For the right, exploiting prejudices is all that counts. The things that used to be avoided are now being actively encouraged
At the heart of power, there used to be a distinction that allowed onlookers to make at least some sense of what was going on. For the most part, a government’s day-to-day business revolved around outwardly serious plans and policies – presented, however cynically, as being of benefit to the public – and responding to events. But, politics being politics, this solid core was inevitably accompanied by much more superficial stuff: distraction, spin, the kind of things Tony Blair once termed “eye-catching initiatives”.
Now that division seems to have crumbled. In the US, Donald Trump is standing for a second term as president without a meaningful policy platform, after a four-year riot of performance and provocation. Here in Britain, there are signs of something comparable: a new politics largely untethered by coherence and practicality, and a sense that we too have no real idea where we might be heading.
