Whither politics?

I have been a watcher of politics for a long time, far longer than I have been an activist. As the latter, I care deeply about each and every individual, but there is also a part of me that can detach from concerns and simply be fascinated by the logical idiocy of it all. Now is such a time. To sit back a little from the Madness of King Trump, the emotionality of the trans debate, and the decimation of the big political parties in the recent local elections.

The world as a whole is finding ways to survive the anti-politician, Trump, if not yet in Gaza. Conflict, fuelled by nationalism and incompatible religious beliefs is in essence intractable – there is still skirmishing and single-religion schooling in Northern Ireland, after all. As Israel takes more lives and land, its own electorate is increasingly disgusted.

Netanyahu may yet be jailed by his own people. Donald Trump has finally found a deal and a pretext to get his nose out of Europe’s business in Ukraine. That has to be a good thing. Ukraine is struggling, but Russia is on its knees, as previously detailed.Here in the UK, the Labour government – my Labour government, that I campaigned so energetically for last year – lost as badly as the Conservatives.

But it is increasingly evident that Keir Starmer has a plan and a purpose that cares deeply about the British people, so I suspect that such determination and a clear head will see them successfully through. The Liberal Democrats offer a vehicle for the less ideological to get involved in their communities, so that has to be a good thing, despite controversies about how they campaign.

They so far haven’t had the activist bandwidth to trouble us here in the Forest of Dean, but taking the county council will make all of Gloucestershire attractive, while the Greens, when not distracted by gender politics, have a righteous cause.

Traditionally, the Tories were defined by their economic adherence to the free market, with low taxation and the inevitable slow decimation of essential public services. America, the land of have-nots and have-lots, was their beacon. But there has always been, also, intolerance.

Electing as leader a black woman does not, in my opinion, do anything to mitigate an essential core of misogyny and racism, but you must form your own view. What is clear to me is that both aspects have created long-standing stresses and instabilities in that Party. They have had decades now to resolve those tensions, but instead rifts have magnified and become entrenched.

Kemi Badenoch has these feuds temporarily suppressed, and an internal sense of clarity that she expects can be adopted by her Party, but it cannot. Not only is that clarity often badly exposed in interviews, but her internal opponents are similarly certain of their equally troubled positions. There was a time when they were nevertheless deemed to govern with competence, mitigating this volatility and convincing the electorate, but those times have gone, perhaps forever.

Sitting back, what I see is a party addicted to its conflicting certainties, that has not yet hit rock bottom. We will not, in my view, witness any possible renaissance in fortunes until it does. Their challengers on the populist Right, Reform, have a charismatic leader who will continue to go for the jugular. In my crystal ball I see several years of Reform-led councils seeking to emulate the excesses of Donald Trump, while one councillor after another is dismissed for expressing unpalatable opinions. The Right as Ouroboros, the snake that eats itself. I wonder.