Illusions in the British Election Campaign 1 May 2015
Related articles
Illusions in the British Election Campaign
Election watching in Britain usually takes various forms. This time, the challenging nutters have been said to be getting the runs on the board, and the voters are having the most interesting, if confusing spread, in years. This terrifies the incumbents, and worries the orthodox challengers such as the Labour Party, whose Achilles heel so happens to be its head. Ever since suffering a Tony Blair engineered castration, New Labour is no longer neo, and is attempting to claw back some votes from the rather confused centre.
Ed Milliband is, in fact, so concerned about the tightness of the contest he decided to pay comedian “of the people”, Russell Brand, a visit at his apartment in Shoreditch, east London. Milliband went for the slang (“It ain’t gonna be like that. Change is hard right?”); Brand went for the big meat issues: those “unelected powerful elites” as puppet masters of the earth; the Murdoch empire, inequality, the housing problem.
And whether people should even vote. “We all got excited by Tony Blair, we all got excited by Barack Obama and what happened?” Hence the reason he had never voted in his life – “because I think it doesn’t matter.” Brand is certainly hard to refute on that one, even if not voting is a recipe for political incapacity. The value of the vote diminishes as a proportion to the weight an illusion of hope exercises. The better the illusion of hope, the more likely a vote might be made. That, however, explains exactly why Milliband, arguably one of the least convincing leaders in years, is doing the rounds with a person the British Prime Minister has dismissed as a “joke”.
British society boasts one, all fascinating reality, apart from the seeming immutability of the National Health Service. For all the pretences of modernisation, of a sceptred isle that speaks of Westminster democracy and the liberties supposedly breathing in the common law, it remains, if not class-riddled, then certainly network riddled. The New Labour experiment was designed to mask it even as it claimed to change it.
The enervating nature of current politics, etherised by the Campbell-Blair line of manufactured enthusiasm for over a decade; the sound bite, which is merely neat cover for establishment politics, continues to cloak British political life. This is what the United Kingdom Independence Party is attacking, insisting that it will challenge the stifling networks of qangos, the sweet deals, the musty public school boy chatter.
Two general elections, argues columnist Gerald Warner, are taking place. The first is “the fantasy election being conducted within the imagination of the political class, the BBC, the dead-tree press and the vast array of public bodies, qangos, and similar running dogs of the consensual establishment.” That class is supposedly pro-Europe, metropolitan, elitist, politically correct “and wholly divorced from real-life Britain.” The second election will only figure on May 8 – “the first occasion” which “concrete reality” will visit those of the virtual world.
In so doing, they are marketing another illusion. It is the anti-Europe vision, one of chest thumping Britain happy to labour away in the sunshine, or perhaps drizzle, of freedom. In some instances, the rhetoric from UKIP is happily populist and anti-establishment. At stages, its only difference with the more extreme BNP is one of shaved heads.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous themes in this election, and not simply because Chris Patten, Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong, thinks so. “The UK no longer wields the international influence it once did; indeed, Britons hardly seem to be bothered by their downgraded importance – or even very much aware of the implications.” The nationalists persist in peddling the “delusional belief that the UK can exercise the same degree of control over global events that might have been possible 50 years ago.”
The mania with Europe – its influence over Britain, its perceived intrusiveness and groping of British institutions like a horny French pimp, has produced the tremors that can only be called delusion. As Prime Minister David Cameron tried, unconvincingly, to explain in 2013 when things were getting chilly with Brussels, “We have the character of an island nation – independent, forthright, passionate in defence of sovereignty.” That is what UKIP has induced, an illusion that is catching, a form of mental debility.
His suggestion then, something which he is emphasising in the lead-up to the election, is that he will take the issue of continued EU membership to a referendum come 2017. His efforts thus far to renegotiate the treaty with the EU have, however, fallen flat. Britain, in short, is Europe’s big boor, the sozzled oaf.
