Be Heard, Not Herd

Here comes the second spike, engineered for the sake of herd immunity. We in the herd have put ourselves on the menu by absenting ourselves from the table.

The Conservative Party usually wins General Elections outright, and its Leader is almost always the Prime Minister. Labour majority Governments are of vanishing historical rarity, and it is impossible to see how there might ever be another one, since the party itself admits that the Red Wall has still only half-fallen, while the Black Wall is about to fall with it.

Labour is fratricidal collection of highly ideological factions that define themselves primarily by their hatred of each of other. At all times other than from 12th September 2015 to 4th April 2020, and for almost all practical purposes even then, the faction that has been in charge has been the one that defined itself by its hatred of all things Red and of most things Black.

In that faction, they care not one jot that people who were variously poor, working-class and BAME have already died in enormous numbers from Covid-19, and that people who are variously poor, working-class and BAME are now going to die on at least that scale again. But we already knew that. We already knew about them. Our error has been to try and influence them, and that despite the fact that they exist essentially in order to lose General Elections.

Instead, we ought to be dealing with the winners, who are in any case far less ideological, as well as being vastly less tribal, with no insistence on seeing the revocable party card before even so much as letting you into the room. They hardly ever even ask if you voted for them. Before 2019, did Dominic Cummings? Other than for Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, did Munira Mirza? Who knows? Certainly, neither of them has ever joined the Conservative Party.

Carped at by the monetarist fundamentalists who infest the Labour front bench and who make up most of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on. Be on the bus, or be under it. Be at the table, or be on the menu. If you choose to be part of the herd, then you choose to end up at the slaughterhouse.