POLITICS is important. Those who dismiss it all with a ‘they’re all the same’ are doing one of two things. Avoiding having to think about things by opting for a cynical retreat. After all those who say that were almost certainly saying it when the choice was between Johnson and Corbyn. Or between a local far right candidate or a left wing candidate. There is a choice. As the people of France have recently shown by uniting against the extreme far right takeover of their government.
Secondly, those who say they’re all the same are dismissing democracy and that is something we would surely come to regret doing. Ireland, for instance, as a democratic state is barely one hundred years old. Much of the world isn’t democratic at all. Much of the world never has been. Much of the world has imperilled democracies. Hungary, for instance, right in the heart of Europe. The USA, with the impending return of a man who has only ever expressed admiration for himself and for a swathe of dictators. Democracy, as they say, has many faults but it’s certainly better than any of the alternatives.
Strangely enough the last time a UK Labour Party replaced a long-standing Conservative government I was just coming in from the pub in Dingle. That was in 1997. This time I’d just come in from the far more sobering fields of Flanders in Belgium and the monuments to the First World War. Wasn’t this supposed to have been the war for small countries? For democracy? It is truly moving to see those rows of white crosses. Those long lines of young men dead before their time. Way before their time. On the wall of the one I was looking at I found a Horgan listed under the dead of a Lancashire Regiment. Did the band play the Last Post in chorus? Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
One obvious thing for those of us looking in from the outside is that the UK is back in the hands of the grown ups. Kier Starmer is a serious man. He is a politician and for all that they are derided when it comes to politics a politician is what you need. Johnson was not a serious man. Truss wasn’t a serious mind. And look how that worked out. Politics isn’t a branch of the entertainment business. It is far more important than that. Anti-politics as a way of thinking delivered Johnson and Trump and when you have the vacuous ego of showoffs instead of the duller, deeper, presence of real politicians the mess left behind by Johnson and Trump is what you get.
Just by chance I was watching a Sky News bulletin about the first day of the new UK parliament. It showed a packed House and Starmer and Sunak and the despatch box. The interviewer then briefly mentioned Ed Davey as the leader of the next biggest grouping before turning to the big interview of the day with the leader of a minuscule parliamentary grouping. I wasn’t sure if the UK media could actually interview Nigel Farage more now that he was actually democratically elected than they did all those years when he wasn’t. But, hey, why have serious discussion when you can have a grinning showman on instead? Even if, à la Johnson, à la Trump, the grin hides deeply disturbing views and simmering prejudices.
Those who denigrate democracy trade in half-truths and lies and misinformation and conspiracy. Covid taught us just how many people are susceptible to believing things that just aren’t factually true. It even saw the whole idea of ‘my truth’ proliferating as if objective reality did not exist. What was the phrase one of Trump’s advisors said? ‘Alternative facts’. That way not only democracy dies.
It matters to us here in Ireland who is running the UK. Not just because the UK shares some of this island. Not just because British decisions affect Irish decisions. But because, for all the squabbling, and all of the please-God-don’t-let-them-win-at-football, we are actually fond of that lot over there. Watching what they have been doing to themselves since that Brexit referendum hasn’t been good. Wondering when it would all stop. Wondering when the British might stop hating themselves and by extension everybody else. Wondering when they might stop voting against themselves and against everything and instead actually vote for something. Now it looks like they might have. Like they’re on the road to recovery. Good luck, Britain. And get well soon.
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
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