Month: June 2024

Husting in a village church

The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Not so draughty, nor eternal; the candidates, hopeful and hopeless, lined up along a hastily built platform, to answer questions they could not understand, put by those who did not understand what they were asking. It is a sight of wonder and worry – worry that those speaking so emptily might, in the chance of a wild election, have responsibility thrust unwonted upon them.

I have never heard so many serious people forced (in most cases against their will) to talk about sewage. The metaphors write themselves. The potential crash of the economy, the strangling of commerce, the abandoning of national interest in the world – all left untouched while we heard discussed the frequency with which ordure leaks into the local river. (Most demanded putting civil servants in charge, as they were in the days when sewage was poured freely into rivers, the petty clerks marking their own homework.)

Parochial concerns, unachievable aspiration, virtue-signalling, the verbal form of the dodgy bar charts, deranged conspiracy theories not recognised as such, or just trying to be heard – it is not edifying. This is how we choose our parliaments these days.

I would not do without these local meetings. They are the closest we have left to the old hustings platforms erected for the open elections like those famous, infamously raucous ones of the Georgian period.  It is the one time that electors get to compare candidates side by side, condemning themselves out of their own mouths, showing themselves either as statesmen or babbling idiots. Only a small section of the electorate will hear them even so. I would prefer that they had all heard that evening, for the contrast of the characters, one standing out, and emptiness of the other candidates; although the audience mainly had minds made up that even the evidence of their own eyes and ears would not change.

It has been a very strange election campaign, not taken seriously by voters., so it feels. The polls will close on Thursday evening. Finding a voice after the following dawn and making it heard will be a challenge for all conservative-minded people.  We look to the long term, but we live in the immediate, needing the food on the table each day, which could get harder, and fighting against a hostile presupposition that will endure. Only through time time is conquered.

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness

There are eternal truths and there are harsh realities. It will be hard to make them heard, but they must be.

See also

Books

Fantasy league politics

More leaflets – fake newspapers, dodgy bar charts – yes, the LibDem / FibDem election machine is running. When you have no chance of getting responsibilities, you can be irresponsible. They are not the only ones though – far from it. The whole election campaign has been fantasy.

The mood on the doors has been reasonably positive hereabouts, just in my narrow corner of the land. It has shifted though, noticeably. Voters have turned away from the Conservatives – they have not turned in favour of Labour – just away from the Tories.  Sometimes it is a failure to deliver, and sometimes just because of a general feeling of disquiet. There is no logic there. Elections are being won and lost by unruled emotion, not calculation, and that is a bad look-out for democracy, and for the nation.

It is as if voters complained that their dog occasionally nips their heels, so they will get rid of it and buy a crocodile instead. It will be a horrible five years ahead. Voters though in coming years will try to justify buying that crocodile even as they are being consumed.

(I am too modest of substance to be able to get assets out of the country and out of Labour’s grasping hands, but I am in panic about what I can do so that they do not steal my pension and my children’s hope for the future – burying gold on a far island suddenly seems an attractive option.)

All parties are in a fantasy bidding war to bribe voters’ with their own money. It is repellent, and dishonest, and we will fall for it. And at the next election (if Labour allow us another election) we will fall for it again.

Many of the doorstep voters I have met have complained about Rishi Sunak personally. Surely he is a small, inoffensive man?  That is not the right personality to be Prime Minister. He can be nervous and defensive, which is not like the man at his best, and he lost us many thousands of votes by apologising for something he did not have to apologise for – the act of apology is a confession of fault.  He ought to have learned at school ‘never apologise – never explain’.  It really is a sorry mess.

The result, I cannot tell.  A good many worthy men and women will lose their places and a good many malicious and unworthy ones will win, and voters, to spite someone else’s face will hack their own noses off, and blame the Tories even for that.

See also

Books

Of The Right Of Succession

Of all these Formes of Government, the matter being mortall, so that not onely Monarchs, but also whole Assemblies dy, it is necessary for the conservation of the peace of men, that as there was order taken for an Artificiall Man, so there be order also taken, for an Artificiall Eternity of life; without which, men that are governed by an Assembly, should return into the condition of Warre in every age; and they that are governed by One man, as soon as their Governour dyeth. This Artificiall Eternity, is that which men call the Right of Succession.

There is no perfect forme of Government, where the disposing of the Succession is not in the present Soveraign. For if it be in any other particular Man, or private Assembly, it is in a person subject, and may be assumed by the Soveraign at his pleasure; and consequently the Right is in himselfe. And if it be in no particular man, but left to a new choyce; then is the Common-wealth dissolved; and the Right is in him that can get it; contrary to the intention of them that did institute the Common-wealth, for their perpetuall, and not temporary security.

In a Democracy, the whole Assembly cannot faile, unlesse the Multitude that are to be governed faile. And therefore questions of the right of Succession, have in that forme of Government no place at all.

In an Aristocracy, when any of the Assembly dyeth, the election of another into his room belongeth to the Assembly, as the Soveraign, to whom belongeth the choosing of all Counsellours, and Officers. For that which the Representative doth, as Actor, every one of the Subjects doth, as Author. And though the Soveraign assembly, may give Power to others, to elect new men, for supply of their Court; yet it is still by their Authority, that the Election is made; and by the same it may (when the publique shall require it) be recalled.

See also

Books