The prime minister may have misread his mandate, or simply misread everything
The prime minister may have misread his mandate, or simply misread everything
From the desk of Alan Nafzger – editor, Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Monday. Or possibly Tuesday. Time has lost meaning under this administration.
I sat this morning with a pot of very strong tea and the full weight of the British news cycle pressing down on my sinuses like a Budget Statement. Keir Starmer, our laconic Prime Minister, has apparently discovered that winning an election is the easy part. Governing – that messy, contradictory, unglamorous business of actually deciding things – turns out to require opinions. Who knew.
The man has the demeanour of a senior partner at a law firm who has been asked, unexpectedly, to also run the office Christmas party. He is professional. He is prepared. He has a folder. The folder is immaculate. The Christmas party is an unmitigated disaster.
The Mandate Problem
Labour won on a wave of people wanting the Tories to stop. Not the same as wanting Labour to start. This is a meaningful distinction that the Cabinet appears to be working through, slowly, like a very earnest book club that has just discovered Dostoevsky is long.
Meanwhile, BBC Politics informs me that Reform is polling at figures that should embarrass everyone, and yet here we are. My colleague over at The London Prat’s coverage of Farage’s polling surge put it best: the Conservatives are being haunted by a ghost they themselves created, and they keep inviting it to dinner.
I have begun telling people at parties – I attend two parties a year, both held in rooms that smell of damp radiators – that British politics is performance art. They no longer invite me to the second party.
In Conclusion
I give the Government until autumn before someone in Cabinet uses the phrase “managed expectations” without irony. I give Reform until the same autumn before they say something so appalling even their own voters briefly wince. I give myself until Thursday before I finish this pot of tea.
Britain endures. Somehow. The Guardian will document every moment of its endurance in approximately 47 think-pieces.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com