Pages

Monday, 23 October 2023

When neither is a positive good

 


The lad he employed in his office was run over by a cab one slippery day, and all but killed. Piers visited him in the hospital, thus seeing for the first time the interior of one of those houses of pain, which he always disliked even to pass. The experience did not help to brighten his mood; he lacked that fortunate temper of the average man, which embraces as a positive good the less of two evils. 

George Gissing - The Crown Of Life (1899)


As we know, Tweedledee and Tweedledum are probably the only candidates with a realistic expectation of becoming Prime Minister after the next general election. Even when neither party leader is a positive good, that seems to be the only choice. Although neither Tory party nor Labour party is a positive good either, one of them is likely to be embraced by the electoral system.

Yet anyone may easily imagine a situation where the media often point out party similarities as well as differences, where media analysis commonly includes the constraints of external pressures, the number of inexperienced MPs, the paucity of their technical knowledge, their general lack of business experience and examples incompetence and weakness displayed by the permanent administration. 

But look, a soundbite squirrel!

4 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

I think we are entering the 'phoney war' portion of the run up to the next general election. Lots of posturing but very little action.

Curiously there is more likely to be a leadership challenge against Sunak than Starmer... what a strange world we live in.

A K Haart said...

DJ - yes, Starmer's grip on Labour seems pretty solid although the party doesn't seem to have a plausible alternative anyway. At the moment, Sunak seems to be ushering the Tories towards a major defeat, although Starmer's rabble may help him when it comes to turning out on election day.

Sam Vega said...

The media seem to have decided that what the UK needs is an egalitarian society committed to Net Zero, where nobody says things that might offend anyone. The party that most closely advocates this will be praised, and the other will be reviled as uncaring.

A K Haart said...

Sam - caring v uncaring seems to be the only political dichotomy left and Labour does have the perception advantage. Although Starmer doesn't really come across as caring in that sense.