Busted - whatever it was, I have forgotten it. If it's very important, feel free to remind me.
Important? You want a reminder of the importance? Alright. You can have one.
For all your 'coolier than thou' sniping, you had better hope that Labour smash the Tories into oblivion, because it almost doesn't matter about Labour and what they do in government. Their hands are firmly tied anyway by economic constraints. (can we put to bed this notion that there is an endless supply of consequence-free money).
What matters in the long term is what happens to the Tory party after the election, because they are the default party of government, and it doesn't take a genius (not you, Andy) to see what is going on.
This past week, we laughed at Anderson's defection and his plea that he wants to be free to "speak his mind", and that "just" wants his "country back". And whilst we may groan at this obvious coding for nostalgia politics of historical grievance, it's part of a wider context of the right of the Tory party, represented by people like Kruger and Cates, trying to drag the party back to social sexual conservatism. Cates is anti-abortion, anti anything that isn't heteronormative. The war against trans people is the thin end of a large wedge. Its appealing to people like AndyCXR who yearn for a return to women as subordinate, and Andy at the top of a tree that has very few branches.
We have Suella (and others) aligning with Anderson casting foreigners as alien, and invoking the notion of a time when things were just...better. This is what Anderson means when he says "I just want my country back". He doesn't believe it, but he knows there is a steady supply of mugs who will. The "just" is signalling that his request is reasonable, rather than fascist.
Why this matters is that these people seem ridiculous. They seem as if they are unwittingly fracturing the Tory party, and we cheer them on because we think they are unwittingly helping to deliver a massive self-defeat.
But this is what they want. They want to inflict a crushing defeat on Sunak, and they want to drive the party into the temporary vessel that is Reform. Reform isn't there to be electorally succesful. It is there to fracture the Tory party, with whom it will eventually unite in its own image with some sort of charismatic demagogue at the helm.
2025-2030 will offer these people the gift of saying whatever they want in Parliament and in the media free from the constraints of ever having to deliver anything. And what do you think it will be that they will say? And do you think the media will refuse them the chance to say it? It will be the cultural battle of Brexit, without the Brexit, all over again.
So back to now. Labour know all of this, and you can see that they are working out how to position themselves to best tackle it, and it looks like a dynamic position. They are extremely reluctant to enter the culture wars, they've alighted on immigration because they have been forced to. Currently, the fight is over whether actual fûcking racism is legitimate or not.
So yeah.
Carry on sniping.
