Oh Socialist Utopia, Where Art Thou ?

This is a piece I haven't been wanting to write for a very long time. Events, though, have forced my hand.

I've covered Keir Starmer twice on this blog, once in February 2024 and once shortly after the electoral landslide that swept Labour back to power. It's fair to say I've presented the man with a glowing, even gushing, review, and over on Decoherency I've presented similar arguments and defended Labour after they suffered quite the barrage of largely idiotic attacks.

Alas, the happy period in which we could mostly ignore politics lasted about six months. Fourteen years of Tory garbage and we got six months when things were sensible. For fuck's sake.

Now this is not like the time when I reversed my opinion on Jeremy Corbyn. No, rather than ranting against Starmer himself, here I want to largely rant against the feckless stupidity of the Great British public. So let me be absolutely clear about where I stand.

YER ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS !

Which is not to say that Starmer himself is blameless, because he certainly isn't. But having seen people on Last Week Tonight describe Starmer as a "prick" and seen his popularity plummet to lower levels than Boris Johnson (!), I have to say that the British are a bunch of contemptibly stupid fuckwits.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... the electorate !

Look, I promise I am going to go through the points where I disagree with Starmer, and I do think he's done some incredibly stupid things. I promise I'm coming to that. But first, he is/was HANDS DOWN the best Prime Minister we had in twenty years. Not even close. Yet he's engendered a level of bitterness that would fuel the wet dreams of a true hate figure like Farage, and... why ? 

For not being good enough, apparently.

It's absolutely fucking exhausting to have to deal with this perpetual bullshit. What the absolute flying fuck is wrong with you ? What in God's name will it take to make you people fucking learn something ?

Jesus H. Christ.

As you might guess, I don't intend this to be an especially thoughtful post. If you came here hoping for another repeat of the five-part rebuttal of Epictetus, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. I don't much care for polemics, but the hell with it : sometimes people need not careful reasoning, but a damn good verbal slap in the cerebral cortex.

Haters Gonna Hate

My basic question is this. What is it about Keir Starmer, dear proverbial reader, that makes you hate him so ? Do you even know ? I doubt it. 

Not that all of you don't have an answer, mind you : plenty will point to things like (supposedly) transphobic policies, "hard line" immigration stances, or perhaps the Mandelson debacle or any number of various other messaging missteps. But I argue that, in comparison to the previous 14 years of Tory missrule, Starmer's government has done absolutely sod all to deserve anything like the level of contempt with which the majority of the public now seem to view him personally.

Again, LWT features British morons describing their towns as "shitholes" without any explanation as to what it is they think makes them shitholes, let alone what it is they actually want their town to be/do in order for them not to be shitholes. If some of you do have answers, then an awful lot of you certainly don't.

The long-standing appeal of Starmer for me was a lack of magical promises. He never said he would transform Britain overnight, because the recovery the country needs simply can't be done quickly. He never gave the impression of being a miracle worker in the way that Johnson or Truss ever suggested. He made it quite clear that the process would be long and difficult. And lo ! The process is indeed long and difficult, made all the more so by the fascist orange cunt running the White House. Getting disappointed that the recovery isn't going very quickly is just stupid. Nobody was ever promised that it would be easy or fast.

Which leaves me bewildered as to what it is everyone is actually upset by. Could it be the litany of so-called "scandals" that have beset the party since it came to office ? I rather doubt it. Consider each of these :

• Expenses and hospitality. This early "scandal" consisted of Starmer and others claiming expenses for things they were perfectly entitled to, and accepting and declaring donations with full transparency for concerts and other events. It's the most pathetic of stories, but it was at this point – not when the winter fuel story started as the popular narrative has it – that Starmer's approval took a nosedive. It never recovered. I find this absolutely exasperating because nobody ever gave a shit when Boris Johnson was handed vast amounts of money by a still-undisclosed donor or turned Downing Street into a tasteless pile of tat for his idiotic wife.
• Rayner's taxes. Even less of a scandal. The Tories wasted billions – tens of billions, all lost now – on useless PPE in the pandemic while Matt Hancock cavorted with an underling, but the fascist rags couldn't handle a working class woman accidentally misreporting a few grand in taxes. It's disgusting. She never should have resigned.
• Mandelson. I'll grant that this one is different : Mandelson is an evil bastard through and through. But the press acted liked Starmer must have been uniquely stupid not to know about the (very real and incredibly serious) issues that subsequently came to light, despite never having tried to do some, oh, I don't know, investigative journalism of their own. They also downplayed the whole aspect of actually imparting state secrets and concentrated heavily on the Epstein angle. Look, this one isn't a non-story, but the way the press span it was downright dumb. Mandelson, as a duplicitous, evil, manipulative, highly intelligent twat, was a downright inspired choice to deal with the duplicitous, evil, manipulative, thick as shit administration across the pond.

Policy Presentations

So if it's not the "scandals" which are the source of the anti-Starmer nuttery, could it be instead the policies Labour has enacted, or those they've failed to deliver on ? This is more credible, but only slightly :

• Winter fuel allowance. Total non-story. This should always have been means tested but the press refused to consider it could have had any other consequence except millions of pensioners freezing to death in their tiny hovels, dying naked and alone with the name "Staaaarmerrrr !" escaping from their frozen lips as they expired. The idea that this might be good for budgeting was never discussed. Ever.
• Treatment of climate protestors. More of an issue for Guardian readers than anyone else, but some people attempted to paint (pun intended) Starmer as personally responsible for the handful of rather harsh sentences for climate protestors as being emblematic of a police state, or something, while racist rioters were allowed to get off Scott-free and given a big bag of crumpets, or whatever. Utter garbage, pure culture war nonsense. This is the effect of sensationalism gone mad, when instead of legitimately criticising the judiciary you see any minor error as "evidence" that the ruling party is worse than the Nazis.
• Response to Gaza. Now yes, my response would not have been much like the government's response. But I accept that the need to balance morals and diplomacy isn't easy, especially given the Labour Party's disturbing recent indulgence in anti-Semitism under Corbyn. I don't agree with their response to pro-Palestine demonstrations and I'm totally unconvinced by their explanation as to why certain participants in these are somehow terrorists. Do I hate them for it ? No. I think they're being stupid, but not malevolent.
• Farmers. Fuck off the lot of you. You've been saying that farming in the UK is on the verge of collapse for at least the last thirty years and it's wearing a bit thin, no matter how hard you work and how essential you are. The inheritance tax was riddled with exemptions and easy to avoid by gifting away the farms before dying. Not difficult. But no, just like with pensioners, no interpretation other than, "oh no, my poor little hovel will crumble into dirt because now I have to pay three million quid because I own one too many tractors" was ever allowed in the media.
• Online safety act. Yeah, I don't like this one. The government has come up with some mightily stupid ideas, not least of which is age verification and – for some reason, God knows why – banning step-sibling porn (but not actually banning actual step-sibling sex, because <snarkasm> that makes sense </snarkasm>). Does this mean they did a very stupid thing ? Absolutely. Worthy of hatred ? Come off it. Hatred should be reserved for racist buggers like Johnson and deranged loons like Truss, not well-meaning bad decisions like these. And incidentally, not once have I seen the news ever suggesting the bleedin' obvious : encourage parents to monitor and regulate their children's screen time. There are already tools to do this. The need for the government to act and thus treat us all like children was routinely assumed as the only option : the idea that the parents could have anything to do with it was never mentioned. 

