Yes, it’s another prime minister nobody elected, and no, nobody knows when the general election will happen or how. Sure, looked at from this vantage point, straight down the barrel of a crisis, British politics looks terrifying from the inside and extremely embarrassing from the outside. But wait: maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for hopefully the rest of my life, the Conservatives will be out of power. I can’t help it. I’m making a mental inventory of things I am looking forward to seeing the back of and then counter-qualities I can’t wait to welcome back into public life.
Won’t it be great when you can assume that someone is telling the truth? When, whatever the promise is, you at least believe they mean it while they’re saying it? It used to be so stark, calling a politician a liar made you sound like a crank; now it’s so obvious that it’s barely worth saying. The most detailed and sophisticated analysis is no better or worse than the most blunt and half-awake: “These people don’t tell the truth.” It’s like a tiger has walked into your kitchen; your hot take would be exactly the same as your dog’s. You wouldn’t even need language for it, you’d just both make a face: “Uh oh, that’s bad.”
We say “gaslight” a lot now, trying to inject complexity into the very simple MO of the charlatan, but it’s the wrong word. My psychological reality is in no way altered by yet more Tory bullshit; only my material reality.
I’m extremely excited about the sunlit uplands on which we do not have to have another conversation about whether the Conservatives are more progressive than Labour because they’ve had three female leaders and now the nation’s first prime minister of colour. It’s just asinine. They know they’re not progressive, they know they were never intending to be. We know that smashing the patriarchy and being female are two different things, likewise, questing after racial equality and being British Indian and Hindu. Is there anything more depressing than having this endless, circular, tail-chasing debate on terms which everybody knows are false?
Actually, yes! More depressing will be the nonsensical conversation we’re just about to dive into; can a man with £730m possibly understand life on universal credit? Why does anyone need a swimming pool in their second home? Is it possible to be too rich to be prime minister or is this the politics of envy? Should we see wealth as a protected characteristic, or something more like body shape, not a territory of hate speech per se but politer not to mention?
I am emphatically not here for that pointless discourse, and yet I know, I know that all it will take is some trollish remark about how being rich is quite lonely and I’ll be pulling on the sewage-galoshes and wading in like a zombie.
I really can’t wait until we can have a normal conversation about Brexit, which doesn’t have to start with a bald assertion of its nonexistent benefits, proceed through “maybe it will have benefits, it’s too soon to say”, and land at “oh well, it’s done now”. I yearn for the eureka moment when we say: “Wait, those people bedecked in union flags, frothing at the mouth about who’s patriotic and who isn’t, they hated Britain and most of the people in it.” Then we can never talk about national pride again, except casually, around sports.
It will be great not to have to argue about whether schools are a necessary element of a modern society, or sit through endless perorations about how the NHS is our jewel, yet like all large jewels, sadly too expensive for these straitened times. I won’t miss the endless journey of discovery that is Jacob Rees-Mogg, how every passing sneer can be double-sourced back to a contemptuous thing he actually thinks and has said out loud.
Obviously it’s a long road back to normal. But to be able to discuss the havoc and hardship without the distorting lens of fantasy, well, it’ll make a change – a nice one.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
