Modified Rapture

There’s an earnest young man on YouTube who’s saying very earnestly that he felt compelled to say to everyone “what I thought everybody knew” that there’s no more than a hairsbredth of difference between the two main parties and the third parties will be ignored, And there’s no money in the world that will deliver on all the promises. He’s also very earnest about people ought to vote but he feels even if you’re voting for a revolutionary change you ought to do it in a depressed mood. I suspect him of having revolutionary yearnings.

There is much in what he says.

And yet I am watching Keir Starmer (1) reading his speech (rather than performing it) outside Number 10 and what’s going through my head is:

“Dance your cares away, worries for another day
Let the music play, Down in fraggle rock”

Which is ridiculous.

Keir Starmer cannot orate to save his life. His handlers will have to be careful to rehearse him well and write a lot of sound stuff. He just gives the impression of being someone without any talent at moderating his voice to suit the sense of what he’s saying. He does not give the ghastly impression that the last two female PMs did of being a wind up doll or an animatronic impersonation of a human being.

He in contrast sounds like a sincere human being who is bad at public speaking.

I shall take what joy I can and hope that Sir Keir’s (2) programme can get some traction before whatever wave of ‘events’ that the universe has in preparation makes it all moot. Go for building up the staff at HMRC first, would be my advice. It might unlock the key to getting everything else moving.

I shall try not to feel too much hope: hope can be a corrosive substance if not handled carefully. I shall simply take joy in the fact that for a little while my blood pressure will not automatically spike when I consider my government. (Though I and my doctors would appreciate it if Laura K could be made the BBC’s correspondent in Kuala Lumpaur or somewhere equally distant.)

I’m not looking forward to great things from the new government (though I’m willing to be surprised) but I can confirm that it feels good when you stop banging your head against the wall of Tory intransigence.

I think that’s what I came here to tell you: it feels good when you can stop banging your head against a wall.

This isn’t my dream result (despite the fact that our local Brexiteer MP is no longer representing us). I would have preferred no Reform at all in parliament after they had finished draining the Tories of whoever still yearns for ‘global Britain’ or whatever it was Brexit was supposed to bring. Watching Farage saying he wants to build a ‘mass party’ is not a pretty sight and rather worrying. The Tories have not collapsed as far as the Liberals did in the 1920s which was my deep and sincere hope but there’s still the prospect of a war on the right to fragment them further. But the really worrying thing is the historical knowledge that the collapse of the Liberals was at least partly because the Labour Party was emerging to absorb a lot of their grass roots. The Tories have Reform to do the same favour to them if they’re nt careful.

Still, worries for another day.


(1) Incidentally, I am probably the only person left in the country who is irked by hearing BBC commentators (the bloody BBC for God’s sake: Auntie!) calling his wife ‘Lady Victoria’ when it should be ‘Lady Starmer’. If you’re going to mention the fact he’s got a K (and Laura K I suspect of doing so with hostile intent) then get it right!

(2) Yes, I’m going to use his title but it’s not hostile in my case, take my word for it.