It winds me up something mental, it really does. Under the Tories we had austerity and the evisceration of our public institutions, and we let them get away with it because they were apparently competent. Yeah, right, whatever.

I shall say it again. You. Fucking. Morons.

And then I must necessarily rattle through the positive sides of the Starmer government : nationalising energy, nationalising rail, support for Ukraine, stabilising the economy in the face of massive international challenges, playing Trump like a fiddle for a trade deal (albeit that didn't stick, but show me anyone who's done better against that cretinous mass of putrid bile), the employment rights act, the renter's rights act, a national wealth fund, reducing migration (not my preference but it's what most people want for some reason), cutting waiting lists on the NHS, improved public sector pay, vastly better relations with the EU, and free breakfasts for schoolchildren.

Are you seriously going to look me in the eye and say that the Starmer government hasn't been, on balance, the best thing to happen to the UK in decades ?

Come off it. That's stupid, and you know it.

A Solution : Mixed Messages

Could it then be messaging ? This area I think is by far the most promising, but also the one where the implications for the British public are the most damning.

For this, it's worth reading Tony Blair's recent essay in full*. Yes, the man is profoundly amoral, and his stance that we should have let the American's use our bases against Iran is crazy both pragmatically and morally. The man acts as though moral values are something nice to have, not actually of practical benefit, whereas this case is a clear demonstration that they are not. Support America's despot in their pointless and economically wrist-slitting war to distract from the Epstein files ? That's not a sane choice, Tony. Likewise, his belief that we should prioritise cheaper rather than cleaner energy is moronic : the climate crisis isn't something abstract that you can pretend isn't happening. 

*Blair also gives some suggestions regarding actual policy and a way forwards, some of which I agree with, some of which I react strongly against. A much better set of arguments on that front comes in Starmer's own response.

But politically, only the most foolish would disregard a three-times election winner. The root of it seems to be, in his assessment, that Starmer didn't pick a side. Tribalism may have its problems, but it's also a source of strength and a clear heuristic : when people think they know what you're about, you're predictable, and they can use that to judge if they think you're basically decent or not. When they don't, they can't trust you. In Unruly, David Mitchell stresses the importance in ruthlessness for medieval kings in eliminating the fatality of doubt among the populace, and there's certainly more than an echo of that here, at least analogously.

I would add that perhaps worse, though, was that while Starmer could have tried to brand his own approach, he just never did that at all. He just thought that people would essentially do this for themselves, and didn't care how they chose to interpret it. To an extent, it wasn't so much loosing the narrative as never crafting one in the first place... "mission-led government" doesn't strike a chord with people. Wanting this to be the "best country in the world" is a platitude, an abstraction, not something nearly concrete enough that people can tell what you're about.

Blair's second good point is that changing leader won't help without having a coherent strategy. I disagree that Labour doesn't have one, but I violently agree that they haven't marketed it. Its approach of almost pure pragmatism does have a whiff of making-it-up-as-they-go-along more than following a clear path. I agree with Blair when he says that to seize the centre, you must first devise policy and only then employ politics. That is, decide on what your goals are first, and then formulate how you're going to persuade people to go along with them. And these have to be lower-level than the "let's make everything better" stratagems of Starmer. You need to define clearly what it is you want to accomplish, fix, or improve, and only then go about deciding how you're going to do that.

His third point is that there is a real need to be radical. Starmer did have a vision for a radical centrism, ironically by decentralising government*, but that all came to nothing. On other policies he never even really offered that much you could call "radical". Nationalising rail and energy is definitely a good thing, but while the piecemeal approach has many advantages, it's also slow. Blair stresses also the importance of unconventional thinking, noting that while this may indeed result in actual disaster**, it also connects with people at a visceral level. The "stabilise" approach was perfectly sensible for the first year, but after that, incremental approaches were just not going to cut it.

* A federal structure for the UK, greater powers for local councils, replacing the Lords with a Council of Nations... all these were on the cards and promised within the first term. There was little enough sign of any of them actually happening though.
** Likening Trump to a car crashing into a brick wall, he rightly notes that the problem is that "radical people aren't sensible, and sensible people aren't radical".

So Starmer needed something big, bold, and obvious : a four day week, universal basic income, rejoining the EU, a wealth tax for the wealthiest, something of that magnitude. Not necessarily any of those specifically, and certainly not all them, but of that order, and economic rather than in terms of government structure. Reforming or replacing the House of Lords might be popular among some segments, but won't be itself directly affect anyone outside the Westminster bubble.

What Went Wrong

The most disappointing thing about all this was just how well-prepared the Starmer government was before going into office. They had many meetings with business leaders and institutes well before the election; by the time of the event, everyone knew their major policies. They had successfully eliminated the doubt that plagued medieval monarchs, made themselves presentable, serious, and safe enough for Tory voters to ignore rather than cosplaying Reform. Their whole shadow cabinet exuded dull competence after the chaotic farce of the Johnson and other previous administrations.

I don't think I can say too much about why this all went wrong, but I do think I can at least identify what went wrong. Starmer learned many of Blair's key lessons but not how to implement them. He knew how to say no to his own side, but not when or how (like telling a child they can't have a pony versus telling them they can't have a My Little Pony play set). He knew that change must be felt, but not how to make it felt or how to have it associated with his government. He knew that you have to meet people where they are, but not how to change their minds when you need to... opting to appeal to their sentiments rather than ever challenge them very much. And he knew that people judge policies in aggregate, but not how to get them to judge them at all... again, failing to paint himself in any sort of ideological colours.

Perhaps at least one root cause is that Starmer is too experienced at dealing with the dregs of humanity. Having dealt with rapists, murders, terrorists, Boris Johnson and Lizz Truss, he appears to have become thick skinned to the point of being tin eared. He could not acknowledge when messaging had a serious problem, preferring to go to foreign summits with other leaders than engage with the rough-and-tumble of the British electorate. I sympathise, but the Prime Minister of the UK needs to be seen to be dealing with UK issues. Starmer is right when he says that many international issues do affect us directly, but this doesn't acknowledge that this isn't how people feel about them. These issues needed to be left to the foreign secretary (and probably having somebody who wasn't David Lammy would have been a better choice there). Messaging really matters, because if you don't craft a narrative, someone else will do it for you.

And finally, he didn't stick to his guns. There were just too many u-turns and climbdowns, raising that hellish spectre of doubt : since he won't stick to his guns, say dissenters, it appears that if we stick to ours, we'll win. He didn't properly understand when to fight and when not to fight, which resulted in a messy, spitballing approach of trying hopelessly to please everyone. He could be ruthless in dealing with his party-internal opponents, sometimes too much so, but not in offering moral clarity.

