THE CHAOS CONTINUES

Politics feels like a refuse dump, full of waste matter, foul smelling and with the distinct odour of decay. The excessive hyperbole of years which, in hindsight, trivial problems were hyped up into life and death issues on which civilised life hung have robbed us of the language to respond to our current crisis and its all too real existential threats.
The venality, dishonesty and incompetence of politicians can and have been, a lazy response and a means of shedding responsibility. I know, in the years I canvassed for the Labour Party it was an argument, -they’re all in it for themselves,’ – that I had regularly to rebut. And in those days it was largely untrue. Most politicians were idealistic, with sound motives, basically decent people trying to do the right thing. Of course, there have always been charlatans, from Horatio Bottomley to Boris Johnson, cynical careerists, barefaced liars and the criminally corrupt. But these were the exception. Now we have world turned upside down, with a good portion of both parties too cowardly to stand up for what they believe and significant numbers on both benches engaged in blatant lying, obfuscation, disingenuity, bad faith.  Politicians like Ken Clark Anna Soubry, Chua Umunna and David Lammy used to be the norm, now they stand out for the simple reason that they speak up for what they really believe.
From Horatio Bottomley to Boris Johnson
So-called, ‘left-wing’ antisemitism, is not new, it is as old as the notion of a progressive/reactionary divide itself. The socialism of fools, it has been called. Still I never in my worst nightmares imagine that it would burst out, like sewage from a broken pipe, into the discourse of 21st century Britain. And all in just over three years. One man alone has been responsible for this normalisation and that man is Jeremy Corbyn.
Jew hatred, in the guise of pro-Palestine anti-Israel rhetoric, in the fetid conspiracy theory mindset of the swamp from which Corbyn emerged, the SWP/far left Stop the War crowd. When Corbyn became the leader of the Labour party he carried this bacillus into mainstream politics.  All this with minimal resistance from the authentic left within the party. It is consequently unclear where the party can go from here. One suspects that in its current form it is finished.
Which leaves the Conservatives, a party so divided at the parliamentary level that the government no longer functions as a UK government but as a mechanism for trying to hold the Conservative party together.
In this bleakly unpleasant world, only a breakup of the traditional two-party system seems likely to be able to save a healthy parliamentary democracy, and that is a long shot.

In the meantime, the shambles continues.   

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