22nd Oct – Trying to make some sense of it all, but I can see it makes no sense at all.

Что происходит товарищи?

We are on the move. At first in no particular direction, but now, with purpose, thanks to Chew-Chew’s shortwave radio, which we have packed with our other few possessions, into the wheelbarrow we take turns to push, while the other wheels the bike. It was when we heard someone say of the UK, “Whichever party is unlucky enough to win the next election,” that our minds were made up.

Whoever it was, began with the 2008 financial crash. His point being, that it was never properly paid for at the time – it’s worst consequences merely swerved, by governments doing much more of what had caused the problem in the first place. Which, he said, they might have got away with, had not Covid arrived a decade later, to force the same governments to into a similar bail-out, but this time ten times greater, just when they should have started paying the original one off.

The perfect storm, in the UK at least, was created by the Tories’ gesture towards paying for the 2008 bail out by imposing a public sector Austerity Programme. No more, he said, than an exercise in tokenism that served only to make the poor, poorer, just as the Quantitative Easing that ‘saved’ the economy, made the rich richer. It’s ultimate consequence, as we all now know, ten years on, was not to pay down any of the National Debt, but rather, to hollow out the institutions of state on which lives are built and depend.

And so, our state crumbles – cheaply built, poorly maintained, hospitals and schools made of inadequate materials, are falling down around our ears for want of the budget, staff, and expertise, to maintain them.

Now, there is no money left. What is spare, is used to pay outstanding debt at 5%, rather than the near zero interest rate of when it was first incurred. Distant and mobile billionaires, enriched by the problems which they helped to cause, are free to flit to faraway tax havens, to leave a country of impoverished, disenfranchised souls, that can no longer reach out to its community of friends and allies in Europe to help it through a difficult stage; and whose requests for trade deals don’t even make the To-do lists of important countries.

Put the poor inheritor of all this onto the world stage. Trump is leading America to a civil war on a ticket that would have made the proponents of the Third Reich blush; Putin’s usurper will probably be to the right of him; add to that Xi, John Un, Mo Bin Salman; and there’s a Big Brother – Napoleon (the pig not the man) Axis, that will form an impassible barrier to any notion of progressive, secular, liberalism that the newly elected leaders of the UK might possess. Oh, and World War III is just getting going.

He’s right. What sort of unlucky idiot would seek power in such circumstances?

Well, ME, actually.

Everything I have ever done has turned out wrong. Not all of it has been my fault; in many ways, I am just unlucky, which in the circumstances, makes me the ideal candidate for success: I am someone with absolutely nothing left to lose, who is used to the tide of events turning against him.

Look at it. The new era of politics began with Blair in the UK, but he and his de facto successor, Cameron, had a popular appeal based on a sort of everyman vacuousness. They were no more than the gateway drugs to lazy morons like Johnson, who, like Trump, rode the wave of social media empowered, perceived neglect, to empowered demagoguery. Centrists, of intellect, with heft, were rejected by their parties as something that the “market” would not tolerate.

The only lesson to take from all this, is that most people are thick, and easily duped. My interpretation of it all is that each new generation is persuaded to crave a nostalgia that never was. Hence, as we age, we move through cycles of fashion which are determined by what the current crop perceives to be the good old days. In the UK, and with luck, in America, we are now entering a new stage where we reject our flirtation with life at the poles, and swing back again towards the consensus-built middle ground. But of a new flavour. The time is ripe, for a new, radical centre.

Have you ever heard of people’s assemblies? What happens, is a body of, say three hundred citizens, are selected, much like they are for juries, and they are asked to decide important issues which are to become new legislation. The assembly is given presentations by a series of experts, and is invited to make a considered, nuanced decision on national and local issues of importance. Their attendees do not bring with them strong partisan agendas, and so, are inclined to find compromise more easily. And their track record, thus far, indicates more impressive decision making than mere parliaments can manage.

Think about this. Bring it in, on a large scale. Devolve power to regions, and the small constituencies of regions, and strip the House of Commons of power. What self-serving shit-house, denied the right to feather his nest, by being made redundant of power would ever seek the position of MP again? In one fell swoop, the whole political system of the UK, is ruined. Further, I, now Prime Minister, just like little Phineas Finn, give away the great departments of state: Education, Healthcare, Defence, Utilities, Transport; switching them from political causes that were prey to the whims and caprice of whatever vainglorious twat is currently at the helm, into well run ministries staffed by technocrats working to a thirty-year plan.

Suddenly politics is no longer a squalid game for arseholes on the make. It turns on its head into an unglamorous grind for dedicated patriots.

This is the style of populism that people really want. This is how to deliver a bloody nose to the hated political elite; to ruin them forever, to derail the gravy train; to make the job totally unattractive to new versions of the usual suspects on the way up. To burn down the house. This is the way to galvanise the energy that was subverted into neo-fascism. Who says that national populism need always be dangerous?

Friend John is with me. He has left home, and has thrown his lot in with mine. And he likes this idea of ruining British politics forever. He has plighted his troth as bag carrier, permanent SPAD, confidante and friend.

Life is an easy game, played by stupid people.

This is a gratuitous non-sequitur, sub-heading. It is of no value to the post – I just felt like writing it. Hope you enjoyed it.

We both seem to have experienced this epiphany at the same moment, and so, we march on, together, developing policy on the hoof as we do, just like time-served, real politicians. All based on the novels of Trollope and a suspicion-skewing-hatred of everyone who we perceive to have been luckier than us in life (by which we mean everybody).

I’ve got to say, that until this meeting of minds I thought that Friend’s tagging along had more to do with getting away from the homestead than it did anything else. There’s the incident of Chew-Chew’s dead body for one; and then, there’s what happened at the discotheque. I really hope that they don’t find the body for a while, because we are travelling on Chew’s credit card. Even more scary, though, is the thought that Scrubber’s Haircut might catch up with us.

It started innocently enough, but soon went awry. Friend John, possessed of local knowledge, knew Scrubber’s to be something of a rough diamond – free with her affections, but difficult to get to know. She and he have a shared past, which has involved, err… physical conjoinment. Anyhoo, I arrived just before the incident took place. They were having a serious conversation about sexual politics; well, she was shouting at him, “The only thing men can do better than women, is to take a piss while brushing their teeth.”

She said it with such vehemence that you got the idea she knew because she’d tried to do it herself.

This passionate discussion, according to John being the usual prelude to err, passion. She then invited him outside, to the yard at the back of the club designated for the storage of commercial waste, then commenced the process of what, in some parts of the world, we call being taken to the cleaners. Friend, unwilling to be seen in Chew-Chew’s leopard-print under-slips, attempted to deliver to her demands without disrobing. He was working on the theory, he says, that women enjoy being shagged up the knicker leg, because it makes them feel dirty without actually having to commit to anything rude. Not so Scrubber’s apparently. She felt short-changed by the manoeuvre, and let her views be known.

From there, the argument escalated into something that it should have never been. Friend’s view, is that once her insecurities are revealed, she feels threatened by anything that does not run true to the course she expected, from where she turns into to an aggressive, intolerant opponent. In her case, says Friend, this takes the form of a sort of out-of-control, proto-feminist-fascist, that wants to burn down any building in which ANY male might be seeking shelter and respite.

We returned to the house as soon as we were able to get away unnoticed, packed the wheelbarrow and set off, without so much as a bye your leave to poor, deceased, Chew-Chew.

Friend John, knowing Scrubber’s as he does, says he won’t relax until there’s at least a hundred miles of war zone between us and her.

Newly emboldened, I would be less concerned if she were to appear. It will all make for good practice in dealing with the Flying Monkeys waiting for us back home.