dianne et al. They deserve a second chance.
After next year’s election will whoever gains control be able to do anything? If Westminster can’t be bothered to support the Labour Party in the present Welsh Government I can’t see Starmer going out of his way to facilitate change in Wales when Labour lose control. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s much point in voting at all beyond “if you don’t vote, then you can’t complain about the result”
You make a fair point. I don’t think UK Labour will care until about 12 months before the next general election. But by then the Welsh party will be hollowed out as Senedd and Council seats are lost in large numbers. It will be too late. Meanwhile, Starmer is being completely outflanked on the left by Farage.
London Labour don’t seem to realise that humiliating Reform in Wales would damage their UK ambitions. Waiting for the horse to bolt before believing the gate needs closing isn’t a great strategy.
Why would the Reform leaning electorate want an imitation of Reform when they can just vote for Reform? Why Starmer believes that tacking so hard to the Right is the way to go is beyond me. Lands up with Labour not even being an imitation of a Left Wing party. No wonder he got fewer votes than Corbyn. Makes me wonder how much longer the Labour Left are prepared to be shackled?
Being diet Reform for England in 2029 and ignoring Wales in 2026 is the mistake. They could be throwing the kitchen sink at Wales now – tackling the things that matter to people – for a fraction of the cost of letting Reform win big here then having an 18 times bigger problem in England.
Sadly, they’ve been captured by capitalist interests who will shortly move on to Reform as suits. Labour have long lost their soul. They were for a long time in conflict between social democrats and socialists. That’s gone. This is now the ascendancy of “blue Labour”. The Tories look shipwrecked. Labour heading the same way. Are we transitioning to a new political order? I’m not sure it will be an improvement on the past.
But UK politics lurched to the right under Thatcher and stayed there. Under FPTP the only alternative to Labour also shifting to the right to attract votes from the new centre right was staying as a protest party. It’s not true that Labour just had to show up when the Cons messed up. After ten years of Tory austerity Mr Corbyn still took Labour to a historic defeat. You can’t win an election based on how you wish the electorate to be. Many on the left are in complete denial that the majority of UK voters are small c conservative.… Read more »
“Meanwhile, Starmer is being completely outflanked on the left by Farage.”
An astonishing sentence in so many ways yet currently true. Quite unreal in all honestly. I suppose we live in “interesting times”.