The next political bunfight will not be an occasion for outsiders.
I am beginning to get concerned about the ‘UK’ ‘General’ ‘Election’ scheduled for May 2015. Not on the basis of who might or might not win it, but rather from the feeling that it looks increasingly likely to be incredibly boring and irrelevant. Given what is likely to be at stake, this might seem like a cavalier judgement; so allow me to expand upon why I think this.
The sarcastically placed inverted commas above represent the starting point of my argument. ‘UK’ because the chances are we will be not quite or not at all the UK by then. ‘General’ because it won’t be about anything general at all: the key issues will almost certainly be the UK Union, the EU Union, and the global econo-fisco-financial meltdown. And ‘Election’ because – as has applied for over thirty years now – it will not be an open, citizen-decision democratic choosing process in any shape or form: it will be a closed-shop form of Union Block Vote à la TUC circa 1974……in which only around half the electorate vote – and they cast a vote for candidates whose experience and lifestyle is so atypical as to be dangerously eccentric. Thus the conclusion is that, of the half who vote, barely 10% think either sensibly or openly about why they voted one way or another.
I see it more, from my vantage point here in the swirling smoke called 2013, as The Grand National Election: a scramble for the finishing line run in thick fog, where every horse pretends to enjoy what’s going on – but in the end, it’s the stable feeding and training them that wins.
The 2015 election will herald in more of the same wonks (bankrolled by more of the same shady tax-evaders) none of whom have the first idea what to do about the global economic malaise or the British cultural chute. As most Sloggers realised long ago, their interest (at the top) lies in power for the sake of it and money for the fun of it, while the fascination (at the bottom) is with the process per se. Ideas, quests and goals are seen as cloud-nine stuff getting in the way. There is no way in for the new other than by doing deals with the old. It’s not so much a national election as the result of unnatural selection.
We have seen the usual shameless jockeying for position in recent weeks, during which UKip got a good election result, Murdoch sniffed the potential arrival of a fresh batch of useful idiots beyond Slippery Salmond, and Nigel Farage dutifully did as he was bidden by scuttling round to the Digger’s flat to lick him all over. Farage’s sole aim in life is to aid in the process of sacking Camerlot, push the Conservatives further to the Right along with those who suffer other forms of loopy fanaticism….and get himself made at best Home Secretary, or at worst Minister of Sport.
At the moment, Nige is allegedly ‘riding high in the polls and attracting thousands of new members’ say the Barclay Brothers says the Daily Telegraph. Fine, but so was Clegg last time – and look what a disloyal, self-centred washout he turned out to be. To be honest here, for those of us who want a new broom itching to start Spring-cleaning (rather than another bodge-merchant aiming to paint over the graffiti) the 2015 election is shaping up to be a complete duffer.
Let us say that, as things worsen over the next year, the Friedmanatics ditch Dave and form an electoral alliance with the United Kingdom Independence Party. They immediately win the full backing of the Murdoch-to-Sark press empires, target weak seats among the Ed Miller Band, reverse the Labour lead and – thanks to our rigged electoral system – in 2015 get elected as a Government dedicated to radically reconfiguring British social, diplomatic and export policies in order to get out of the slump. Labour by contrast slumps back into anarchic disarray, and begins sporadic talks with the four LibDem MPs left. The insanely greedy banking and economic model that caused the mess, meanwhile, moves on untouched and strengthened.
On the other hand, suppose some of the nefarious activities of the Tory Right finally come to light, investigations do come to fruition, collars are felt, and the trail leads straight back to a drug-fuelled, blackmail-ridden and sexually depraved minority in the Tory Party….who just happen to be either in power now, or hoping to grab it over the next few months. Boris Johnson tries to defend paedophilia as merely “a human preference that has been with us since ancient Greece” and the police arrest seventeen more 87-year-old ex-BBC gropers in a bid to deflect attention: but it’s a fudge too far, and media outrage gradually captures what passes for the public imagination these days. Labour romps home, and there is an immediate run on Sterling coupled with huge spikes in the UK’s bond yields. Britain stumbles backwards into a mire of unrepayable debt. The insanely greedy banking and economic model that caused the mess, meanwhile, moves on untouched and strengthened.
And that’s my point, really: none of the riders likely to be part of the next Grand National Election have the tiniest intention of making the fences safer or protecting the horse; and even if they did, in the current structural context of UK politics, no foreseeable result is going to change the quintessential madness of the race. The j0ckeys work for the owners: no 66-1 outsider nag will deliver us from the familiar dull pattern of jostling, drug-tests, and shooting the mortally wounded. The 2015 UK election might become the Hunt Stakes, but it will comprise nothing more than the feckless in pursuit of the pointless.
As always, something from left-field could decimate the field. The exposure of sexual perversion and depraved corruption in both the Westminster Tory and Town Hall Labour camps might create enough voter disgust to allow the emergence of a British Beppo Grillo. The mainstream media might sense the national mood and call for a systemic cull. The Metropolitan Police might rediscover the plot and make some senior arrests without fear or favour. The judicial process of banging up former Newscorp criminals might accelerate, and cause some canaries to start a New Dawn chorus. A radical coalition from all three Parties might condemn the Brussels-am-Berlin daylight robbery, and call for immediate UK secession from the EU coupled with an Asia-focused export policy. And a squadron of flying pigs might beat up Buckingham Palace.
What British government needs is a powerful regulator to come down hard on all forms of monopolism, embezzlement, monied interest corruption, and non-dom unelected media ownership. Such a regulator can only come from our ranks here in the real opposition demanding Radical Realism. If we don’t try to form this properly and flex the remaining muscles we have, then after 2015 we will be quietly closed down.
This process is already well under way in continental Europe. The Disunited Kingdom is merely waiting for the right excuse. In the Grand National Interest, of course.
Yesterday at The Slog: Twelve Dominoes to Disaster – one down, eleven to go
The Slog 