The Long, Slow Death of UK Party Politics

Every day brings a new low as the UK's political 'leaders' scrape the bottom of the pork barrel for yet another populist gimmick to distract voters from the litter of broken promises and the stench of rotting bureaucracies. While covering the 1972 Presidential campaign, Hunter S. Thompson wrote:

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.” Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

He must be howling in his grave.

At some point, you might think, the vast majority of their supporters will see that the Tory-led Brexit is a road to nowhere, or that the UK cannot possibly finance Labour's latest manifesto anymore than it could in the 1970s. The centre ground will re-open to any political party desperate enough to seize it. Politics will be about solving the root causes of genuine problems, rather than dogma and dog whistles for the nostalgic party faithful.

But any such moments of truth are a long way off, and by then the surrounding alternatives will be so bad that voters will have lost all perspective, anyway.

UK politics and its beleaguered public services will have to descend into total chaos before there'll be any meaningful change.