Many of the people who have been prime minister in the past six years seem to have internalised the idea that we’re sleepwalking towards an apologetically British form of tinpot dictatorship. After all, each of them has spent a remarkable amount of their time in office saying out loud: “I really don’t think the public wants an election.”
Perhaps the arc of history is bending towards them being right. As discussed here previously, a recent poll found that 61% of 18- to 34-year-olds supported running the UK with “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with parliament/elections”. Which doesn’t feel like the most ringing endorsement of whichever form of democracy we currently practise (constitutional experts/dadaists are invited to get in touch to clarify). We have an unelected second chamber and the second mandate-free prime minister in just over two months. Meanwhile, the former health secretary who spent most of the pandemic telling everyone how to behave has absconded from his post as a member of parliament, and is currently poised to pocket a rumoured £400,000 fee to enter the I’m A Celebrity jungle, where he claims to want to talk to the public about dyslexia. That’s going to be difficult with his mouth full of kangaroo cock. But we are where we are.
