It took me a while to get there after my traumatised embrace of normie social democracy after the 2019 election and Covid, but Zack concisely and powerfully captures what now seems like the most important fact about contemporary politics. Things WILL change. The question is not whether change comes or doesn’t. It’s what change will take place. I argued soon after the election that Starmer’s Labour would empower Farage:
Starmer’s Labour will follow a similar trajectory to Macron’s government: getting elected from the centre before shifting to the right, failing to address (or even exacerbating) the underlying mechanisms driving the fascist creep, legitimating their agenda through perpetual triangulation, before (it seems likely) being supplanted by the very party he styled himself as a bulwark against.
The only thing wrong about that prediction was suggesting it would take 10 years and things might get a bit better first 🤷♂️ it is a dangerous fantasy to imagine the status quo could persist, held by those who either have yet to be immiserated or are themselves driving the immiseration.
Mark Carrigan 