Stranger in a Strange Land
Posted on October 5th, 2023
by Rab Bruce’s Spider
Mastodon: @RabBrucesSpider1@Mastodon.Scot
Twitter: @RabBrucesSpider
It’s been hard to know what to make of the Tory conference. These people seem convinced that their way of governing is the right way despite 13 years of evidence to the contrary. Rishi Sunak’s only chance is to paint himself as somehow different to all the many Prime Ministers who have preceded him since the Tories came to power, yet he is as culpable as any of them when it comes to telling blatant lies. His speech listing all the things that he wasn’t going to do anyway but which he claims he had cancelled was almost unbelievable, yet he was outdone by other speakers who made outrageous claims based on conspiracy theories or stoked culture wars and ramped up the hatred of foreigners and immigrants.
The fact that Liz Truss can gain ecstatic applause or that Nigel Farage walked around with a huge entourage of admirers seems so far out of kilter with what most UK citizens (sorry, subjects) actually want. Or perhaps it is me who is wrong and what UK subjects want is to demonise foreigners, promote cars over public transport, continue to contribute to climate change and unhealthy air. That certainly seems to be what Tory voters want. And even if the Tories are trailing in the polls, it’s not as if Labour are any better since all they’ve done is U-turn on every promise and simply adopt whichever policy the Tories come up with.
Watching all of this unfold, I couldn’t help but feel that it was like watching events in a foreign country. Sadly, it seems we are stuck being attached to that country for the foreseeable future. What a chance we missed in 2014.