Blessings of a minority British government
The mess that passes for a Brexiting British government was on full display on Thursday as Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May pushed away a working majority with both hands.
It had not seemed possible that May could have volunteered to make life worse for herself, but she did by calling a snap election for no good reason. Blueblood Conservatives may revel in the destruction caused by austerity policy — hacking away at the National Health Service, terrifying teachers, exhausting the police in a time of terror — yet nothing dents their self-confidence, certainly not evidence.
It might be a special national brand of hubris, a quality of the British upper class, a self-belief that can be superficially charming but ultimately repellent. Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway explained it recently while apologizing for having upset an audience at her old Oxford college with a blasé speech.
Lady Margaret Hall “taught me how to work, how to think — and how to spot cant and feeble logic,” which is all to the good. But she became a person who was no longer frightened of anything. “Being post-fear,” she wrote, “makes life more comfortable, but also more dangerous, because fear fends off disaster.”
Ex-PM David Cameron had no fear, choosing to call that disastrous referendum on EU membership as a bone-toss to his hard-right, a yawn, a party trick. He wrecked the lives of millions of his own countrymen but look at him now, posing in his new $43,000 garden shed, a mouse-coloured luxury hut in which to write his memoirs.
I rather like the shed and would like one of my own to put relatives in. Indeed, I like May’s revealing pre-election “confession” for its tonic absurdity. When asked about the naughtiest thing she ever did, she said, “I have to confess, when me and my friend used to run through the fields of wheat, the farmers weren’t too pleased about that.”
Both now-ruined politicians were making a plant-based call-out to true believers while oblivious to how little they connected with young and otherwise ungardened voters. Strangely, this is also partly true of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn who is soft-Brexit and an ideologue to match any Tory, a man of the hard left who is numb to those who disagree, who is not a friend to women, whose views do not bend. He’s an awkward leader, but one with a good fighting manifesto.
Corbyn gardens in an allotment, another British botanical signal to traditional Labour voters, much like the mystifying American obsession with the moral worth of corn farmers.
In order to cling to power, the Conservatives have made a deal with the devil, bolstering their margin by forming a coalition with the DUP, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. They are hard people stuck further in the past than in their own lifetimes. They oppose gay rights and abortion rights, and their numbers include climate change deniers and creationists.
May has handed the keys to the kingdom to a collection of peculiar primitives. As the Independent reports, DUP once joined a campaign called “Save Ulster from Sodomy.” The DUP politician Edwin Poots claims the planet is 4,000 years young. “You’re telling me that cosmic balls of dust gathered and there was an explosion. We’ve had lots of explosions in Northern Ireland and I’ve never seen anything come out of that that was good.”
May’s new affection for the DUP is as strange as Corbyn’s personal fondness for Sinn Fein. It is not clear that Corbyn is willing to form his own coalition with the Greens, Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats, not that it will help.
As one tiptoes through Great Britain’s abandoned car park littered with rusty bumpers and old bits of wire, one searches for good news. Here it is. A hung parliament with MPs making genuine arguments and dubious alliances is going to be an improvement.
MPs will now resemble most Britons — they’ll feel insecure — but without the ornamentation of racist feral Ukip. Every nation has its stray dogs but the barking did not last the night.
At the very least, the Conservatives, if they survive, will be pressured by Labour to better fulfil the main function of government, which is to protect citizens from violent death. Perhaps there will be a better-designed police service or hospitals with clean spaces for ill humans.
Perhaps there will be a better Brexit, or best of all, no Brexit at all.