It’s become such a cliche to complain about gaslighting in politics that it’s hackneyed now even to complain about other people saying it. Yet it remains the case that when politicians deny the problems that are staring everyone in the face, or admit the problem but deny the cause, then turn round and argue that no, actually, you caused it, or remainers caused it, or Albanians caused it, or the wokerati caused it, that is quite unsettling. You could call it gaslighting, or you could call it nascent totalitarianism, and I am happy with either because I don’t work for the BBC.
If you cling on to your observable realities, you fall out of step with the norm. To join the herd, you have to deny your own experience. It’s amazing how many people are prepared to ventriloquise plainly ridiculous propositions, such as: “It’s not Brexit causing this or that crisis – it’s small boats”, on to other, nameless opinion-formers – “That’s what they think in Lincolnshire, anyway” – just to avoid the discomfort of the fringes.
Ultimately, though, a reality will arrive that cannot be denied, and there is nothing more poetic than that it should arrive in the form of a queue. The very thing the British think we’re so good at, our proudest boast. But we didn’t mean like this: we meant staying polite while an orderly line waited for some low-stakes resource to be efficiently if laboriously distributed. We didn’t mean getting stuck on a coach in Dover, eating Mini Cheddars because they’re always the last snack standing, urinating into an Evian bottle, missing two days of skiing while men explained to each other on LBC phone-ins how much room for manoeuvre it takes to do a three-point-turn in a high-sided vehicle. That’s not a Great British Queue. That is a circle of hell.
I got stuck in Dover this time last year for a much shorter time – only about six hours – and I quite enjoyed it, because even then I could feel some mood shift, some new collective sense that this queue was definitely real, and was probably related to that time we took back control of our borders. It’s gaslighting 101 – if you want the herd to swallow your nonsense in perpetuity, don’t round us all up, put us on the same motorway and leave us there. We might turn.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
