Gifts to the unholiest of gods

If the government really had the courage to “reconnect emotionally” with the British voter, it would be blasted by shame and horror

~ Tabitha Troughton ~

What is this, slithering in your direction, smears of red and shards of bone in its wake, smirking ingratiatingly, waving gory tentacles, and muttering platitudes through its 27,000 teeth?

Is it a giant slug?

No! It’s the UK’s government, which has just been told, by Starmer’s toxic chief of staff, that it needs “to reconnect emotionally with voters”.

Given the government’s documented track record of carnage, cowardice and corruption, voters may well flee, but the Guardian is made of sterner stuff. “In a presentation”, that paper explained seriously on its 6 January front page, “ministers were told the government needed to gain back voters’ trust with three Es”. The jokes are writing themselves. Who would not, at this point, risk an MDMA-induced stroke for a brief, delusional high, in which one forgets the government’s ongoing policies, and also the near indescribable awfulness of a recent Keir Starmer promo video, in which workers were invited to Downing Street for Christmas lunch.

This showcased the prime minister prodding limply at cold roast potatoes,and pretending to chat to a prole, while completely ignoring their replies. It was the best they could do, or a post-realist joke.

The “three E’s” with which the government were told to woo the country turn out to be “emotion, empathy and evidence”. Presumably the same emotion driving continued diplomatic and military support for our ally, the Israeli government, whose continuing genocide in Gaza has seen children freeze to death in inundated tents. Perhaps the empathy to match that of our ally, the Israeli government, who backs settlers ravaging in the West Bank and escalates the torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners with relish and impunity. Or maybe the kind of evidence yet to be heard against un-convicted prisoners of conscience starving to death in UK prisons for opposing weapons supply to our ally, the Israeli government—deliberately held on remand way beyond the legal limit, while the government contemptuously dismisses them.

The UK’s prime minister, eyes glassy, refuses to support international law. It is not, he says, in the “national interest”, as though it is ever in the national interest to be a humiliated ally to demented, brutal, sociopathic regimes. The economy of Spain, whose government has stood openly against Trump, is out-performing those of Germany, France and Italy. Meanwhile the UK, staggering and flailing, pays vassal tribute: billions more to US pharmaceuticals, billions upon billions more on “defence”.

There is a vast, shapeshifting horror in the shape of civil war, posing on the horizon behind the UK’s giant slug of shame. It is being invited into the country by obedient acolytes Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. And this government’s attempt to ditch jury trials, for example, is the latest in a series of gifts to this unholiest of gods. It is now absurdly easy to picture the UK state in five years time as a low-budget version of America, even without Reform.

Looking to Gaza, we might be tempted to think we deserve this. But of course, no-one deserves this. If the government did have the courage to “reconnect emotionally” with the British voter, it would be blasted by shame and horror. Hannah Arendt observed, in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, that modern terror is not merely used by dictators against opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people, who are perfectly obedient.

So, to the barricades, UK citoyens! Keep up your pens and paintbrushes, your guitars and cameras, your research tools; keep raising your flags and voices; sport your frivolous costumes against the coming shadow. Create plans for neighbourhood support. Save the slug from itself. Being “perfectly obedient” is not an escape, or an answer.

Image: Number10 on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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