<
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain>
"My life divides, evenly enough, into three political eras. I was born in 1980,
a year after Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street with the prayer of St.
Francis of Assisi on her lips: “Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And
where there is despair, may we bring hope.” The Conservative-run Britain of the
eighties was not harmonious. Life beyond the North London square where my
family lived often seemed to be in the grip of one confrontation or another.
The news was always showing police on horseback. There were strikes, protests,
the I.R.A., and George Michael on the radio. My father, who was a lawyer in the
City, travelled to Germany to buy a Mercedes and drove it back, elated. Until
Thatcher resigned, when I was ten, her steeply back-combed hair and deep,
impossible voice played an outsized role in my imagination—a more interesting,
more dangerous version of the Queen.
I was nearly seventeen when the Tories finally lost power, to Tony Blair and
“New Labour,” an updated, market-friendly version of the Party. Before he moved
to Downing Street, Blair lived in Islington, the gentrifying borough I was
from. Boris Johnson, an amusing right-wing columnist, who was getting his start
on television, also lived nearby. Our local Member of Parliament was an
out-of-touch leftist named Jeremy Corbyn.
New Labour believed in the responsibility of the state to look after its
citizens, and in capitalism to make them prosper. Blair was convincing, even
when he was wrong. He won three general elections in ten years and walked out
of the House of Commons to a standing ovation, undefeated in his eyes. I was
turning thirty when Labour eventually ran out of road, undone by the Iraq War,
the global financial crisis, and the grim temper of Gordon Brown, Blair’s
successor. He was caught in a hot-mike moment describing an ordinary voter, who
was complaining about taxes and immigration, as a bigot.
Since then, it’s been the Conservatives again. In 2010, the Party returned to
government in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Since 2015, it has held
power alone. Last May, the Tories surpassed the thirteen years and nine days
that New Labour had held office. But the third political era of my lifetime has
been nothing like the previous two. There has been no dominant figure or overt
political project, no Thatcherism, no Blairism. Instead, there has been a
quickening, lowering churn: five Prime Ministers, three general elections, two
financial emergencies, a once-in-a-century constitutional crisis, and an
atmosphere of tired, almost constant drama.
The period is bisected by the United Kingdom’s decision, in 2016, to leave the
European Union, a Conservative fantasy, or nightmare, depending on whom you
talk to. Brexit catalyzed some of the worst tendencies in British politics—its
superficiality, nostalgia, and love of game play—and exhausted the country’s
political class, leaving it ill prepared for the pandemic and the twin economic
shocks of the war in Ukraine and the forty-nine-day experimental premiership of
Liz Truss. Covering British politics during this period has been like trying to
remember, and explain, a very convoluted and ultimately boring dream. If you
really concentrate, you can recall a lot of the details, but that doesn’t lead
you closer to any meaning."
Via
Garbage Day: All the CEOs want to be podcasters now
https://www.garbageday.email/p/ceos-want-podcasters-now
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
