I love democracy me.
All those years of urgent screeching by centrists and liberals about being 'politically homeless' and they finally got what they wanted, the left crushed out of political life, and all three major parties offering nothing more than moderately different flavours of the exact the same thing: neoliberalism, crackdowns, more cops, fewer nurses, ongoing-austerity and constant boot-licked fealty to the worst and cruellest opinions bellowed out daily by the Mail and Sun.
But this is, at the heart of it, what neoliberalism and the post-WW2 'Washington Consensus' is about. Defanging democracy, removing the big questions from the public altogether. No ideology except the dominant ideology. The plebs can't vote for the wrong thing if it's never allowed on the ballot.
That's a big part of the reason Brexit was such a shock and why so many people voted against their own best interests because, outside of Scotland and N.Ireland, we hadn't been offered a decision that could actually really change anything for decades.
I know a few people, like my Dad, who voted Leave precisely because of that, because fuck every living prime minister who all lined up telling him to vote Remain. It's hard not to sympathise with that sentiment. It's also grim to think where we might end up down the line if the centrist plan to make sure that politics stays like this forever pans out. They can try and hold the gas in, but there will be burps, like Brexit, that shake the foundations of society and maybe bring the entire thing down on top of us.
So thanks to politics getting back to normal you can have your Tory party with added lemon or with no added sugar, but whatever you choose, or don't choose, you're still getting 2 litres of carbonated full-fat Tory.
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