Aftermath

So yes, as promised, I've set out what Starmer got wrong. I will say again that there are some policies I also disagree with, particularly transphobic judgements about bathrooms and the bizarrely prudish online safety act. The internet should be for adults; it's children who should bear the difficulties of access, not us, and parents who should be responsible for this, not the government. That one really did feel nanny state.

And yet the government has done an awful lot of good. To hate them for their entirely predictable missteps and utterly minor misdemeanours is profoundly lacking in sense. Frankly, if we can't be grateful for the improvements under Starmer compared to the last decade and a half under the Tories, then we'll never be happy – ever. We've been sold down the river on expectations of absolute perfection, and nothing less, it seems, will every satisfy us : anything less than a miracle is worse than shit. The perfect is indeed the enemy of the good, to the extent that if something is slightly flawed, people seem to want to vote for the exact fucking opposite instead. 

Indeed, it often feels as though the public view someone being slightly incompetent as worse than being deliberately malevolent. Nothing much else can possible explain the appeal of Reform or their brainless cousins in Restore.

For a much better sort of milkshake man, see this.

There is something rotten in the state of Britain. I cannot fully address what it is, but I will venture two major contributing factors. First, nobody seems to have a clue how our economy works. Nobody seems to realise what's really generating the money or where it's going; Blair is convinced AI will affect changes (literally) on the scale of the Industrial Revolution, but as to the basic questions of 1) where is all the money going ? and 2) why was our economy so much better in 2005 ? nobody seems to have a damn clue.

The second is the media. I love this piece on grumpy old men, and its main claim ties in to the British press perfectly. By selecting and sensationalising  all the negative stories, they've become an engine for conditioned responses. The voters are trained to see the bad in everything and the good in nothing, to see politicians as all self-serving hypocrites and worse. They're deft at finding the clouds is every silver lining and assuming that the negative interpretations are the only valid ones, with any positive interpretations being dismissed out of hand as tribal propaganda. We aren't allowed to be happy with anything. We don't appreciate for a moment just how much worse things could be.

Even this, though, I think doesn't fully explain what's happened. There is something rotten also in the psyche of the British people, something that prevents us from seeing the blindingly obvious. When we react with "my town's a shithole" for no good reason, then it makes perfect sense to say, "Starmer is a prick" for no good reason, and by the same token to declare that "Andy Burnham would be much better" even though he's at most 10% more likeable than Starmer.  

I don't claim to know what exactly has come over my fellow countrymen. I'm acutely aware that "they're all just bad people" is an insanely common and idiotic fallacy that explains nothing. But this is the reason why I said that "mixed messages" as a solution for why the Starmer government has failed is such a damning verdict for the public : that they cannot see how minor the problems really are, that they need to be spoon-fed to think for themselves, does not bode well at all.

Let's hope Andy Burnham can figure it out. If he can't, Brexit and austerity will be the least of our problems. And what a cheery thought that is.

Exasperation

Right, having started the New Year on the high of a long-awaited publication, it's time to get back to reality.

Which is, and I can't stress this enough, dismal.

I've done goodness-knows how many posts about politics... oh wait, I made a tag for that, so let's count 'em. That's 47 here, which tend to be quite long and (dare I say it) detailed, and a whopping 1,026 over on Decoherency. Which tend to be shorter, more current, and a lot more ranty.

Some topics deserve a fuller treatment though. And the Current State Of The World Right Now is just such a thing. You can't call yourself a blogger and not cover the return of the Orange One. You just can't.

They take away your blogging privileges if you do. Although maybe it'll be the opposite. At the rate social media is going, perhaps soon you'll have to write panegyrics for flatulent orange blubberbags instead.

Anyway, as I was saying, I've written a lot about politics, because it is after all a thoroughly interesting subject. After politics, they say, everything is ashes (perhaps that might turn out to be more literally true than the usual interpretation). But more importantly, I've tried, God knows I've tried, to understand why people believe apparently incomprehensible things and support people who say things which are dumber than a bag of particularly dumb rocks, and I realise that... I've failed.

So to warn you, this is not a post in which I'm going to attempt much in the way of explanation. Oh, there'll probably be a few passing comments here and there, because sometimes I just can't help myself : after all, we have to try. But for the most part this is going to be no more than an emotional outburst, a paean to exasperation, a eulogy for common sense and decency*. It will also use a lot of intemperate language. Readers of a nervous disposition, pregnant ladies, and those with a heart condition should look away now. Probably.

* Not quite entirely though, because anyone who tells you that everything is hopeless and we're just innately a shitty species is a cynical loon who shouldn't ever be taken seriously.

America, Where Art Thou ?

Let me start with the US's apparent determination to shoot itself in the foot and a good many other places besides, what with the US being the isotropic home of gun-toting crazies. To be honest I got lucky. When the election result came through I was away on conferences and there just wasn't time to worry about it. Yet the sheer bizarreness of it all still hasn't sunk in. Kamala Harris had such a blisteringly good start to the campaign, surging in the polls and slipping only slightly later on, that I never really worried much about the outcome. It seemed almost a foregone conclusion.

For the opening credits of Have I Got News For You, they used to have a cartoon of Obama effortlessly getting the basketball in the net. Later they changed it so he missed.

Which of course it wasn't. The Atlantic has it that Democratic losses weren't truly catastrophic for the party; perhaps there was more an element of not voting at all rather than actively shifting right. This seems very much to have been the strategy of election manipulators in the past, though I've yet to see a detailed statistical analysis of these results. 

What gives me a lot of pause for thought on that possibility is the multitude of reports of Trump supporters being incredibly unenthused : falling asleep in or walking out of his rallies en masse (though I don't know of anyone who quite managed to do both and sleepwalked out), polls showing remarkably little energy or support for the campaign. And conversely, Harris seemed to have consistently massive rallies; the "you want the other smaller rally down the street" moment was genuine gold, as was the success of calling the Repubnicans "weird". That painted a very rosy picture of apathy among the MAGA crowd and a determined enthusiasm among the liberals to get out and vote*.

* Note that I'm not saying that the strategy of firing up one's own base by denigrating the opponents is the right approach. I'm just commenting here on the apparent differences between the two sides, with one appearing markedly more successful than the other.

I mean they hardly look wild with excitement. Couple that with many pictures of stadiums half-empty, plus multiple polls showing that Trump supporters were doing little more than going through the motions, and the general trend seemed clear.

For whatever reason, it didn't turn out like that. I just have two comments on that point. First, I heard from someone (but haven't been able to find the story online) that one pollster won millions of dollars by betting on Trump because he asked people not who they'd vote for, but who their friends would vote for. Apparently that gave a much more decisive result. People might well be too embarrassed to say they themselves would vote for the Oompa Loompa in-chief (psychologically, confessing even in an anonymous poll may still be embarrassing) but less so about admitting what their friends would do. And we know that if you do have many friends who share a belief, you're very likely too as well. So that one works both ways, being both an accurate reflection of what people believed but also because of who was, by their own admission, persuading them.

