Election section

A new dawn, or more of the same?

I didn’t expect my first publication to be about Politics, but since we have just experienced a historic Labour landslide victory in the UK General Election I wanted to share some thoughts in the immediate after-math. So what do I think, am I over joyed, indifferent, do I even care? I think you have to be a dyed-in-blue-wool Tory follower of some years to not accept these lot have had their shot. Regardless of a Democratic process to choose another Government, whether you are Labour, Lib-Dem, Green or that bean balaclava bloke pictured next to Jacob Rees-Mogg the time has come for someone else to play in the sandpit.

The disaster’s of the past few years have come home to roost and the British electorate have said enough is enough in emphatic fashion. It’s such a roll call of horrors when you look at it. Grenfell. Brexit. PPE. Endless COVID bungles and Partygate. Truss and the shafting of the Economy. Rwanda. The catalogue of chaos is almost endless and I fear Politics has entered through a looking glass during Tory rule since 2010 from which it can never exit.

The problem is though, this Labour party don’t really inspire very much do they? I was Twenty in 1997 when Labour last won a majority landslide amidst a wave of ‘Cool Britannia’ triumphalism and I was riding that good feeling gravy train all the way to the end, doing what Twenty year old’s do with ne’er a care for whose in Government. In the mid nineties to me the Tory Government weren’t much more than a grey John Major puppet on Spitting Image and if Blair and his merry band of New Labour acolytes were going to inject a bit of colour into proceedings that was alright with me, thank you very much. But this time? While there’s a hopeful mood for change, there’s also a great deal of scepticism. Keir Starmer has a lot in his inbox and has to deliver on promises almost immediately following such a huge mandate from the British public. Labour has some questionable policies and the concern for me is are we just swapping one mask for another? In a wider context, do Labour, or any of the main Political parties for that matter even represent modern Britain anymore? Society is more nuanced now and I'm not sure old style Party values really fit such a wide public view on key issues and does that then open the door for populist Right Wing parties such as Reform?

Which brings me to the Elephant in the room: the buoyant turd that is Nigel Farage still won’t flush, and you wonder what nuisance he will continue to make of himself. I’m no Political analyst but even I can sense that Reform’s performance in this election is a worry. I’m pained to even commit his name to text; character’s like Farage take breath from such exposure. Remember when he turned up at Trump Tower following the Brexit result unannounced for a photo op with the Orange blimp? Such shameless displays are all that Farage is good for and maybe, just maybe he won’t actually take to the role of being an actual proper Member of UK Parliament.

And so we enter into the unknown. A new dawn or more of the same. Time will tell, but for now we can bask in the joy of some very unpleasant people, spectacularly poor at their day jobs getting their comeuppance live on Television. All we need now is for eleven men in Düsseldorf to start doing their day jobs tomorrow night, make a little Swiss cheese and just maybe it will feel like ‘97 again for a while. Schadenfreude anyone?