Please, just make me care

General Elections are ruined for me now

Storm clouds gather for the Tories or something lol

[Note: have to say I enjoyed writing this, so things are looking up since last week’s miserable missive about being too battered by life to be bothered producing anything. Nice to have some mojo back.]

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There's a General Election in Britain. It was labelled as a 'snap' election, mainly because that sounds more interesting. Everyone already knew a General Election was imminent. It's just a bit earlier than people expected.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶t̶y̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶a̶t̶h̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶ the election and literally nobody texted me, so I didn't even know about it for nearly 24 hours. 

Time was when I would have been excited right now.

Since 1983 - the first one I could vote in - I've lapped up the spectacle of idiots debasing themselves, sipping traditional pints in traditional British pubs for traditional British news and all the rest of it. And I've always stayed up to watch the results.

Being media myself once, I've been a reporter as well as a participant in the whole shebang, which was most exciting of all. I've done the interviews, vox-popped people on dreary northern streets, smelled the anticipation, fear and despair in a vote-counting room and all the rest of it.

My memories of General Elections are mostly of personal disappointment, because I've usually managed to be out of step with le grand public and always fancied that I could see what the rest of them couldn't; which was that the Tories were evil and should never be allowed near the levers of economic or cultural power. But they mostly got in anyway.

I left Britain half way through their latest dismal 14 years, in which the Tories focused mainly on transferring wealth from the public domain to their backers, making Brexit happen and then making it even worse than it needed to be.

In a way, I'm kind of grateful to them for the Brexit part, because it was beating the hassles of losing various 'rights' and conveniences that came from being a European citizen that made a move to Normandy more urgent, a choice I've never regretted.

Strangely, it seems now, I was at my most engaged with British politics immediately after emigrating. Having been radicalised by the angry centrist professional middle class hordes on Twitter dot com I was furious about my status as an educated modern cosmopolitan suddenly counting for a lot less.

In the most cliched way possible (for an educated modern cosmopolitan) I swung further left and joined the Labour Party's radical wing, People's Momentum.

For a time I shouted online all day long about how great it would be to have Jeremy Corbyn at the helm. It was time for a 'real change', rather than the usual nibbling around the edges of things, was my feeling at the time.

Oddly, I have now become the sort of person I used to hate.

The kind that says 'they're all as bad as each other' and feels sceptical about the role of politics as a life-changing thing.

The kind of person I used to glance at askance and think you fucking twat, it's people like you who keep letting the Tories back in.

At least I have the dual luxury now of not feeling at all agitated while also knowing that the party I have never voted for are expected to see their worst result since maybe forever. Maybe even get wiped out ! Which would be nice.

So this election, for me, is a bit like when England gets knocked out of the World Cup and you can relax a bit, because the worst is over; the 'worst' always being the hope.

I might even stay up, the way I always used to, to watch the faces of Tories as they lose their seats. And maybe see Rishi Sunak describing a (hopefully) catastrophic result as 'disappointing' in his peculiarly bloodless way.

It's strange to feel this way when you used to feel so differently.

Some of it is down to the process described here over the past few years; letting go of old certainties and being at peace with uncertainty and cognitive dissonance. Becoming 'post-ideological'.

Some is down to understanding the right a lot better than I did and consequently hating small c conservatives a lot less, if at all. Even often sympathising with certain conservative views which at one time I would have caricatured to the nth degree, so that they might be more easily described as morally repugnant.

Another facet is disappointment with the general direction that politics has taken, with the classes that I always recognised to be the basis of 'justice' (the ones broadly representing the economic hierarchy of haves and have-nots) being replaced by a status hierarchy (based on personal identity and educational attainment).

Somehow I've even become sceptical of government itself, as a thing, despite anarchy being unconvincing as an idea and hardcore libertarianism being quite terrifying.

It's like how would you prefer to be oppressed and controlled, for the supposed benefit of other people, sir?

Ooh, let me think about that. Actually, I'll save myself the bother - just take my money and give me some more rules to follow.

It's not that I'm 'politically homeless', it's more that I no longer even feel like a political 'home' is anywhere I want to dwell.

Having once thought that the personal was political I now don't even really think that the political is political at this point. It's been replaced by a fault line between the formally educated and the 'stupids' (ie people who don't have the correct opinions about things that none of us actually understand in any depth).