Secondly, there was one clip – I think it was on John Oliver – contrasting two particular campaign events. The Harris one on this occasion was in a church, very solemn, dignified, serious, and... boring. The Trump event was unhinged, with a crazed Elon Musk jumping like he's on some implausibly potent drugs and Hulk Hogan turning up for who the fuck knows why, probably there were cheerleaders shooting bald eagles with fireworks (or the other way around*) and all the other crazy American stuff as well. I dunno. Unhinged to be sure, but you couldn't possibly call it boring. And it stuck in the back of my mind ever since that the Trump event was, if I may abuse the stereotypes, a lot more American-feeling than the Harris one.

* Or the other other way around. Fireworks shooting bald eagles with cheerleaders.

That may have course been an outlier though. Most of Harris' events looked a lot more lively. But it did worry me, a bit.

Perhaps I was caught in a filter bubble ? It's very possible. Maybe there were more enthusiastic Trump supporters elsewhere, maybe Harris alienated more people than it appeared. Maybe there were selection effects : you don't need much enthusiasm to vote, and of course by definition the existing fanbase are bound to turn up in legions at the rallies. So Harris' huge crowds may not have reflected the wider voting community. Maybe. We similar effects all the time; after all, nobody takes opinion polls on specific issues very seriously because they're generally so unrepresentative. 

Regardless, what I think everyone has utterly failed to get a handle on is the most basic issue of all. We can do detailed statistical breakdowns to the nth degree, but this doesn't answer the fundamental problem : why in the hell anyone listening to Trump for more than about 30 seconds doesn't feel an uncontrollable urge to a) punch him very hard indeed in the face and/or b) run screaming down the street, their brain oozing out of their ears in an effort to escape the unbearable nonsense it has to put up with.

That is... I genuinely think that we have some pretty good insights into how persuasion works in groups. That obscenely long linked post is not, mercifully, a complete waste of time. But while we also know a good deal about how persuasion works among individuals, I feel like we're still missing a huge piece of the puzzle. We don't understand the fire-is-hot problem, how people can experience the same evidence and come to strikingly different conclusions that one would naively think equivalent to claiming that fire is cold instead of hot. I'll quote myself :

I don't know how to persuade anyone that fire is hot if they won't believe it when their own hair is actually on fire. Those kind of errors are supposed to be dealt with by the Darwin Awards, not persuasion.

As I've said, I've tried. I keep records of how I've changed my mind. I've tried to self-assess how I make my own political decisions. I've looked at why bullshit is appealing. I've read books about persuasion and rhetoric. I've read numerous threads on social media attempting to explain why liberalism isn't appealing to people and none of it is much help. 

I don't say there's no value in any of this, but... when I hear someone saying, "I'm going to be a dictator" and a host of other statements to the same effect, and worse besides, I can't not care about it*. I can't somehow assume this was said purely for dramatic effect or some such nonsense. I immediately assume that the kind of person who would say such things, for any reason whatever, is in no way fit to be near any political office of any kind. Either they're truthful, in which case they want to assume power over me and mine which I don't want them to have, or they're lying and are therefore not to be trusted.

* Along with a legion of other insane remarks, not least on health and foreign policy. America First ? You deplorable selfish bastards. You don't think it matters to say things like Russia should be given a free hand in Europe, eh ? Apparently not, with one BBC article quoting Trump supporters who said it was all about the price of eggs. The selfish fucking cunts.

Trump supporters appear not to care about this. That Trump is demonstrably a liar doesn't bother them one bit. Exposing his lies, important though it is, has absolutely no effect on them at all because that simply doesn't interest them. And I find that absolutely baffling, in the extreme. That's the root of the problem, the bit I think nobody has addressed : how in the holy flying hells are there so many people who think like this ? How can they vote for someone when they know they can't trust him to do what he promises – if, that is, they can even string a coherent message out of his verbal diarrhea at all ?

A small cult of loonies is to be expected. A few nutcases here and there ? Sure, people are people, weirdos gonna weirdo. Whole societies in the past were incomparably worse than voting for degenerate racists. But a huge chunk of a modern industrialised nation ? And again, I'm not talking about the kind of reasoning that involves a robust statistical analysis or deep critical thinking skills. I'm talking about problems almost literally at the level of realising that fire is hot (I'm not using hyperbole here), that if you elect someone who promises to all but eat your babies, then this – FFS – isn't a good idea. 

What leads me to absolute and profound exasperation is that this is the kind of thing that even with such fecal disseminations as Fox "News"* and a plethora of social media outlets, you absolute bunch of brain-dead fucktards can't see the most buggeringly obvious thing... even when it's hurtling towards you from behind in a truly worrying fashion with a pronounced bulge and a menacing grin. It doesn't matter what your surroundings are like, you should be able to reason for and by yourself. You should be able to realise that Man Who Want Eat Babies Bad, Woman Who Don't Want Eat Babies Better.

* Though I think the "Fox" should also be in quote marks, because it doesn't relate to foxes either.

There's probably an element of this at work but even this isn't enough for a full explanation.

And no, people of Quora, I don't buy your explanations that Me No Like Liberals Who Want Take Toys Away. Liberals are not, in the main, constantly telling you that everything you've ever loved is evil, and it takes no effort at all to understand this. Now to be fair, there are some pretty stupid memes around and plenty of activists who do rather insist on this sort of highly toxic, puritanical, holier-than-thou behaviour... but you can just ignore 'em. It's really easy ! A bunch of morons on social media saying mean things is not an excuse for voting for a frickin' would-be dictator, you absolute bunch of effluent, incontinent, impotent man-babies.

Ahem. I did warn you this was going to be a rant.

Anyway, I might be prepared to excuse some of this as due to a particularly perverse version of American exceptionalism, a strain (or stain) perhaps of their peculiar culture : an excessive veneration for material wealth, an obsession with influencers, alpha-bro culture and leadership. But I can't do that, and to see why, I turn back across the pond to my native soil.

Britain, What Are You Even Talking About ?

I watched the UK's general election with triumphant glee. And you know what's changed my mind about the result since then ? Nothing, you feckless bunch of twats. I still believe in the government every bit as much as I did before the election. The Labour government isn't perfect, because "perfect government" is an unrealisable oxymoron, and to their enormous credit they tempered expectations brilliantly on that score (if anything too much so). But it is, nonetheless, doing a bloody good job, though you wouldn't think so from either the media or the polls.

Don't worry, this section of the post will be considerably shorter than the first. The same major themes apply as above, and I already did a short write-up of the main issues here. In brief, the Labour government has done a pretty good job of sorting out the mess the country's in, considering that they've got 14 years of damage to undo and have only been in power for a few months so far. Scandals ? Negligible. The worst we've had is that they claimed some freebies and declared them properly. Now, listen up and listen good :

That's

Not 

A 

Scandal !

I don't care if it's not a good look given the economy, it's not a scandal. It's unrealistic in the extreme to expect people not to take material advantage when they're allowed to, and if you think you wouldn't do so yourself, you're likely deluded. The real scandal is the endemic Tory corruption that's being ignored because of this absolutely pathetic and pointless non-story. 

