What British politics needs: BDSM and a flak gun

BDSM or Bondage Discipline and Sadism Masochism is an act that is reliant on consent, trust and respect between those taking part. Politics is also reliant on consent, trust and respect between those taking part. Which one ends in the most pain, and mess, is up for debate though.

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I was born in 1996, one year before the age of Tony Blair,  and six years after the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. I was too young to vote when Nick Clegg gave the Liberal Democrats their first chance of power for over one hundred years, and too insolent to feel their student fees betrayal at the hands of the Conservatives. Both sadly and fortunately I have been at the frontline of Brexit, shaped by Theresa May wielding her axe as it cuts through our futures.

In the aftermath of the chaos, why has British politics crumbled into a state so sorely lacking in humanity and direction that it makes Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un singing Kumbaya a more pleasant reality?

2010 feels like an awful long time ago, the start of a new dawn. Labour were removed from power, ending a thirteen-year run in control and the Conservatives had a young, fresh-faced, David Cameron at the helm. Come 2018 and n the Conservative Party stands as steady as a statue made out of treacle, melting depressingly slow before us. In common with Labour and the Liberal Democrats it has a cabinet whose cowardly smugness supports them more than their actual policies. Under the Conservative Party we’ve experienced high privatisation, increase in the number and usage of food banks and crippling cuts to fire and police services — the latter of which has contributed to London’s knife crime rate rising dramatically.

That, a whole lot of inflation and the latest Windrush scandal, mean we’re living in a less than vintage era. Meanwhile, Conservative Party supporters prostate themselves before their party and inspiration-less leader only because ‘history will forgive them’ if it turns out alright, in the hope leadership qualities will have developed by the time another snap election is called.

Corbyn though is no better either. He smacks of the student who never let go. CND and fighting for the people, yes; but shouting a tad every Wednesday to drown out the crippling anti-Semitism in your own party is not an effective strategy. Corbyn supporters hang onto him because they can’t bear the thought of logic taking his place. Corbyn’s tactic is to out-crazy the government then cover that with a film of Young People Like Me, So There! This certainly worked for a while but, like a ‘cheeky cigarette’, has now burnt out. On the floor lie the smouldering remnants of a party that will be remembered in history as an opposition lacking in a spine, and with conviction reliant on a youth vote that supported them because the alternative was only slightly more decrepitly disdainful. Under the remnants lies hope in David Lammy and Chuka Umunna. First Labour though, like the Conservative Party, need to sweep up.

As for the Liberal Democrats — well, it’s hard not to be incredibly sympathetic. Rather like Leicester City Football Club they sat dormant and rather quiet for a long time, had one surge of success and have declined appallingly since. Though the Liberal Democrats betrayed the students of the UK they did try to make gains, though small, with Tim Farron running a pro-EU stance during the last general election. Sadly, however, in the wake of Farron’s resignation they spectacularly missed an open goal. They voted in Vince Cable as their leader — a man who has been as effective at running the party as the Daily Mail has been at being a balanced and fair newspaper — instead of the former Business Minister Jo Swinson. The Liberal Democrats have become invisible leading to the inevitable counterfactual question: ‘What if Jo Swinson had been elected leader?’ I rather get the feeling more people would notice and respect them as the latest Pro-EU party Renew starts to build momentum.

The situation then, isn’t particularly brilliant. No matter how much the Daily Mail and its tributaries try, they will never be able to polish the steaming turd that is the current British political environment. It’s an environment so toxic that scientists are studying whether it is actually of this Earth. Certainly its leaders aren’t. May is riding a wave of supporters who support her because none of her subordinates want to sit under the political guillotine whilst Corbyn clings on like a confused limpet, stuck to a depth charge about to go off. Cable? Well, he has single- handedly swamped the Liberal Democrats in anonymity to the extent that their name is barely heard or mentioned.

Time to put away the lube and leather stockings people, because the flak gun has been replaced by a campfire and an American tuning a banjo.

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