“This will succeed through its success”

And so we have a new government: given the way that the final electoral arithmetic worked out we got the only one of the possible permutations which made arithmetical and political sense.  Quite how long lasting the arrangement will prove to be I do not know but as they have only been in office for 48 hours or so it would be churlish to snipe and rant.

interesting times

Not that such scruples have stopped others: the political blogs and the comments pages on the websites of the media are still in pre-election froth mode with a dearth of rationality and an over-abundance of venomous spite, reductionist claptrap, partisan points scoring and other nonspecific bullshit.  This is coming from all sides and is as tedious as, from a civility perspective, it is worrying.

The difficulty, once Parliament resumes, will be the lack of strong opposition in the House which is the hallmark if good Parliamentary democracy.  The Lib. Dems. are are now part of the governing coalition and Labour is rebuilding itself and facing a leadership contest.  This is common enough when an adminsitration falls, of course; it is ‘normal’ to have the defeated party in some disarray.  The importance this time is that, although the the coalition parties are clear that they are in this for the long haul, there remains a chance that it will crumble and require a further election to try and sort things out.  No party can afford not to be making contingency plans for that eventuality.

Even were that not so, given the ideological divisions within the parties (though not always between them) and in our society then a high quality of debate and decision making will be essential.  We seem to have a dearth -on all sides- of forensic minds coupled with strong debating skills.  The only ones who spring to mind are Ken Clarke, Vince Cable (now securely whipped, tethered and neutralised) and, maybe, Alastair Darling.  There may be more talent on the back benches and in the new intake but I sense that something important has been lost with the apparently inexorable rise of the professional party political apparatchik (witness the tautology uttered yesterday which I have used as the title for this post).

In the meantime I am on day two of a new regime of BP meds.  So far so good although I will know better in a couple of weeks.  I do not appear to have a bilocated brain today and that can only be a good thing.