The two-party system is dead. It's been gasping its dying breath since about four years ago, when the UK was left without a majority government, but it is now officially, irrevocably, irreversibly, and indubitably dead. Extincto. Pining for the fjords. It has spread its wings and joined the fucking choir invisible.
What leads me to say this with such piss and vinegar is that the United Kingdom Independence Party has won its first seat in parliament, and lost its second one by a red cunt hair. The first one was simple enough: a Conservative member resigned and ran again with Ukip rather than the Conservatives. The people of the seaside area called Clacton like him, rather than his party, so he got elected with no problem. Conservative and Ukip are two halves of the same coin, so no surprise there.
More surprising (in fact, it couldn't be more surprising) is Ukip's near victory in an area that was solidly Labour. Labour is the party for the blue-collar masses, those people with only a high-school education who work as miners and shopkeepers and McDonald's "do you want fries with that?" crew. Its candidates were once also in this mould (Taffy Nye Bevan, I'm looking at you, ya sheep fuckin' bastard!); recently, though, the Labour gang are just as educated and just as polished as the Tory boys, and so it can also be called the party of one hundred per cent, industrial-strength, lab-grade hypocrisy.
The Labour member for Heywood, a suburb of Manchester, was an old charger of a man with a name more suited to a horse: Jim Dobbin. Whoa, Dobbin, whoa. He was a member of the blue-collar, dirty-hands, coal-mining class through his father, although Dobbin himself was educated (in medicine actually). Well, just a few months ago, on a business trip to Poland, he kicked his legs up in the air, neighed for the last time, popped his horseshoes, and cantered across Rainbow Bridge, to lie in patient wait for his rider, the two-party system.
I don't know why Mancunians damn near unseated (or rather, unhorsed) Labour. They've been in bed with them since Margaret Thatcher, may her great Name be magnified and sanctified, told them The Reason They Suck. I mean, up there, the C-word (and I don't mean cunt) is worse than the F-word. Ukip is, to be honest, more Tory than the Tories. Not in the authoritarian, Fascist way that most people mean when they say far right, but very much classically liberal, or libertarian. That's a Good Thing though, so I'm not going to complain. Just think it's weird, that's all.
Anyway, the fact is that Ukip are the real conservatives. D-Cam, our present Prime Minister, is like a damn pussy willow. He bends wherever the wind blows and he has no opinions of his own. Zip. Zero. Zilch. On the other hand, Nigel Farage, well, now, there's a man who should be Prime Minister. Opinionated, of the people, sanguine, and never to be seen without a pint of real British bitter in his left hand and a real British cigarette in his right. So I wish them luck.
The problem is that there's no difference in British politics these days. It used to be that the Tories were the party of the bourgeois, and Labour were the party of the proletarians. Now, neither is either one or the other. Both occupy the centre ground, and if there's anything I don't like, it's fence-sitters. Real politics is back. Thank you, Farage.
Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the one Conservative Member of Parliament with some actual brains in his head, wants an electoral pact with Ukip. I like, no, I love the Mogg. He's basically a phlegmatic, old-fashioned equivalent to investment banker Farage. The Mogg reminds me of Phileas Fogg in the Verne novel: quietly active, and atavistic to a fault. The only problem is that neither D-Cam nor Farage can see that an electoral pact would be good for them both. D-Cam can't see it for his hubris (he doesn't want to have to thank anyone) and Farage can't see it for his pride (better go at it alone than sell out).
I think that there's a Ukip minister hidden inside the Mogg, and he's rattling the bars of his cage trying to get out. Rees-Mogg will join Ukip, of that I am certain---but could he please at least try and be a bit less vehement about staying with the Tories? I mean, I know he's just trying to give the Whips the political equivalent of a hand job, but there's a limit to that. Plus, there's no need to polish D-Cam's name while you try to extricate yourself from the Whips' control.
Of course, now that Ukip is a going concern, a whole new can of worms has just opened up. First of all, in a four-party system, which is what we have now (although I'd hesitate to call the Lib Dems a party---they should hold onto their arses, because they'll be blown out from under them), there are no majorities. Someone will have to form a coalition with someone else. And if Nigel Farage refuses to think with his brain, Labour might grab the reins and that wouldn't be good for neither the Tories nor Ukip.
Second, there needs to be an electoral pact, no matter what D-Cam or Farage say. If there is no electoral pact, the only alternative is assured destruction for the British right.
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