I’ve been away from work for a week and I’ve looked to the stars for inspiration. Well, sort of.
It’s vital for anyone in politics, especially given the speed at which it currently operates, to take a break, step back and try to see the bigger picture. Or just rest. I did a lot of both.
Whether by subconscious design, or more likely complete fluke, I used some of the time to indulge a passion of mine: science fiction, and ended up thinking politics.
Advances in visual technology in just the last decade, have allowed television companies to create spectacular and compelling versions of the classics. The works of Issac Asimov, and Frank Herbert Dune have attracted global audiences. Believable video renditions of the extraordinary art and design of Jodorowsky and Mœbius can be found in almost all visual Sci-Fi. Inevitably this has been an inspiration to explore the works of newer writers and the creation of equally gripping versions of the struggles of humankind eons into the future.
If you’re no fan of the genre all of that may sound so obscure you don’t care much about it. Science-fiction was long looked down on by the intellectuals of literature, but stay with me: at its heart there is a simple question anyone reading this can understand.
When the past and the present look stagnant and failing as options for the future, what, and who, will offer the bold changes needed to alter course and equally be able to make that happen?
Science Fiction has always been a form of experimentation in social and political revolution, or evolution. It has often been accused of being geopolitics set in worlds where humans and aliens act out the politics of now, either clumsily or with subtle nuance depending on the work. Generally, it offers scenarios as to how things might turn out, for good or ill, if certain things are attempted.
However as a genre dealing in massive timelines, the stories usually focus intently on the build up to, and the navigation of, inflection points. It offers myriad imagined scenarios and outcomes but they nearly always focus on the moment of ‘change’.
We’ve heard lots about change in recent months.
The Prime Minister, trying so hard at PMQs yesterday to cling to his pre-election support and his message of change, has still not accepted, that however good the intention, change works both ways, and a change for the worse is toxic in politics.
One change that Conservatives have had to accept is the public not wanting the party to be in government right now. Despite many of their election predictions about Labour turning out to be correct, they lost quite some time before July 2024. And Reform, the rising contenders, have continued that rise in the wake of last year.
I still maintain Reform, now, are like a new runner in a competitive marathon. Striding out hard and fast in the first miles, begging the question; could they stun and maintain the pace for the many miles to come? Or does experience of such races in the end see them drop back as we approach the line?
I don’t know. I do know either option is possible, and suspect over the next two years, and miles, we’ll find out.
So what does our present suggest about our imagined futures?
Spotting inflection points is one thing, persuading people it is an actual inflection point is harder, but it seems to me all our political parties are being faced with one. People’s wants, needs, and the system that best delivers that are all questions challenging the politics, and systems that exist now. What certainties one chooses to drop seems as valid a discussion these days as the certainties one choose’s to cling to. I’ve seen change come and go, but none of it seemed set in a world of so much uncertainty.
Only the oldest of us, I’d contend, have seen this before.
All science fiction, because it is fiction, tends to hide who it is that will be in the end those that found the answer, or an answer. After all, as fiction, the story has to entertain and surprise or you wouldn’t read or watch it.
Entertaining politics is a bonus but, in reality, politicians need to deliver fact not fiction. Ideas imagined and formulated yes, but then delivered in Government.
I was asked endlessly in December for my predictions for 2025. My honest answer coalesced around a more general prediction on a wider time scale.
Victory and success in our future, including the current government, will favour the boldest but deliverable plans for Britian. Tinkering, or building a plan on what worked in the past isn’t going to cut it. Promising the moon on a stick with no realistic plan to deliver it, isn’t either. Convincing people that you genuinely have an answer, when you seemed not to before, is going to be very hard.
Those conditions do not rule out the success of any party in our system, so no, this is not a veiled attack on anyone, but an elaboration of my prediction, and one I’m prepared to be judged on.
Labour think they have a bold plan that will be delivered ‘in the end’ and bring success. A bad start has not always led to a bad future. Time scales here are still, despite the pace set early, measured in years not weeks.
The Tories are evolving and adapting as they always have, probably too slowly for some, but they have to take the space to develop the bold and a strategy to deliver it. There job right now is not a manifesto for 2029, in 2025, but to avoid the fate of last year: be to be right about their opponents but nobody’s listening.
Reform understand being bold, certainly, but they must convince voters they can even attempt the grinding and intricate task of how to deliver that boldness, rather than just saying it.They also have to avoid peaking too soon.
And all three need to note, other options exist, if none of them get this right. The electorate are choosier than they’ve ever been.
‘Fortune favours the brave’ they say, but it is also said real power is in choosing to promise only that which you know you can deliver. They seem logically at odds, and yet within that conundrum will lie the path one party will take to run ahead of the others.
For the Conservatives, and their leader, they need to start grabbing a line from another Science Fiction series and tell their followers, and those they want to follow, what the basics and foundations are, and say:
“This is the way”