Monday, October 25, 2010

No puzzle!

You have to smile, even if it is through gritted teeth, at the confusion of The Daily Telegraph.

The poor darlings have turned to Michael Barone to tell them why American voters have gone so sour on Barack Obama's Democratic party. "It's a question that must puzzle many in Britain who – Conservative as well as Labour and Lib Dem – welcomed Obama's election two years ago and saw him leading America and the world into broad, sunlit uplands," he says.

Well, Mr Barone, it doesn't puzzle us, either readers or writer of this blog. And there is more to it than you seem to have worked out. We are not seeing politics here, but anti-politics. The rhetoric is changing and you need to catch up.

What is interesting, though, is how little of this applies to the UK. Here, in a one party state, the electoral system does not work – not that it really ever did. The politicians have screwed down the safety valve and there is nowhere for pressure to escape. The result, of course, will be "violent revolution Paris or Petrograd style" that Barone says "would not come to Britain or America."

It's coming ... it will just take a little time.

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