To elaborate…
The UK has always favoured centrist governments, when the Conservatives get too nasty they’re unpopular, Labour only wins when they do Thatcherism-Light, etc.
We now have a choice between a relatively moderate conservative prime minister, who is admittedly being dragged to the right by his party and others, and a relatively moderate labour leader who has purged the extremism from his party to pursue a centre left agenda.
In both cases, what I see are two people who believe in principles, compromise them for politics sake, who are fundamentally in favour of the status quo rather than revolution and prefer to win through being seen as competent.
Fine, this has been the case most of my life. It’s why I’ve been relaxed about politics. Whatever happens, things will largely stay the same with small incremental changes.
The difference now is about the fringes. Not a day goes by recently without a headline grabbing policy coming out of the government press machine making a virtue out of being a bunch of ****s.
The ridiculous culture war stuff, the politicisation of fear and anger. Pointless, ineffective policies that are intended to win a few votes regardless of the harm they cause. Sickening stuff a lot of the time, born out of selfishness of behalf of those in power to try and keep that power and get as much as they can for themselves. It feels like they be the ones looting the Titanic as it sank.
So whilst Labour are not likely to usher in a revolution, a golden age or fix things overnight. I’ll take centrist middle aged dad running the country if it means an end to this nonsense. An end to a government attacking it’s own citizens in the name of defending the people.
Yeah, it’s strange how much that overtones window has shifted during my life time. It makes me hanker for the quiet times if John Major’s stint… And I say that as a socialist.
I think that the business of parliament got hijacked by the business of the city during the 90s. Thus has left us with career politicians.
The difference being what sort of business benefits the city. The Tories have been great for boom and bust. An absolute bonanza for hedging and shorting, but less so for long term stability. I think that’s where labour come in. The sane business but with a calmer plan.
In context, “overtones” is a pretty decent autocorrect for Overton here.