On a Cold Political Wind.

Today’s big news from Britain is that the Gorgon at number 10 has called a snap General Election only two years into the Tories’ current tenure of office. The tone of Mrs May’s announcement left no doubt that she is fully confident of winning it by a landslide, and on the basis of current opinion polls it’s what everybody else expects, too. Nevertheless, it has to be said that taking the tone she did was little short of arrogant.

And so the political wind that is blowing from left to right around the world blew a little harder in Britain today. The Tories will have another five years in office, making it twelve consecutive years in all. No doubt their policies will continue at pace and probably become more hard edged. Vital public services like the police and NHS are likely be eroded further, as are the local services provided by local authorities. The biggest loser is likely to be welfare, leaving the ghettos which didn’t exist before the arrival of Thatcher to become even more alienated. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. Britain will lurch even further into the kind of state in which only the wealthy and the substantially prosperous will feel fully at home. The word ‘egalitarian’ might well fade from the Oxford English Dictionary of its own accord.

I dislike Mrs May quite intensely. She is a most unattractive person, and in saying so I’m obviously not referring to her looks. It’s her attitudes and general demeanour which have something weasly, opportunistic, arrogant, elitist and untrustworthy about them. She is the embodiment of the unsavoury nature of historical Tory attitudes. She is the popular perception of the hag brought to the forefront of the political arena.

This is a personal assessment, I know, but what isn’t in doubt is that she’s the only world leader to have walked across a stage holding hands with Donald Trump. That has to say something, doesn’t it?