After a hard day of woke, tofu-eating activism, many civil servants like to unwind in front of a movie. So when a colleague asked me how I felt about Labour winning the election, I couldn’t help thinking about that opening scene from Dune. You know, the one in which the oppressed indigenous Fremen people suddenly find that their obscenely wealthy overlords, the Harkonnens, have abandoned the crumbling infrastructure of the desert planet Arrakis, for something like a well earned holiday in Mustique or the Cayman Islands. Anyway, the resulting transfer of power (spoiler alert!) doesn’t go particularly well.
Dune is, of course, just a piece of space opera, but it is nonetheless a handy reminder of why, after 14 years of galloping and often otherworldly Tory chaos, it is so important that Labour are prepared for a likely return to government.
