For political nerds, a club of which I confess to being a fully paid-up member, elections are usually times of great excitement. Yet this election is by far the most dismal I have ever experienced.
My general feeling — matched, it feels, by much of the electorate — is one of deep, gnawing disappointment and boredom. I can barely bear to read the papers or turn on the television.
I have never before, for example, experienced a TV audience laughing out loud at the leaders of both main parties when they are questioned on trust and truthfulness. It has been a disheartening experience watching programmes like Question Time where it has seemed that the only adults in the room are in the audience, not on the platform. And sometimes the party leaders refuse to even be in the room at all.
Joe – you said: “What I am left with is a distinct feeling of the end of times — or at least, of an era”.
Yes, yes, yes !!!
But not left, right or centre. The future has to be down. To enable us, at grass-roots, to decide what is wanted. And then let us do it on our own, without interference from above.
Thanks Barry. You’re right. That involves two things. First of all a willingness for enough people to step up and do something. Second, an ability to break down the power that has now been hoarded centrally and among a few people. In France that involved the guillotine. What will we have instead that’s not quite so French?