A general election has been called, I believe?
It comes with just six weeks’ notice from our Prime Minister, to the surprise and consternation of MPs and party members, who had their summer holidays booked, and of nearly a hundred constituencies who will have to parachute candidates in sharpish and – though I know we were the last thing on his mind, as we have been for the past 14 years – of the electorate. Us! Hi!
On the same day, the Deputy Prime Minister – Oliver Dowden, apparently – unveiled an official government website advising Britons on how to prepare for emergencies and increase “national resilience”.
This includes stockpiling enough non-perishable food and bottled water for your family to live off for three days without leaving the house, baby supplies should you have been foolish enough to bring an infant into this perilous world, and first-aid kits, to go with the “analogue capabilities” he suggested last year that you build into your home: candles, wind-up radios and cyanide capsules. Okay, not the last, but it is surely only a matter of time.
The two announcements have quite done for my own personal resilience. Dowden’s came first, you see, and I had – for the first time in a long time – relaxed. There it was. The quiet part finally said out loud. We are all doomed. And we are all alone. Nobody in power is going to come and save us.
There’s a website. With some common sense recommendations on it. And that’s it. Not even any government-issued packs or MREs (that’s meals ready to eat, in case you are not as familiar with prepper lingo as I, a lifelong pessimist, am) or directions to shelters or rallying points (depending on the nature of the emergency).
And it certainly doesn’t give a detailed national strategy put together by numerous experts well-versed in the best way to halt the spread of disease, zombies, fire or flood, or – imagine! – the best way to prevent them from taking root in the first place. No plan to build the protections needed for the power grid before the predicted solar flares start hitting us in 2025, fry every circuit around the globe and bust us back to the Middle Ages.
I suspect there hasn’t even been as much as an interdepartmental memo on what we might maybe think about doing differently and/or better in the event of another of those pandemic things we so recently experienced. No nothing, no how, nowhere, no way.
Buy candles. Good luck. Don’t forget matches too. And a tin opener for cases of ring pull failure. I just doubled the effectiveness of the website. You’re welcome, Resilience Team!
It was such a relief, this effective official recognition of the fact that the country is on its knees, and so close to utter destruction that there’s really no point in doing anything other than hunkering down and letting the waters/zombie hordes close over your head once the last sardine tin is empty.
I was ready to give in, to give up, raze it all – the last vestiges of a health system, legal system, police force, democracy, civilisation – to the ground. It is, after all, clear that this is where humanity is ultimately headed. We gave it the old college try, we had a good run. But enough already.
Then Sunak appears and offers hope, albeit obliquely. Announcing a general election (or “gennylec” as the “platty joobs” people are already calling it, which has me searching the website ever more closely for the cyanide capsule – cynny cs? – advice) is, all polling suggests, synonymous with announcing the return of a Labour government.
Which is to say, whatever your particular mileage is with the red team, a different government, with different priorities, and the sense of revivification that attends almost any prospect of change.
I can feel my psyche already fracturing under the strain of the pivoting necessary, away from Dowden, prepping and the sweet release of the End Times and towards a possible new dawn – even one ushered in by people who will inherit a shitstorm of unprecedented proportions.
And yet. And yet. I look back at the last 14 years and the misery visited by a bunch of conscience-free cronies, crooks and careerists and cannot help but envision a better future under people who, to put it at its very, very, very least, have not proved themselves yet to be as bad.
They say it’s the hope that kills you. But maybe in such small amounts we may all inch towards survival.
Election 2024
The general election campaign has finished and polling day has seen the Labour Party romp to an impressive win over Rishi Sunak‘s Tories.
Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders have battled to win votes over six weeks, and i‘s election live blog covered every result as it happened. Tory big beasts from Penny Mordaunt to Grant Shapps saw big losses, while Jeremy Corbyn secured the win in Islington North.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK also outdid expectations with four MPs elected.
But what happens next as Labour win? Follow the i‘s coverage of Starmer’s next moves as the new Prime Minister.