It just doesn’t feel like any of the people around now will
be our voting options at the next election.
Jeremy Corbyn was an unlikely leader before he got in, it
was a shock (good or bad) when he did, and he’s stayed precarious and unlikely
ever since. Theresa May is seen as a competent politician, but that doesn’t put
her in front of others. As a candidate she didn’t stand out so much as have no
competition. She isn’t idiosyncratic or a conspicuously unlikely leader, it’s
more just… ‘why her?’
So both parties feel as though they could just as easily be
led by somebody else, rather than having leaders who are the spearhead of a
particular direction the party is currently taking. Admittedly maybe Corbyn
could have been a spearhead, if he had had a following louder than any other
division or faction currently vying for exposure in Labour.
But then it’s refreshing that a lot of the likely leaders
that have been gestating in the politics of the last 10-15 years have almost
all gone. We hadn’t been managing staggering margins in election results with
them as leaders or cabinet/shadow cabinet figures. This doesn’t really feel
like something new, though. Something old has gone, but without there being
replacements.
Jeremy Corbyn appears to be publicized and managed by the
same crass team that clearly jizzed to West Wing as
kids and wanted to inject ass kicking procedural confidence into Ed Miliband –
regardless of the material they were working with. Jeremy Corbyn is noble on
paper and in deed, or in track record, but he isn’t his PR team, who clearly
use the same rules of engagement as Miliband’s team – they look at top ten
lists of stats on Twitter and Buzzfeed, think the public also wants politics
reduced down into that (and intelligence and morals and ethics and debate), and
then copy and paste. ‘People will love this.’ This was how the remain teams
helped us out of the EU.
Theresa May is who we have for the moment, regardless. Her inaugural speech was a promising mix of bring
me your black, your gay, your poor… inclusiveness and confidence. In her recent
past she was big enough to admit to changing her mind on gay adoption, and
supported same sex marriage ahead of a lot of her colleagues.
On the side away from liberal, Theresa May became notable a
few years back for high profile deportations and attempted deportations. The
media liked to portray her as a tough figure who’d get it done, who wouldn’t
take any nonsense from foreign leaders. She’s noted that the status of EU
nationals in the UK is negotiable.
Without irony, rather a lot of countries use this vocabulary
of competition, of having to look out for ourselves because otherwise we will get stamped on. Because all the other countries are selfish, we must be more selfish. This is why Boris Johnson’s fans are also fans of Boris’s new position
post Brexit vote – he puts Britain first, others behind.
Brexit. We were a nation in thirds it seems. A third wanted in
the EU, were liberal and internationalist and multiculturalist; a third were
concerned about immigration and its economic and cultural impact, coupled with
the cultural and (costly) economic impact of being in the EU, enough to want to
leave; the last third felt the same as the second, but were unsure about leaving
because of the uncertainty of having Britain going out on its own.
A potent two thirds, it seems. A momentous decision that
wasn’t really made with that much momentum. Nobody really had to change their
opinions. Nobody really said anything to change anybody’s opinions, either. The
EU, the referendum result: everything was a given to all involved (whether they
were for or against). So we’ve now perhaps woken up with the shock of a
surprise result after mental listlessness. Although it’s not really as though
politics is springing to action.
“Theresa May seems to think her
main task is to reunite the Tory Party, an impossible alliance of people with
wholly incompatible beliefs, and a major obstacle to intelligent thought or
useful action. Surely that’s the last
thing Britain actually needs? Many of her party (perhaps Mrs May herself) would
surely be happier in New Labour, or merging with it, if unity is what they
want. What's quite certain is that New Labour would be happier with Mrs May as
their leader than with Jeremy Corbyn, which I for one find quite funny”
Peter
Hitchens, ‘Why Blairites Would Rather Be Led By Theresa May Than Jeremy Corbyn.’
No particular leaders, no particular leaning towards either
party (at once both different and interchangeable: Conservatives and Labour –
radically different ideas packaged the same way (sometimes vice versa)),
soundtracked soundbites, emotive and six words long. Obsessed with getting the
message across, less the message.
Even if May v Corbyn is here to stay, what are the big
themes now? The last government or so had the Economic Crisis to deal with. Now
it’s more just (just!) the economy, which is far more nebulous to affect,
understand or report news on. Everything’s still stinging: flukey property
market, b-all interest rates… but that’s almost become normal, rather than post
financial crash. We’re kind of out of or kind or ‘meh’ with any foreign
interventions. Even the EU is sort of settled, although its ingredients will
still be in our vocabulary – split opinions on immigration, foreign aid, money
going abroad to investments and business contracts. Just because we’re ‘back in
control’ it doesn’t mean that we won’t make the same choices we used to blame
the EU for.
One by one we are ticking off the things that preoccupy
people when they try and volunteer their interests in politics and in voting a
particular way. We are going to run out of concrete things to say are making us
unhappy and messing up our private lives. We’re heading towards nuance.
We can’t get majorities out of elections. I guess there’s a
nice pluralism in that – saying none of the parties speak to you means, in
another light, that there are certain things you like and certain things you
don’t in all of the parties. Similarly with leaving the EU – at least it
wasn’t a huge majority in one direction. People had things they liked and
things they didn’t.
If we were rabidly anti-immigrant and nationalistic
exclusively... man... and with having such potential to live a modern, open life
where it’s easy to be informed about all events and cultures in our country and
the world, so easy to be little l liberal, and easier to have free time and
some money to pursue a fun life outside of work. Having all of that going for
us, and yet still being preoccupied with migrants and pounds and pennies being
creamed off tax payers’ money? Boy, that would be grim.
Pounds and pennies. We do seem to have a strange fixation on
using up time and money, and finding someone to blame the constant shortfall
on. So we set up migration as an opponent in this fight for resources, this
idea that Britain is too crowded, that our personal lives are being made
difficult by too many people needing the same things, or that our favourite goods
and events and memories are being taken away by the
dilution of culture.
Is our culture being watered down by the lifestyles of the
13% of our foreign born population? Culture is almost as nebulous as the
country. What is culture? Food, art, dancing, slang… is any of this shit
uniform nationally? Or even shared by a majority? Are there things that everybody shares?
I mean, regions have differences, north and south has
differences, people live in various combinations and economic levels
everywhere. Apart from, like, breathing air, there are hardly any experiences
shared by the majority of the population. We’re not all sitting down in front
of Corrie with a mug of tea and talking about the rain every night. Look at the
stats.
Transatlantically we’re looking at politics that’s charged
by, feeding on, the immigration issue. It’s the only thing left to hold on to
while the parties (both British and US) endure a long term lack of
direction and unity as their most recent narrative changing, bona fide leader
figures slip into history.
