Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Gotterdammerung

Well. I think it's fair to say that, from the perspective of a socially liberal, metropolitan public school Conservative in 2016, political matters have developed not necessarily to our advantage. Having had for a decade a leader of the Conservative Party who had the same sort of childhood, went to the same sort of school, and had the same sort of instincts as I did, it's hard to adjust to the new reality where everything from my accent to my social sogginess is suddenly deeply unfashionable.


It is also quite hard to adjust to the fact that everything I thought I understood or knew about politics has turned out not to be true (although my doom-laden predictions for Labour seem to be holding up reasonably well). I never thought that Trump would even get the Republican nomination, let alone the Presidency. The world seems to be coming as a bit of a surprise at present.


Anyway, it's been hard to think of anything to say from my new perspective as an outsider that wasn't either trite or depressing. I have no idea what Theresa May thinks about anything. I no longer have any confidence in my own views of what will happen. And I find the whole tone of current political debate depressing beyond words. Ho hum.


I'm therefore going to channel the spirit of Marechal Foch: "My centre is giving way, my right retreating. Situation excellent, I am attacking."



1 Comments:

Blogger Recusant said...

Well, not wanting to boast and despite having the same background and circumstances as you, I did manage to win quite handy sums of money on both the Brexit vote and the election of Trump. To me, both results seemed utterly obvious if .....if..... you ignored the witterings of the punditocracy, who distinguish themselves by talking only to each other and those like them in London. The only exception was John Harris in the Guardian, of whom I am not usually a fan, who actually headed out into the boondocks and had his metropolitan sympathies rattled.

If you thought 'shy Tories' was a thing, imagine how shy Trumpers were: nothing to be gained by admitting it and an awful lot to be lost.

In any case, my belief is that we have reached the end of the century of ideology. The end of the Cold War and the loss of communism as a credible opponent has hollowed out what ideological structure might have existed in the West. We are now back to the old, traditional, political motivations: nation, religion, culture and tradition.

9:56 am  

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