It is a human trait to think that the point you are at right now is the point at which everything changes — specifically, that the past was much better, the future will be worse, and you’re there on the cusp.
People say it now and they said it 100 years ago in the “Chron” (except the old boy who once wrote in and said the Victorian era was dreadful and the 1930s were much better). Doubtless a caveman looked out on fire, sighed heavily, and said it was all going to hell on a handcart.
In most cases this is not true — but those who think now is the end of the two party system in this country might actually be right.
The causes are probably down to a mixed bag, aided by the fact that the two big parties seem to fight like rats in a sack once they get into power.
Going back a couple of years, the Tories committed slow suicide: over Brexit, with Dim Dave Cameron, the Maybot and Bullshit Boris, not helped by Mr Johnson expelling all the brainy Tories.
Labour — and the left has always enjoyed a good civil war — nominated Jeremy Corbyn as leader as a joke, watched him win and then split in two. Keir Starmer got in and appeared to have steadied the ship, but the obvious thing then would have been to get rid of the technocrat who doesn’t understand (or see the point of) politics and replace him with a more charismatic person like Angela Rayner, but once these people get a sniff of power they’re not giving it up.
Today the Tories are too pointless to warrant the term Opposition and Labour apparently wants to go the same way.
Aside from the in fighting and rubbish PMs, society has changed, too. We’re all middle class now (or working class, depending on how you look at it), so party loyalties are not the same, eroding the traditional voting blocs. Votes are now being split all over the shop.
Not the other parties are necessarily better; they’re just newer. Nigel Farage is doing well, though he hasn’t got any policies other than sending the buggers back, promising things he can’t deliver and which often make no sense, and is now making threats (probably unprecedented in this country) to build internment camps in constituencies that elect Green MPs — a sign of how rattled Reform UK is over the Greens.
They, meanwhile, have realised they need a complete manifesto and are getting stick over talking about things other than greenery. (There’s also the Lib Dems, and, er.)
Social media plays a part — it makes people aware of how unfair life can be, exposes them to fake narratives that say a penniless Syrian crossing the Channel is to blame for their high street shops closing, but also makes people think they have a valid opinion. We all have an opinion on social media.
Reform UK complains its supporters are never listened to while in fact they (and supporters of all parties) are endlessly listened to, reinforce each other’s views and never shut up, all of which splits voter intentions.
Another problem may be the fact that there isn’t anybody who believes in anything any more: as we reported last week, a number of churches are either under threat or have closed, reflecting a decline in people holding religious belief. At least belief lent a moral framework through which to view the world, whether left or right; now people often believe the last post they saw on social media.
The Greens are taking votes from both left and right, which is why all the media hates them, hence the relentless attacks on Zac Polanski. But while he’s attacked (rightly) for not paying council tax on his boat, Nigel Farage expects us to overlook his £5 million donation from a foreign national, and Richard Tice his tax errors.
The change from two parties is so rapid that the main challengers, who may well be the power brokers after the next general election, have not really caught up.
Mr Farage’s private company, Reform UK, is making a decent attempt at weeding out lunatics, although it hasn’t yet worked out how to trawl social media histories, possibly because that costs money and would hit Mr Farage’s dividends.
The Greens are further behind Reform on that curve as they expand rapidly, so you can expect unpalatable views to emerge as disillusioned far- left Labour voters who verge on antisemitism move to the Greens.
Reform UK’s next issue is learning to tolerate criticism. It wants power but with power comes accountability, and thus far Mr Farage has been accountable to nobody other than the billionaires who give him money.
We carried a story about the Reform UK candidate who said he would end the practice of Congleton Town Council handing out money to charity and instead allow charities to raise cash themselves using council premises — not a totally lunatic idea but followed the next week by people writing and saying it was totally a lunatic idea. Last week Reform UK supporters tried to blame the Chronicle (not true, he said it) but also accused other politicians of playing political games.
Of course they’re going to play political games — they’re politicians. Reform UK is a political party and this is how it works when you sit at the top table. It’s hard to see how Reform UK thinks it’s going to go any other way.
The late David Worth told me, after serving one term on Cheshire East, that the politics were too much for him (by which he meant lying and backstabbing), but he was an independent trying to do some good — political parties should expect robust debate, particularly on the Chronicle letters pages.
Still: it’s an interesting time as the two parties that have dominated politics lose their mandates, a point I seem to have strayed away from. Coalition politics works fine in other countries, so why not here?