I keep thinking back to Brexit and how comforting it was to be so sure that it was a bad thing. Now I don't know. All I do know is that - in the short term at least - it's pretty bad for most people and has failed to make a difference for the people who wanted it. Circle back to the election and I feel the same. We're mostly being invited to make a decision we're not well qualified to make.

Which is why we mostly vote on the basis of vibes, even though we tell ourselves that policy is what matters.

A good example of this is immigration. Having read around this subject until my brain felt bloated I still have no idea how the various trade-offs really work. So how the hell can I really have a solid view? I've a vague sympathy both with people who love all immigration and people who think it's mostly bad.

Another is this goddamned war in Gaza. Let's not go there. Except to say that I feel you when you're upset about all the smashed up babies, but please spell out your understanding of Salafism and its raison d'être and how that fits in with your wish for Israel to go back to the ceasefire that Hamas broke on October 7 2023. As far as vibe goes, I know where I'm at with all that. It's just become another thing you don't risk talking about.

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Experience tells me that approximately half a dozen people will immediately unsubscribe on the basis of this post, because this isn't the kind of thing they want to hear. They'll be disappointed that I don't have Very Strong Opinions on the matter. Most will probably hate the fact that I doubt very much that a historic Labour victory will make things much better or worse.

They'll be disappointed that I don't think the Islamists will really take over Britain when Labour is returned to office, nor that 'Wokeness' will dismantle the fabric of the nation. Or that Ingerland will become majority Sudanese with invasion by modern day 'sea peoples' inspired by the end of the stupid Rwanda deportations idea. 

The sort of people who magically insist that Covid-19 wasn't a significant disease are raving about all those things in the comments of conservative blogs that I enjoy.

Part of me envies their excitement because who wins matters a lot to them. Another part of me feels a certain compassion for their agitation. I want to say go outside tonight and watch the darting swallows and later, the stars - you might feel differently about it all.

In a way, it's the absolute idiocy of the culture wars that killed normal politics for me. Some stupid minor right wing party or other (I can't be bothered reading back over where I saw this) tried to fire up its base with a policy proposal to increase taxes on people who work from home. Or maybe their employers. IDK.

Because the 'laptop class' = educated = comfortably off = socially liberal = Woke = BAD = deserving of punishment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm aware of the dynamics that led to the realignment from economic class to identity status class and it annoys me as much as anyone. But really? If Rupert and Olivia join the National Trust because it suddenly talks a lot about slavery and annoys the Daily Mail, let them enjoy their luxury beliefs.

You don't really have to care about this stuff. It's a choice.

Of course, because politics is so akin to religion, this opens you to a charge of being a morally bad person because of that popular bit of rhetoric about how all evil needs to flourish is for you not to be particularly bothered.

Except that I don't really see much evil to be 'against', let alone any correct approaches to feel enthusiastic and hopeful about.

Maybe this is mostly about having turned my back on Britain, so that I don't directly experience the post-Brexit/post-Covid/Ukraine war battering it's undergoing. It's possible that Labour leader Keir Starmer is being quite inspiring, in the way that Tony Blair was. I don't know, because each time I look at the latest UK headlines I'm drenched with a kind of weariness as if I just turned on the TV and there's a game show on that I don't understand.

He's apparently insisting that he's a 'socialist' and a 'progressive' though, so I'm a bit wary. What I hope for isn't so much about equality and ever more identitarian atomisation as more practical and tangible things like the people I care about there being able to eat well, get around safely and affordably, receive prompt and effective medical attention and not have their stuff stolen. Bonus points for improved material comfort opportunities (even allowing for accelerated resource depletion).

High falutin ideals are for people who think more grandly and idealistically than me. I just want the basics to work and for people to have the same chances in life that I got.

I like to imagine that Keir Starmer might tweak some things enough that some of those goods will be measurably improved, but I've no real idea of how he and his team might make that happen.

At least I'll be glad to see the back of the Tories for a while, because they have been revealed to have no idea of what they even are, apart from generators of headlines on hot button topics.

It's going to be particularly pleasing to see them handed their arse for trying to focus everyone on  the unwanted sort of migration that represents a small fraction of incomers while presiding over spectacularly high inward migration of the economically useful kind. The main kind that upsets people who can't compete so well in the labour market and suffer most from the resulting overstretched public services. After lying to all sides about their aims the whole time.