Incompetence ? Also negligible. Sorry, but means-testing pensioners for money most of them don't need so that it can be given to other, genuinely needy people, that's a good thing. So is making farmers with millions of pounds in assets pay inheritance tax on them, especially when you consider the many exemptions and that they can simply gift it to their descendants ahead of time. If these really are small family farms being affected, then as Private Eye put it, the tax is "essentially voluntary". And we've seen huge progress on reinvesting in the economy, an end to strikes, a commitment to green energy... look, this government is clearly, unarguably, going in the right direction. Of course it isn't bloody there yet you twerps, they're not wizards ! Things take time to have an effect ! Why is this hard to understand ?!??

Say what you will, I feel the AI got the mood of what I was after here pretty well.

And yet what we've seen from the media is nothing but relentless, grinding negativity. Because the PM had a free suit he's clearly in the pocket of Big Fashion. Because he used the apartment of a Labour Peer – an actual Labour party member for God's sake – he clearly somehow pocketed tends of thousands from this even though no money changed hands because why the fuck would it ? Because the budget didn't immediately cause skyrocketing economic growth the Chancellor is clearly a monstrously incompetent amateur and deserves to be put in the stockade or torn apart by bears or something.

Worse... who's benefitting from this perceived though absolutely phoney incompetence ? Not the Tories, thankfully, who are languishing the doldrums of having elected yet another bloody loony. No, it's the even stupider bunch of loonies who've had more practise at cultivating insanity : Reform, a.k.a. the Nigel Farage party. Party ? Drunken-unintelligible-old-white-men-slurring-words-in-a-pub, more like.

I just don't get it. You perceive dishonesty and incompetence among Labour, fine. You're an idiot, but fine. But to then say, "I know who'll really get things sorted out, it's Reform" is a truly special kind of stupid. I am aghast*.

* Even the subreddit "UK politics" now seems to take a dim view on immigration, for reasons which are never clearly expressed beyond people simply stating that they're obviously right. Bugger that. It's a load of racist nonsense.

Part of the exasperation is not knowing what to take seriously any more. Ironically, part of this is due to Rishi Sunak's best speech : that of his departure. This was humble, contrite and respectful well beyond what was needed. It made me feel that the guy probably wasn't that bad, he's just fallen in with a bad crowd. The problem is that all this is so at odds with the rhetoric he used in Parliament that it's impossible to know who's the real Rishi (if there even is one). Is it Parliamentary performer Rishi or is that naught but a façade ?

When statements can be given which are so contradictory, making sense of anything becomes excruciatingly difficult bordering on impossible. The same goes for stated policies, especially across the pond. If the so-called leader can't actually formulate a coherent sentence, how can you ever know if he's doing what he said he would ? Yes, there's an element of theatricality to political performances, but when rhetoric loses meaning to this degree, what's the point of listening to anything ? At the moment accusations from the right are verging on the point of calling Keir Starmer a werewolf or a banana cunningly disguised as a lawyer : it's such abject nonsense as to rot the brain of the viewer.

Where Do We Go From Here ?

Goodness only knows. For the UK the situation is nowhere near a state of despondency; exasperation is all that's warranted at the moment. Polls this early in a government don't mean much. Give the policies time to actually take effect and it may be a very different story a year or so down the line – but only if the government gets its act together on messaging. Clearly, they've been objectively bad at that. As things stand Labour have a thumping majority and aren't afraid of taking unpopular decisions. This is good, because they're going to need to force things through to effect real change.

But they can't rely on a promised upturn forever. One of the big problems with not knowing what to take seriously is just how likely a Reform breakthrough would be. For now the answer is "not very", but if there's a single lesson from this, it's that we have to take the batshit stuff seriously and can't rely on people's common sense. They don't have any.

Which is hugely depressing. That people were willing to keep voting for the Tories and their absolute drivel, their corrupt incoherence and rampant corruption, their hollowing out of the state for their own aggrandisement, for 14 years, but then decide almost instantly that because Labour haven't fixed everything right away and aren't literally saints that they must somehow be just as bad.... well, sod the whole dang bleedin' lot of you. You're not making any sense. It makes me want to physically scream.

Some hope is gleaned from the in-fighting currently afflicting the far right. This is true in America as well, though there things are undeniably in a worse state since the crazies have (for now) won. Success is not final, failure is not fatal, and all that. I take some comfort from Trumps' utter untrustworthiness, who is at least not a raving ideologue like some of his so-called cabinet. Slim pickings indeed.

I'm not sure I can venture much of an explanation for any of this. Best guess : it's a combination of insular communities with self-reinforcing beliefs and a media who are singularly bad at remaining objective. Criticising everyone without giving praise where praise is due just makes everything seem awful the whole time. This is not really how a proper critique is supposed to be done : it's like the news is on permanent "debunking" mode rather than "verification". Couple this with rampant sensationalism and disaster ensues. What's the point of even trying to do the right thing if the whole press are just going to rip you to shreds over the most minor details regardless ? This environment is a hotbed of stupidity. The result, especially in America, is a cult on a grand scale.

There's a nice quote in Amazon's underrated sci-fi drama The Rig :

The truth is not enough ! Not anymore. It hasn't been for a long time. Behind me... behind everything... there is a vast engine of power, dedicated to making sure that the future you want does not happen. That we never learn, never change, never stop. Something this big, even with proof, people have to choose to believe it. The people we're fighting don't give up. 

In the show it's a conspiracy. In reality it's nothing of the sort, it's right out in the open. That's the tragedy of the whole thing, that we can see what's going on, that we have the means to tell everyone... and it doesn't work.

I don't know what to do about this. I know lots of people think they do, but I can't get over the fire-is-hot problem. People wanting to watch the world burn is one thing, but when they themselves feel the lick of the flames and do nothing... the old meme is more pertinent than I thought. If the artist would like to suggest a solution, I'm all ears.

The Morning After The Fourteen Years Before

I need to say a few words about the other highlight of last week, the UK's general election.

In years gone by I've stayed up into the small hours watching the election coverage. It tends to be quite fun listening to all the different kinds of election speeches. Some are vacuous, some are unhinged - Peter Mandelson's "my enemies will taste my inner steel !" polemic comes to mind for the latter. And of course you have all the analysis, commentary, the silly graphics... it's an unusual excuse for a late night, one which doesn't happen very often.

The last few, though, my heart wasn't in it. Politics in the UK has become too depressing, the results too much of a foregone conclusion. Well at least this time the result was a foregone conclusion but one which finally went in a good direction.

I got myself nicely ensconced in my hotel room. Plenty of tea, plenty of snacks. No alcohol, which was an oversight on my part but probably a wise one, what with being in the middle of a conference and all.

My plan was to stay up pretty late, just enough to get a sense of where things were going. If it had gone the other way, quite honestly I don't know what I would have done. Quite probably, and I'm not being rhetorical here, cry. The mood of the country has been so dead against the Tories for so long that for them to retain power would be an abomination.

