No, it bloody isn’t.
I’m bored stiff and no amount of doom-scrolling nor pint-downing can sate my appetite for something, anything. Parliament is in recess, the news cycle has slowed and we are in the midst of what many refer to as silly season.
But this moment of calm got me thinking. Just last week, I found myself sitting in a particularly cramped, dimly lit, Indo-Chinese restaurant in Soho. The waitresseses were really pleasant – ‘another beer, mister, perhaps?’ – and the food was top notch. I highly recommend the Hoisin Duk Pancakes alongside the Ohn No Coconut Tofu.
Rather than experiencing some form of immense cultural awakening, ridding me of my obsession for salt and pepper, I had instead subjected myself to The Guardian’s famed Dining Across the Divide. An occasion which brings together two people from opposite ends of the political spectrum in the hopes of showcasing that one can still maintain a civil conversation with someone they have disagreements with.
All I knew before venturing to the restaurant was that the tab was covered by the paper, I was to meet a photographer who would stick around for a few minutes then bugger off, and that my companion for the evening was a chap called Adrian.
To my surprise, the occasion was incredibly pleasant. Adrian was a very nice man and we enjoyed a good chat over a few pints. He informed me early on that he was a passionate Guardian reader, that his nemesis during his years working in local government was The TaxPayers’ Alliance and that he was a member of the Green Party.
The last one startled me somewhat. ‘The Green Party’ I thought to myself, ‘I didn’t think they were up to much nowadays.’
I quickly grabbed my stomach, informing my new friend of a ‘sudden bout of indigestion’ and rushed to the toilets. I opened my phone and checked for myself. To my surprise, the party has more than 200,000 members. It just didn’t make sense. Where had they all been hiding?
Polanski and his band of merry men have just north of 1,300 councillors across England and Wales, lead 21 councils and have 5 MPs sitting in Westminster. For months, they boasted that they were on course to replace Labour as the only party on the left. But, alas, they appear to have crumbled, slumping to a rather poor 13 per cent in the polls – a far cry from their peak of close to 20 per cent .
But whilst I would very much enjoy dedicating one thousand words to the irrelevance of the Green Party, there is a serious point to be made here. In clawing back many disillusioned Labour voters who had flocked to the Greens, Andy Burnham has strengthened the left-of-centre bloc. Labour, once again, dominates the left-of-centre vote.
The right, however, remains split. The latest polling by YouGov puts the Tories on 20 per cent of the vote and Reform on 23. Restore Britain, meanwhile, continues to chip ever so slightly away at Farage’s right flank, charming voters with the promise of mass deportations and referenda on the death penalty.
One can see the electoral arithmetic for what it is. At present, a split right will allow a Burnham-led government back into Number 10 were a snap election to be called. Whether he could secure an outright majority is anyone’s guess, but the numbers are most certainly leaning in his favour.
And yet, whilst the British right continues to tear itself apart, Kemi Badenoch has been looking toward the Mediterranean on how to win. In her meeting with Giorgia Meloni earlier this week, the Tory leader has said that she remains committed to turning the British economy around, much in the same way Meloni did for Italy, and therein lies the rub.
Kemi Badenoch has chosen the economy as her electoral battleground. Our leader is eager to channel the late Mrs T, bringing about an economic revival through the championing of business and the private sector. Please, everyone, give the girl a chance.
Reform, meanwhile, are far closer to John McDonnell than they are the Iron Lady. Significant state intervention, the nationalisation of key industries, partial ownership of Rolls Royce – it is the complete antithesis of the Conservative’s policy platform. Despite bringing a number of free market thinkers into the fold, Millbank’s lot are struggling to adopt a full-on, Thatcherite-style agenda.
And that is what makes a deal between the two sides impossible. Any meaningful electoral pact would require each side to reconcile on the very policy differences that are supposed to distinguish them.
Of course, there are areas of common ground. Both sides want to leave the ECHR. Both sides are followers of climate scepticism. Both sides want to rein in welfare spending, and both sides want to clamp down on illegal migration.
But whilst there are a number of agreements, the fundamentals are simply incompatible. An electoral pact may well solve the numbers problem, but what of the political problem? How does one jump into bed with a party who brags about wanting to kill you off, who has a vastly different economic outlook than you? It will never work, and perhaps that is what makes this whole ordeal so saddening.
Because I sat down with a Green Party supporter, had a nice meal and left wondering whether politics really had to be quite so miserable in the way we make it out to be. Why can I sit down with someone who is the political polar opposite of me and have a lovely chat, whilst those on our own side continue to squabble and fight like rats in a sack?
It’s depressing because I desperately want to see a right-of-centre government lead Britain into the 2030s and beyond. I want us to, once again, be a serious country that governs for the sake of governing and not for the sake of people-pleasing.
Our country faces a whole host of systemic problems that this Labour Government seems incapable of tackling. Welfare spending is running amok, house building has ground to a halt and the state seems incapable of doing the very things we expect it to do.
But that doesn’t make our present predicament any less awkward. We on the right cannot add together our votes and hope that the most basic of differences disappear.
I maintain, as I have for some time now, that we should not enter into a deal with Reform. It would be electoral suicide. Just look at Lloyd-George and the Liberals in the 1920s. That doesn’t mean I cannot be frustrated at the current state of affairs, however. Egos and policies will continue to clash, and I will continue to weep, hoping that this is just one big, bad nightmare.
So instead, I’ll let out a little cry, put my earphones in and listen to some Morrissey. That’ll make things better.