THIS General Election campaign is an insult. If we had a functioning democracy, here is what would happen.
We would acknowledge that all data points in one direction – an electoral asteroid is on a collision course with the Conservative Party, which faces a justified political apocalypse.
Though its size and scale is to be determined, a Labour landslide – gifted by the worst government in British democratic history – is all but assured. That will mean a government led by Keir Starmer with pretty much free rein to do what it wants for half a decade – that is, until the third decade of this century croaks its last breath.
So what will this new government do to address the multiple crises and injustices not just scarring but rather defining life on these islands?
It is here the answers are lacking. On the one hand, given half of all voters believe the Tories deserve to lose every single seat – including a quarter of those who opted for the party back in 2019 – the Labour leadership has calculated that it can coast to victory by promising very little. But most of our media have conspired to ensure that substantive discussion about what happens next is all but extinguished.
For future historians of the 2024 election campaign, here is a precis of what happened. Our Prime Minister, knowing his party faced an existential crisis, for some reason called an early election at the worst time – before the Tories’ arch-nemesis on the right, Nigel Farage, had gallivanted off to the States for the presidential election, and inflation figures improved.
Rishi Sunak has since run the worst campaign in modern times. The problem is, this has essentially become the story of the campaign. Our media outlets are just competing over pointing excitedly at the latest Tory calamity. It has become a bloodsport. That’s because they know it’s all over for the Tories.
Journalists no longer have to worry about losing access. If it’s a government that’s there to last, the “lobby”, as our political journalists are known, want advance briefings, gossip, little morsels and tidbits here and there. If you displease the government’s spinmeisters, they freeze you out.
But who cares about advance briefings from a political party that will be lucky to scrape 100 seats in less than two weeks’ time?
What is now to be gained from focusing on the raging bonfire that is the Tory campaign, except occasionally for some humorous respite? The Tories are dead, buried, finito, kaput, it is all over. And what other coverage do we get? Relentless oohs and aahs about yet another opinion poll which simply underlines the inevitable finale we all know is arriving – Toryism burned to a crisp, a Labour landslide.
In a functioning democracy, we would instead focus on what our next government will do.
How will it fill the projected £20 billion annual black hole in the nation’s finances – simply to prevent even further cuts on top of 14 years of austerity and keep us merely standing still in our current disastrously parlous state?
Why won’t Labour raise taxes on the well-to-do given how they’re booming when everyone else is not? How will growing child poverty be addressed, given Labour support for Tory benefit cuts? What powers and money will the new government grant Scotland? How will England’s disintegrating NHS be saved without vast new sums? What meaningful new rights will workers gain?
What about the existential menace of the climate emergency, and how it can be harnessed so it becomes an opportunity to provide new jobs, improve living standards, get better public health? What of both parties refusing to end arms sales to Israel, having been complicit in its genocidal rampage?
Notice how we’ve been robbed of such a discussion. These islands are in a mess, and we’ve barely debated what the next government is going to do about it all.
As it is, politics in this country is like an episode of EastEnders, as political correspondents breathlessly debate who is up and who is down. For them, it’s high drama indeed. But that crowds out the actual substantive issues we should be focusing on.
Indeed, much of our media now fears crossing Labour, knowing that a long stretch in government now beckons, and that it too will freeze them out if they’re displeased. Going by historical precedent, some will end up working for them.
Is this how a healthy democracy should work? Clearly not. And at a time of so much turmoil, with our society in such a dire state, this is a particular travesty.
An election with an inevitable result beckons, with no real discussion about what happens next.
If you’re wondering why the increasingly farcically named “United” Kingdom ended up in such disarray, well, here are some clues.