What actually happened was that by around 3am (local time), after some actually quite decent interviews, analysis, and endless fun watching Jeremy Vine slowly wear himself out jumping around the swingometer (and various incarnations thereof), it was pretty clear that there would be no great upset. Two cups of tea could see me no further so I went to sleep... for about an hour. Then I woke up, saw the news, saw that results were coming in thick and fast : LABOUR GAIN... LABOUR GAIN... LABOUR GAIN... LABOUR HOLD... and so on, and I couldn't get back to sleep. So up I stayed until the end. I saw Starmer's victory speech, I saw Rishi concede, I saw Jacob Ress-Mogg and... heeheheheee !.... Liz Truss lose her goddamn seat.

I also saw Jeremy Vine still swinging hard (if a little more slowly) at well after 3am.

And of course there was the inevitable oddity, the crazy results bucking the trend with TORY GAIN. Which made no sense, especially for poor Jonathan Ashworth, who I've liked very much throughout his career in opposition. He deserved better. Unfortunately, politics is random enough that a few inexplicable curveballs like this are part of the process.

The main result, though, was exactly in line with expectations. The Tories haven't suffered an extinction level event (that was never very likely) but by God they've taken a body blow. The Lib Dems have deservedly resurged with avengeance. Reform have shown themselves up as the useless protest vote that Farage parties always are. The Greens and Plaid have made at least a little progress, while the SNP - in perhaps the biggest surprise of the night - have truly collapsed. You'll recall I said exactly this possibility right back in 2015, when everyone else suspected that the SNP surge marked a permanent sea change in Scottish politics, that once they were in so deep, it would be very difficult to get them back out. 

To me the lesson was different, that politics can be potentially very unstable indeed, and that large majorities can flip to large minorities if a party isn't careful. Fortune's wheel is ever turning... the system is one always on the edge of chaos, predictable only if it sticks to its own rules. The SNP took their new-found dominance for granted, to their ultimate cost.

Whoops.

But of course the real result is that huge Labour majority. I have to confess, of course, to being biased. This is the result of which dreams are made (second only to the ultimate goal of a Labour - Lib Dem coalition), giving power back to the sensible, grown-up, boring people. I couldn't be happier. To me it's a eucatastrophe, an unexpected (well, not so much) anti-disaster of astonishing good fortune, a real opportunity, at long last, for the country to heal itself. To pick itself up after 14 years of Tory shenanigans (especially the last five of the utmost stupidity), dust itself off, and look everyone else squarely in the eye and declare, "Why yes, actually there was a reason we used to be renowned for our political system, bitches."

In short to me the result was absolutely joyous. I walked into the conference with a spring in my step and my head held high, although by the afternoon the adrenaline finally began to wane and I started to crash. But it was a truly cathartic moment of the utmost delight, even something approaching bliss.

I've said enough out my quasi-adoration of Starmer's Labour here and here (and probably elsewhere) that I don't need to, ahem, labour the point.

Sorry, I'll see myself out.

But I just want to add one small but important point. In terms of actual politics, I'm firmly on the left. I believe in a big strong welfare state acting as a safety net, liberal in its social policies (guaranteeing freedoms in a utilitarian sum, acting with as light a touch as possible to impose the smallest restrictions for the biggest gains) and socialist in its economics (government providing all the essential services, but leaving non-essentials by and large to run themselves, intervening only when absolutely necessary). 

In terms of the way I think politics should be done, however, I'm a centrist. I believe more in the process than the result. I believe that while my own opinions are valid, and some fraction will be correct, the same is true of everyone else. Well, nearly everyone, probably not Liz Truss. I'm not joking here : as I've said rhetorically, you simply cannot reason with pathological liars like Johnson or the delusional like Truss. Nor does this work with the politically feeble like Sunak, who find themselves craven to their own party and chronically unable to lead. A reasoned argument with someone who refuses to make up their own mind gets you nowhere.

Most people don't lie at these extremes of personality types, though unfortunately they seem to be disproportionately represented in politics. But when you clear out this lunatic asylum, this squawking henhouse of nonsense, I believe discussions are the ultimate answer. That a decision formed by consensus is by far the most secure. When you combine independent conclusions formed in good faith, then and only then do you get the best decisions possible, not from any one ideology or perspective, but from many. So while of course I want to see the policies I favour enacted, more important to me is to see this process of serious discussion taking place. To see people getting together, genuinely engaging with each other rather than shouting each other down, compromising when necessary, forceful on occasion, but always listening.

This is why I'm a Starmer superfan. I know, I know, people say he isn't inspiring. Fuck 'em. I've said it before and I'll say it again : this kind of boring, sensible politics is the best thing I've seen happen (politically) in my entire adult life. The idea that you can turn on the television and there isn't a political crisis, that politicians are actually working to solve the problems rather than create more of them to (largely subconsciously, I think) enrage and divide voters... Good God, can it be true ? 

Starmer, to be sure, doesn't have the easy charm even of Sunak (in his own greasy and cringe-worthy way, but nevertheless, he gives slick answers much more comfortably in television situations than Starmer), let alone Blair. But if he delivers on results, this is a skill he may not lead to learn. He's generally good enough to get the job done, interview-wise. And he understands perfectly a key lesson of Blair, that voters judge in aggregate*. Individual incidents, however overblown by the media, don't really matter, it's the sum whole (and, crucially the feelings it engenders) that really matters come voting time.

* And many others as well, especially that leadership involves saying no to your own side. If you don't do this, if you don't impose some direction on the group, you'll end up going nowhere and being visibly weak.

So in the rest of this post I want to cover three things. First, I'll look at the electoral strategy that got us to where we are now. Then I want to say a little more about why I'm optimistic that politics, at least so far as actual policies go, is likely to get significantly better given the immediate actions Labour have taken in government. Finally, I'll end on a bit more of a cautious note as to how it may be difficult to retain this kind of attitude in the future, and how we must always be on guard against a return to factional chest-thumping politics where believing one's ideology is considered more important than getting anything done.

1) When The Hurly-Burly's Done : Why The Tories Lost And Labour Won

It's pretty obvious why the Tories lost : they were shite. Not only were their pledges shite (and racist), but they failed to deliver on any of them. Johnson, in short, broke them, turning them into a confused quagmire, a dastardly mix of anti-woke culture wars mingled with populist and at times even socialist policies that were largely unworkable. Johnson, in his pig-headed way, cared not a jot, driving them into both a hole and wall at the same time, if that's metaphorically possible.

From this any sort of recovery would prove near-impossible in the short term. Johnson, a traditional tribal politician, had the peculiar attitude of not actually standing for his own tribe. This kind of rampant megalomania is not common in British politics. What Johnson in effect did was to set all the Tory factions against one another, each thinking that they were the true voice of the Conservatives, each equally determined to fight their corner and each unwilling to back down. The result is that it transformed the notoriously disciplined party into something little better than a bag of screaming cats.

One particularly stupid cat, however, briefly assumed the mantle of authority. But Liz was too stupid and her beliefs too crazy to assume anything more than the mantle, not the authority and control itself. By doubling down on Boris' approach of total tribalism in support of unworkable policies, but having absolutely no appeal to other segments of the party (still less among the general population), she was doomed. But she did enough damage in her less-than-lettuce tenure to make recovery all but impossible for Sunak. 