It was always funny to see Boris Johnson in particular playing this game; pretending to be the nasty xenophobic racist while actually practicing peak liberal policies - thus ending up hated by the left for completely the wrong reasons and just confusing everyone else about what was really going on. So that it ended up hopeless to talk about him with anyone who had chosen a trench to occupy in the war. This was always the most interesting thing about him. The obvious dishonesty and entitlement of treating his country like a game of Civilisation, rather than a place filled with actual people.

It was also funny to see Liz Truss ousted not by the electorate but by 'the City'. A moment that revealed who really runs Britain anyway. That cost me several thousand euros, due to currency devaluation at exactly the wrong moment, so laughing about it is probably best.

If anyone were to ask me at this point what I want from a government it would be less drive to change and more improvement of what is.

This is how I realised I was becoming less 'progressive' and more 'conservative'.

I've a very old-fashioned set of priorities; equality of opportunity regardless of who you are or your  history and heritage, transport and services infrastructure that works, a health system that works, education that encourages personal flowering rather than just processing kids into 'the economy', a high-trust, low-corruption commercial and civil environment.

These are not huge visionary ideals and they're probably all that most people want, really. But the campaigns are already about 'transforming' things - as if the public they're pitching to serve demands some sort of revolution every 5 years or so.

I'm done with all that now. But that's what elections are.

Even whether I'll really bother to stay up to watch those Tories get the electoral kicking they so richly deserve is in question.

As I write, something has landed presciently in my inbox¹. It's about unintended consequences, which just happened to be the subject I wanted to sign off with.

Part of my scepticism about 'big ideas' and 'transformations' flows from the phenomenon of unintended consequences.

I now live in a country which suffers from many unintended consequences arising from well-meaning transformational policies. The immense generosity of the state toward workers basically results in a permanently sluggish economy as the costs of taking on staff - for small enterprises in particular - just make it impractical to risk bothering.

In my town we had one bistro that was always heaving with customers. The food was lovely and the atmosphere great. It was a real community hub, with gnarly farming types propping up the bar and families eating out in the next room every night. They summarily closed down last year, citing high taxes, social charges and relentless red tape rather than business failure. They'd just had enough of being gouged by the state.

There's some jobs gone, right there, because France loves the workers.

Laudably, France likes to preserve its culture, so that means keeping French as the first language. Which means that most of the talented English-speaking IT folk from Eastern Europe who helped drive the digital transformation of Britain didn't come here. So we have the worst digital environment you can imagine. Almost nothing works consistently well. I am not exaggerating. Here's what happens when I attempt to log in to my local newspaper (for which I'm paying) to share with you the story of that restaurant closing.

French digital life really is this bad at steady state

Vive la langue Français, though.

And let's not forget the 'incident in our IT system' that led EDF to close my electricity supply account, open another one and decide that they had under-charged me over the preceding 30 months by more than 8,000 euros. Which, when you live in a well-insulated house of just 70 square metres, seems unlikely (according to a well-informed friend who knows my home and understands energy).

Flippant and flattening as I'm being, there is a serious point here about Big Ideals. They come with costs and unforeseen results so I tend to prefer small ideas now, like making things work reasonably well.

So that's what I'll be hoping might happen when my native compadres vote in their next government.

It doesn't feel like a massive ask, so fingers crossed, eh.

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Huge news from Podcastistan

Regular readers already know that I’m doing research for a book on the American Army unit that liberated my town. You can follow that work here and here or - best of all - donate to support the research costs here. Hell, there’s even a Twitter for it.

And now there’s a podcast.

What’s going on with this is that I’ve been taking more of an interest in WW2 and especially the liberation of Europe. And a lot of what I read or watch or listen to is very densely detailed in a way that gives me brain freeze.

So I decided to do a thing called D-Day & After, for Rookies. Where I ask really naive questions and interesting people answer them in a reasonably accessible way. The first episode is about the Utah Beach landings, because that’s where the 24th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Mechanized (my guys !) came in.

It’s with a writer called Michael Walling and I think it’s pretty good. I certainly learned a lot from him.

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You might already be able to find D-Day & After, for Rookies on your usual podcast player (depending on how quickly the Soundcloud RSS feed processes on them) although Apple is grizzling about the resolution of the artwork, so it might not appear there for a while.

1. It's by the British legal constitutional commentator David Allen Green, writing about the unintended consequences of legislation around the timing of General Elections in Britain.

Thoughts on the calling of a general election – and on whether our constitutional excitements are coming to an end – The Law and Policy Blog (davidallengreen.com)