One out of three is bad

Not unexpected but you have to worry why. The phrase stealing about the ears is that the mood is rather ‘Late Major’.

Thirteen years of Conservative or Conservative-led government means there is no one else to blame the woes of the nation on, and there is justified blame. The solution though is worse: it is as if a man said to himself ‘eating chocolate has given me diabetes, so I will change my diet and eat pure sugar’.

In thirteen years, the narrative wants to move on. to show change is possible. Napoleon III lost his grip in the good times, when the nation felt ‘La France s’ennuie’; and we are not in good time, and Rishi Sunak is no Bonaparte.

The reasons for the decline are well known and were perfectly predictable when the Conservatives put them in place: high tax and the lockdown principally, and now high interest rates. Oh, and the Ukraine War. All these (apart from the last) and Labour-lite policies, which Starmer promised to do more and harder. And now he is less than a year from being empowered to do so.

Now we have the Renters’ Reform Bill, almost hard-Labour, which can only hurt renters, and landlords, and Starmer will make it worse, but renters will vote for him.

So what do we do? There is no realistic alternative with actual Conservative policies. The only other sane party with largely sensible policies is Reform UK, and the system does not permit them to advance. So I stick with the Conservatives, in the receding hope that they will reform and grip the system entrusted to them against their own reluctance.

The ‘youthquake’ is real – hatred for the Conservative Party is there. It does not necessarily mean though that they are all socialists. There are plenty of libertarians and hard-conservatives amongst them. They will trickle into the polling booths and vote in a socialist. Such is the madness of the system.

There is no inevitability about anything in politics, except despair.