Such a feat would have required a political genius of the highest order. Starmer, with his quiet but ruthless expulsion of dissenters, could not have done it : such things take time Sunak was not gifted with, nor did he seem at all interested in building a power base. People drone on about how Starmer doesn't stand for anything (or at least they used to, see below), but what in the world Sunak's famed "plan" was ever supposed to be was something I could never make head nor tail of.

The Tories made themselves unelectable. The Labour party made itself look boring... and safe. Gone were the anti-Semitic overtones of Corbyn, along with all his other pro-Russia, anti-NATO, ambivalent-EU stupidities. There was just enough radicalism in Labour to make everyone curious (federalism, abolishing the Lords, Great British Energy) but not enough to be a concern (e.g. not cancelling Trident a la Corbyn). True, they didn't adopt anything really radical. There was to be no hint of UBI, a four-day work-week, precious little about proportional representation, and no hint of re-joining the EU. But in this softly-softly approach they gave their opponents not a single piece of ammunition to use against them. If they weren't daring enough to face the arguments head-on, they also weren't stupid enough to fight battles they couldn't possibly win*. As I said, Starmer doesn't have the easy charm needed to carry this off.

* Yes, polls show people are now against Brexit, but it would the utmost folly to assume another referendum would be anything other than a repeat of the last disaster. You can't undo such things at a whim. You need a detailed campaign strategy, one that must be carefully formulated to avoid the mistakes of the first attempt.

It's worth bringing in some counterfactuals here though. Had the Tories been in a better position, would Labour have adopted a different strategy with a more radical, risky agenda ? It's possible - we can't know for sure. It's also possible they never would have elected Starmer to leader at all. One can play endless counterfactual games, but the one that strikes me as most relevant is in relation to Reform. There's no doubt Reform hurt the Tories pretty badly, though as to exactly how much I await detailed statistical breakdowns. Would Labour still have won without Reform ? It's absolutely a valid question; to say that Labour weren't proposing good enough policies to inspire people (given the low turnout) is by no means a claim without foundation, though I'll avoid committing to an answer for the time being.

But... let's consider what might have happened had Labour still been in the doldrums of their pitiful 2019 state. This, I suggest, would have been an absolute disaster in which a major Reform breakthrough might have been a real possibility. By playing it safe, failing to unify the right against them, Labour not only ensured their own landslide but also neutered any chance of Reform gaining a meaningful parliamentary voice. This was, unequivocally, the right election strategy for the right time. It remains to be seen if and how they'll adapt to the no-doubt different circumstances of the next election.

A pertinent point being exaggerated quite properly by satirists but taken too seriously by the less credible political commentators is how bad Labour's share of the vote was. In terms of delivering a win, the absolute share of the vote doesn't matter, and Labour knew this. What matters is that their share increased hugely relative to the Tories. We've now got a huge Labour majority because they are the most popular of the parties, simple as. That's the system we've got to work with and that's the game of electoral calculus they very successfully played. Absolute numbers don't factor into it.

Whether this is inherently fair or not is something I'll return to at the end. For now, I'll just say that it clearly is possible for small parties to make big gains if they work within the existing system rather than insisting that it should be something else and campaigning as though that were already the case. The Lib Dems did very well indeed precisely because of that (as did the SNP in the past). As for Reform, their poor performance indicates that either a) they're too stupid to understand how the system works, in which case they probably don't deserve to be in parliament anyway, or b) they really are all about the protest politics, not interested in any actual power but simply having the chance to rant and rave and wallow in their own sense of petty entitlement and victimhood. 

Sadly we still have to put up with this twat. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Which leads me to my final point in this section. Throughout, the Lib Dems were very careful to target Tory seats where they were polling well, not Labour. What we have is a de facto combination of tactical voting and even, to a degree, a progressive alliance. It's not sold as such, there are no open statements of collaboration with Labour (save an open invitation to intellectual property theft). What such movements have failed to realise in the past, I think, is that this kind of direct, rub-your-noses-in-it approach ends up being the kind of "being told what to think" attitude that people don't like. People are happy enough to listen to arguments aimed at persuading them. But this attitude of entitlement that of course you want to vote for me to get these guys out, of course you already agree with our agenda... that winds people up the wrong way.

Telling people, "here's the evidence for X" is generally okay with most people. Telling them, "and here's why I adopt position Y in response to this" is usually fine too. But being told simply that you must believe Y in response to X, must feel something that you don't already actually feel, that you must simply be a bad person otherwise... this doesn't work. Progressive alliances turn people off, I think, when they're so explicit because they make this inherent assumption that of course it's what people want even when it was never on their agenda. Instead, this much more implicit and totally informal approach has delivered real, tangible gains in part because it avoids all of this almost culture-war aspect to the whole argument.

2) Reasons To Be Cheerful

I mean, apart from the stonking great Labour majority, which is more than reason enough.

Labour have said for some considerable time that they were in talks with the movers and shakers behind the scenes, putting them in a position to take advantage of power the moment they attained it. And this appears to be emphatically true. They proceeded from a presumption of actually being in government, a very different prospect from being a party of protest. And so while too many wrote their manifesto pledges off as being unambitious or "not radical enough", this looks very different in the dawning light of actual power. We've seen immediate action on almost all of their major pledges, and even some which were barely mentioned. Barely a week into the new administration we've seen :

• Scrapping the detestable Rwanda scheme
• A new aid package for Ukraine with accelerated delivery
• Lifting the absurd ban on onshore wind power
• A commitment to housing targets
• Talks with the EU for closer alignment (at least beginning the process)
• The appointment of a prison's minister who doesn't believe prison is always the solution, a sentiment echoed by Starmer himself
• Meetings with doctors to avert strikes
• Work begins on recruiting new teachers
• Meetings with leaders of the other UK nations and even local mayors for greater devolution of powers

Perhaps most emblematic of all is a commitment from Starmer to work with those of any stripe (albeit this is easier because now their are far fewer politicians on the right). The dramatic tonal shift away from conflict and brow-beating to one of collaboration is not something that should be underestimated. May, for instance, pathologically insisted that "Brexit meant Brexit" and completely ignored the beliefs of Remainers. Starmer returns to a time-honoured approach of at least pledging to govern for the whole country and not just the party faithful. "I will fight until you believe again", he said, echoing a sentiment he expressed very clearly throughout the campaign. Thanks largely to Johnson, trust in politics has collapsed. The idea that politicians might actually say what they mean has become something of a novelty.

And this is why, I think, people weren't all that impressed by the manifesto, even though it contained some extremely ambitious pledges. People expected yet more climbdowns and u-turns and judged it accordingly : on that basis, it does indeed look weak. The problem is of course that when you lose trust you can believe anything, pervert any statement to mean what you want it to mean. Things look very different when those commitments actually materialise. And to repeat from a previous post, yes, of course politicians have to lie sometimes, there's just no other way of working together. But not all lies are the same by any means : lies about who you like and who you don't like are the necessary grease of the political machinery; in contrast, saying the machine is a typewriter when it's actually a clock is of a different order. Lies about people and lies about policies are not the same.

