The end of politics

Neville Goodman

A couple of years ago, I promised to let you into the secrets of the semi-colon; but I keep getting distracted. I think it is time to tell you, if you had not already worked it out, that our present Labour government is the biggest disappointment of my adult life. I say adult life, because my biggest disappointment as a child was that my parents would not buy me a policeman's uniform for my seventh birthday. They couldn't remember this at all. They claimed that I cried myself to sleep for days because they wouldn't buy me a bicycle, which I don't remember. It is true I have never owned a bike. Perhaps that is for the best: I last rode a bike aged about 11 and collided with a car in an otherwise empty cul-de-sac. Exhortations from hospital management for me to abandon my car and take to two wheels will forever fall on deaf ears.

It is not just the things this government has and has not done that disappoints; it is the manner of their doing it. Every day, it seems, I read yet another blistering critique of what passes for their philosophy. It hurts doubly because I keep reading it in left-wing publications, mainly the Guardian and the New Statesman. Their love of the private sector as the answer to everything, and their courting of the super-rich, is not what I voted for. As Polly Toynbee wrote: ‘What is Labour there for, if never to say enough is enough?’ The government is now complaining when judges criticise them, failing to realise that the executive and the judiciary are just not on the same side. There is legislation going through parliament, largely unremarked, which was intended to allow the executive to introduce just about anything they like, without recourse to anybody. Blair is mystified when anyone objects, because, he assures us, he is a good bloke and only has our best intentions at heart. Thus is paved the road to hell.

The real worry is that Cameron and the Conservatives would be worse while Mingies and the yellow ones don't stand a chance. Frank Fukuyama got it badly wrong with his book The End of History, but in the UK we do seem to have reached the end of politics. Populism and sound-bites have won. The media latch onto old people being badly treated in hospital and instantly we have ‘dignity matrons’ appointed, overlooking that disrespect of the elderly starts in the community. And please don't mention dignity and John Prescott in the same breath.

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