Hello darkness, my old friend

Ben Wildsmith

I’m done with podcasts. For months now I’ve been bingeing on presidential election analysis from the superstars of the medium and it has warped my perception of reality.

By the time Joe Biden was taken out on to the Whitehouse lawn and put to sleep by George Clooney, I’d fully absorbed the certainties of liberal aristocracy.

All Kamala Harris had to do to win, I explained, was walk in a straight line and not be Donald Trump. I consider it karmic justice that my sole written foray into optimism should leave me looking like such a prize prat. Hello darkness my old friend, I will never desert you again.

Why was I fooled, though? There is a blob of British political life which has, until now, managed to convince a lot of people that it is the adult in the room.

Ideologically, it stretches from George Osborne on the right to Alastair Campbell on the left, taking in Rory Stewart, Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, Andrew Marr, and Ed Balls. Enjoying huge audiences, Campbell and Stewart sell out the O2 arena for live shows, these podcasters sit above party politics as a sort of self-appointed House of Lords.

Conceits

There are two conceits that underpin their status as political seers. The ex-BBC contingent, Maitlis, Sopel, and Marr, explain their new careers as freeing them from the shackles of public service broadcasting which hitherto interfered with their desire to tell the truth as they saw it.

The ex-politicians, meanwhile, pair off as double acts from opposing parties. Their emancipation is from the party line, allowing them to find broad agreement with former opponents and differ companionably on air. Hefty cheques from media companies are not a factor.

Having left behind the grubby compromises of their previous careers, we are encouraged to see these characters as beyond the reach of corruption and prejudice.

Rory Stewart cultivates the air of a political monk, distressed by the venality he finds around him. Chin-stroking centrist dads look wistfully at his emaciated frame and wonder ‘what if’ he’d become prime minister. Love Island would, presumably, have been replaced in the nation’s affections by dramatizations of Trollope as the UK drowned in contemplative decency.

All of this crowd, and newcomers like former Trump staffer Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci, were fully in the tank for Kamala Harris. Each appearance she made on the campaign trail was presented as evidence of her ‘cutting through’ to the American electorate.

Her running mate, Tim Walz, had captured the mood of ‘normal’ America, we were told, by pointing out that Trump and JD Vance were ‘creepy’ and ‘weird’. That was the point of difference with 2016, the zeitgeist had moved on, damn it. The Dalai Rory went as far as claiming he would bet £100k on Harris to win, if he had it. (pro media tip: he does have it).

Emily Maitlis ended up being slung off Channel 4’s election night coverage for swearing in frustration at the results.

Convenient perception

Lending further authority to this bipartisan agreement was a convenient perception of Labour’s victory in July.

If you are an amenable liberal whose entire career has been spent in building coalitions and crafting compromises, or a journalist whose reputation is built upon explaining those processes, then Keir Starmer’s victory must have confirmed everything you thought you knew about the world.

Even now, when we know that Labour won precious few Tory votes, some are desperate to pretend that an appeal to moderation won the day.

A simpler explanation, and one backed up by voting patterns, is that the UK didn’t vote for Labour to win, it voted for the Tories to lose.

While it is an agreeable notion that the great unwashed peered over the edge of the Johnsonian abyss and stepped back into reason with Keir Starmer, it’s wishful thinking.

Mistrustful

The electorate remains a resentful, mistrustful, seething collection of aggrieved malcontents.

On this occasion, it smelled Tory blood and went for the kill, just as it did when the Brexit referendum offered an opportunity to stick the boot into the political class.

It is, however, easy to miss this if your interaction with people outside of the political bubble involves greeting thousands of obsessives who have paid to hear you describe a civilised, liberal future.

Elections are not decided by people who listen to political podcasts.

The electorate on both sides of the Atlantic has been gaslit for so long that many people dismiss politicians as liars simply because they are politicians. The two states have become indivisible for those who have watched their living standards erode remorselessly over decades.

Appeals to morality in that context require a demonstrative sea change, something special in which to believe.

The Democrats firstly looked America in the eye and told it Joe Biden was fit to serve, despite visible evidence to the contrary.

Then they produced Harris as a candidate without consulting primary voters and acted as if nothing had happened.

They campaigned on women’s rights and railed against the toxic masculinity of their opponents whilst featuring Bill Clinton at every opportunity.

They appealed to progressive values whilst pouring bombs on to Gaza and Lebanon.

They sent billions to Ukraine without a credible plan for victory.

All the time, prices rose and rose and rose…

That was the status quo offered to the people of America, wrapped in warmed-up, hopey-changey rhetoric from the Obama era.

Shipwrecked

Once again, the comfortable narratives of liberal politicians and their media equivalents have been shipwrecked on the harsh, jagged lives of those they seek to govern.

The implications for politics here are obvious. Incumbents are in trouble all over Europe as voters pull at any lever that promises to reverse societal decline.

Reading Baroness Morgan’s platitudinous congratulations to Trump yesterday, one would imagine that she feels the hot breath of the mob on her neck with 2026 approaching.

If full-fat authoritarianism can win support in libertarian America, despite a morally bankrupt candidate,  then its UK equivalent cannot be ignored.

Soothing words from liberal panjandrums must surely have lost all commercial value now. There can be no compromise with what Trump offers, it either succeeds or fails in its entirety.

As we try to navigate what washes up from it on our shores, we should remind ourselves who brought us here, how the complacency and hypocrisy of a seemingly permanent political class exhausted hope in democracy and rendered tyranny attractive to those it failed the most.