Looking forward to a year of exciting politics and elections
As an incurable political junkie, 2024 is already looking like it will push my sad addiction to its very limit. Not only is this the year in which we will see our first general election in nearly half a decade but America will also go to the polls in November, when the world will face the very real prospect of the second coming of Trump, a sequel which, if it happens, won’t be for the fainthearted.
I don’t mind admitting that I started the new year with a genuine spring in my step, largely due to the prospect of consuming an obscene amount of news from both Westminster and the White House. Many people get fed up with election coverage before it starts but I get genuinely excited by the insights and nuggets from the likes of electoral experts such as Sir John Curtice. I never tire of him telling us viewers why the Lib Dems might take Newquay or if the Tories are in danger of losing all of their Surrey seats but might take a former mining community.
In the days and weeks leading up to previous elections, both here and across the Atlantic,
I’ve often had to make do with as little as four hours’ kip a night. This is not because I’m kept awake by the potential impact of any political earthquake, but largely because I routinely disappear down an internet-sized election rabbit hole on a nightly basis.
This is all before we get to the night itself, which is genuinely one of my personal highlights of that particular year and, yes, I do appreciate how incredibly sad that sounds, but the tension and drama that such an occasion brings beats anything Netflix can dream up. I’ve lost count of the number of all-nighters that I’ve pulled to watch the likes of David Dimbleby keeping us informed which constituencies have changed hands and which political titan has suffered their own Portillo moment.
Of course, these things can drag on – remember 2010 when we had to wait days for a coalition government to be formed or the last US presidential race, which dragged on until the following weekend. There are a growing number of people who claim to be ‘finished’ with politics due to endless broken promises but give me the real life drama of elections and their consequences for a nation over tv shows such as Traitors.
I, for one, am looking forward to following every twist and turn.