But I'm getting carried away. None of those things have actually been delivered yet, because it's been a full four days since Labour assumed office. Nevertheless, to be shown to be already beginning the work needed is important. And of course, it would be foolish to assume that every policy will be delivered exactly as stated and on time and on budget. No government is that saintly. For certain, there will be corruption, scandals, and stupidity, That's the nature of the game. The test for the government is how it deals with this, how it seeks not to eliminate such occurrences (a fool's dream) but to actually and significantly reduce all this compared to the shitshow of the last fourteen years. And of course in how it responds when these things occur, how it defends or suspends the accused, how swiftly it responds or doesn't respond.

3) Reasons To Be Cautious

Which brings me to my final theme. The small voter share is, undeniably, a source of concern for the future. It's not anything to get into a blind panic about, not something to declare the results invalid over. But it should give any reasonable politician pause for thought : we're seen as the better choice by far, might think Labour, but it's a pretty low bar. The rapid turnaround of Labour's fortunes might yet be matched by a similar feat by the Tories. Unlikely, to be sure, but quite possible.

In years gone by the Tories too had this presumption that they were "the natural party of government". Consequently they formulated policies which were by no means very nice, let alone desirable, but were at least workable. They were things that, quite unlike bridges from Scotland to Ireland, could actually be implemented. They knew they'd have to deliver to at least some some extent on what they promised, so they didn't promise everyone the Moon when the rockets weren't available.

What this shifted into was entitlement. And in this sense this is quite a different outlook. Instead of merely assuming that they would be in government, they assumed they deserved to be in government : come what may, no matter whatever bullshit they spewed forth, they deserved it not because of whatever nonsense they said but simply because of who they were, that they were fundamentally better than the little people. Sensible, cautious presumption became the height of arrogance. Policy became unworkable nonsense.

The message for Labour is manifold. They have to actually deliver on their promises : not everything, not perfectly, and not exactly on time and/or budget either, but the goal of perfection must ever be their aim. Contrary to a media which exaggerates every slight miss as a major and totally unrecoverable failure, the public's standards are not so ludicrously high. But they must still aim towards... let's call it core delivery. Then they have to avoid the sense of entitlement which causes policy to drift from pragmatism to nonsense. It's honestly quite hard to envisage this happening to Starmer, but power can corrupt the best of us; if he's truly wise, he'll leave before it gets to him. And with a thumping majority, maintaining parliamentary discipline will be tough.

The other note of caution is of course Reform. Or rather, their combined vote share with the Tories, which exceeds Labour's overall (though not Labour plus the Lib Dems). We shouldn't be too gloomy about this : in the seats which Labour actually targeted for winning, their swing away from the Tories was far more dramatic than the national average, proof positive of the importance of a disciplined and controlled election campaign strategy. Nevertheless, that the country has still not yet decisively rejected the absurdity of the Tory mindset, and some have even embraced an even more hardline variant of lunacy in Reform (however much that may have been a protest vote), should absolutely be cause for concern. Especially combined with that low turnout. Labour won the election, but the battle for hearts and minds is going to need to pick up a gear.

Conclusions

The cause for celebration is very real. A push towards cheaper, more secure, green energy, a movement towards fixing the NHS rather than just blaming the staff, towards closer alignment with the EU if not reintegration, towards more devolution and local powers rather than total fragmentation, and best of all a push towards real dialogue and discussions... all this looks pretty good to me. Gone too is the Tory party's grim parody of diversity (let's pick racists of different ethnicities to prove we're not racist !), replaced with a Labour party committed to actually delivering egalitarianism and opportunities - which has already gone down badly with transphobics like Rowling. 

Replacing all these idiotic culture wars with productive discussions ? Yes please. All this may not deliver everything I'd ideally like, but if tempered with realism, then these expectations aren't unambitious either. The reasons to be cheerful outweigh by far any reason for cynicism.

The question arises, of course, as to whether the result is fair giving the disproportion of seats in relation to votes. Here I will elaborate on things I've been saying for years. We have representative democracy, and FPTP delivers on both aspects of this. It's an absolutely valid way of selecting local candidates to be your ambassadors to parliament to speak on your behalf. It's also democratic in that its tendency to return large majorities mean you can be confident that the party elected will have few fetters acting against its pledges : it will try to enact its policies as stated, and not have to water them down in a coalition.

This is not to say that proportional representation wouldn't be a valid solution either, however. It really depends on what you want your system of government to be. If it's ensuring everyone has a voice, then PR is the better choice. If it's more important to represent local communities, FPTP is better (though, a ranked voting system would be better still, and arguably a sensible compromise between the two). The difficulty is that neither of these perspectives has any strong intrinsic claim to be the better option either morally or pragmatically. There simply isn't any one right way to implement democracy, no single solution to how a country should be governed or decisions formulated (the difficulties of balancing the need for both local and national governments is something elaborated on at length in Isabel Hardman's excellent book).

Starmer's lack of a clear ideology has caused difficulties, but Laura Kuenssberg (of all people) mentioned the intriguing phrase of "moral socialism". Which, as she pointed out, could have been purpose-written for a Guardian headline. But might this phrase have actual value ? I've pontificated about liberal democratic socialism, trying to maximise both social freedom, political choices, and equality of resources all at once, an ungodly phrase for an awkward balancing act. "Moral socialism" at least rolls off the tongue a lot more smoothly. 

Starmer himself doesn't seem to think like this. He just wants to fix things. 

Fair enough, but for a lot of people, having some comparative ideological framework is of tremendous help. Starmer tends to assume, I think, that everyone is like him, that when a solution is clear to him that everyone else gets it too - a minor weakness which is an occasional annoyance, but he'd do well to learn this at least when communicating his intentions*. But I shall leave aside the thorny question of how much the system itself matters, to what extent can good people deliver good results in a bad system and vice-versa.

* For instance, in one of the debates, the fact that his two-stage (stop the gangs, process those already here) scheme would easily cut illegal migration far more than Sunak's Rwanda farce was easily lost in the verbal fog. Starmer doesn't seem to realise that implications aren't always equally obvious to everyone.

I believe in credit where credit is due. For all the scantily-clad villainy of their statements during the campaign, Rishi Sunak and Jacob Rees Mogg both gave very gracious concession speeches. If they'd only adopted such attitudes a little more during their terms of office, perhaps I might have been more sympathetic and trusting towards them. 

See, make no mistake, I despise the Tories. Loathe them. But I concede that, if brought back as a halfway-sensible, respectable party which would at least regrow its moral backbone, it would at least have some uses. Somebody is needed to hold the government to account. Somebody needs to provide a counterbalance, to act as a reminder if nothing else then at least why the alternatives are worse. Getting that important balance, maintaining that vital tension and stress in the system, the drive to do better or else we'll end up with that lot, is not at all easy. More difficult still is, to my everlasting exasperation, getting the majority to see that some choices are, quite plainly, utterly stupid. 

This though is an altogether bigger challenge, and for now I think I shall be content to accept the fact the government is not only "not a shitshow", but actually intent on delivering its promises. At the very least, there's the hope for a better tomorrow which we've not had in a good long while. And that is no small victory.