pass the chalice

Election fever mounts in the easily distracted DUK, as mass, mostly mogul-owned, media and more distributed social media develop the plots and sub-plots of the unfolding drama ...

Almost all seem very keen to ensure we register to vote - and today is the deadline. Like any public entertainment, it only works if we turn up ... young people are often castigated for declining the opportunity ... the sacrifices of suffragettes wheeled out as guilt fodder ... on one level the story never held water .. Lenin suggested that: The British bourgeoisie lets go of Power with one hand, only to catch it with the other ...  maybe he had a point and maybe the parliamentary democracy which has served capitalism so well is finally unravelling ...its credibility exposed by apathy ... not to mention corruption .... the emergence of a professional political class, schooled in PPE, experiencing little of life outside politics ... some say: Anyone wanting to be a paid politician should not be one ...

Social media, being to a large extent composed of commentators of our choosing may give an even more distorted view than the Newspapers - subject to the cruel jibe that: Freedom of the Press is for those that own one ... and it is true that the majority of incoming FB opinion on my feed is in favour of the new messiah, whose initials are, coincidentally, the same as the other one who challenged injustice and was crucified ... the metaphorical fate awaiting Jeremy if the groundswell of popular opinion, aided by seeming suicidal statements by the incumbent, translates into an unlikely win ... and the transfer of the poison chalice from May, who has probably realised the scale of the coming chaos, what with untangling the DUK from the EU and the world financial system teetering on the brink ...

Engaging with FB friends (some of whom are real friends too) is generally declined ... the polarisation this time is rather extreme and passions are running high ... anyway, maybe they are right and we have a genuine chance of bringing peace and prosperity with the amiable, if rather uncharismatic, Corbyn ... although it seems unlikely from this perspective ... which has changed from the Leninist view of youth to a transcendent one of approaching senility and decrepitude ... imagining that the caterpillar can be revived and reinvented as a less rapacious creature is missing the point that the butterfly now gestating is of a different order altogether ...

Intriguingly, some of the FB friends posting inspirationally on the Beautiful New World, nevertheless are drawn into the old stories again, as the scripts ramp up the "you couldn't make it up" factor ... and whether it is the passing of the poison chalice and subsequent crucifixion or ignominious defeat (and subsequent crucifixion) with a triumphant Tory empowered to rampage across the realm .... who knows?

This commentator is not convinced that either option represents the transformational changes the times demand ...