The idea of detachment from Europe could only be the stock sentiment of a power capable of going its own way with any constructive gumption. This implies power, and not merely of the pedestrian, light-weight sort that acts as the alibi for banksters. This is imperial, and the imperialists of all sorts, be they the beer swilling trotters of the UKIP side, or some of the Tory fold, are convinced that Britain matters on the world stage. In truth, the stage left them decades ago.
The sense that chaos is descending on British politics is, for all of that, fitting. The electoral patient is fed up with the feed. No one quite cuts the mustard – and the alternatives are proving politically racy or extreme. But they have the political mainstream on the run.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]
News
Hilary Timmins' Award-Winning UK Documentary Series To Inspire NZ Students
29 Jun 2020 Education
Dream Catchers, produced and directed by Hilary Timmins, celebrates the success stories of more than thirty inspirational New... more
New Zealand reaffirms support for Flight MH17 judicial process
7 Mar 2020 News
Ahead of the start of the criminal trial in the Netherlands on 9 March, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has reaffirmed the need to... more
Business
NZ Government's Economic package to fight COVID-19
17 Mar 2020 Business News
The Coalition Government has launched the most significant peace-time economic plan in modern New Zealand history to cushion the... more
NZ Government announces aviation relief package
19 Mar 2020 Business News
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today outlined the first tranche of the $600 million aviation sector relief package announced earlier... more
Living
Diversity was Key at New Zealand Trade Tasting in London
6 Jun 2022 Food & Wine
New Zealand Winegrowers Annual Trade Tasting was recently held in London, on Wednesday 4 May, in Lindley Hall.
It was the first... more
Kiwi author stuns Behind the Butterfly Gate
12 Jan 2022 Arts
Hidden behind the Butterfly Gate is where the secret has been kept for 76 years...
New Zealand writer Merryn Corcoran’s... more
Property
Fairer rules for tenants and landlords
17 Nov 2019 Property
17 NOVEMBER 2019
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer... more
New Zealand Government will not implement a Capital Gains Tax
17 Apr 2019 Property
The Coalition Government will not proceed with the Tax Working Group’s recommendation for a capital gains tax, Jacinda Ardern... more
Migration
Boosting border security with electronic travel authority – now over 500,000 issued
19 Nov 2019 Migration
19 NOVEMBER 2019
We’ve improved border security with the NZeTA, New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority, which helps us to... more
Christchurch reinstated as refugee settlement location
18 Aug 2018 Migration
18 AUGUST 2018
HON IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY
The announcement that Christchurch can once again be a settlement location for refugees... more
Travel
Gallipoli Anzac Day services cancelled
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
The New Zealand and Australian Governments have announced this year’s joint Anzac Day services at Gallipoli will be cancelled... more
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
more
Sport
The Skipper's Diary: Sir Richard Hadlee honouring his father and NZ's Forty-Niners
27 Oct 2019 Cricket
NZNewsUK London Editor Charlotte Everett spoke to Sir Richard Hadlee about why he’s chosen to publish his father’s... more
PREVIEW: All Blacks v England semi-final
26 Oct 2019 Rugby
The two most convincing quarterfinals winners are set to square off in a semifinal showdown for the ages when the All Blacks meet old... more
Columns
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
11 Nov 2016 Opinion
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
First published on Werewolf
The ghastly likes of Marine Le Pen in France and Geert ... more
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
10 Nov 2016 Opinion
Column - Gordon Campbell
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
Well um.. on the bright side, there (probably)... more
Kiwi Success
Congratulations to Loder Cup winner
26 Sep 2018 People
25 SEPTEMBER 2018
The Loder Cup, one of New Zealand’s oldest conservation awards, has been awarded to Robert McGowan for 2018... more
Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
16 Aug 2018 Appointments
16 AUGUST 2018Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
HON JENNY SALESA
Associate Education Minister Jenny Salesa is... more
Recruitment
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
14 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
22 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more