Politics Explained, 2

Having had so much to say about some recent governments, with specific reference to Boris Johnson, the least I could do was accept in advance responsibility for the Labour government so inevitably put in place this year, them being the first time- at the age of 64- that I'd ever voted on the winning side in a General Election or other national vote.

It's not been immediately brilliant. The world, or only the country, didn't turn into paradise overnight as it had shimmeringly been thought to have when Blair got in. It couldn't have been expected to. Blair inherited an economy in workable shape, made it look a bit glam by having Oasis round for a glass of posh booze, was okay for as long as a couple of years but ended up having to resort to saying that God would be his judge, apparently omitting to recall that his Chief Svengali, Alastair Campbell, had said they 'didn't do' God.

It should have been Gordon in the first place but that's a different essay.

Labour MPs will, with some justification, argue that we've had the vote and they've been given five years. It's been said they need to do all the hardest bits first, like closing the loophole that Jeremy Clarkson pointed out to them that he then goes on a protest march to complain about.

It's been said that Keir Starmer lacks charisma but while charisma can get you elected, it doesn't solve problems. Clement Attlee was one of the best Prime Ministers there's been, so uncharitably characterised by Churchill, whereas Johnson was demonstrably the very worst until the Conservative party dug deep enough to find one arguably yet more disastrous.

Labour and Starmer may or may not have seen disillusion with them setting in quite so soon so, like a big club finding themselves on the verge of relegation, they must think it is a long season that gives them time to recover. However, that vast Commons majority is a fragile thing based on the gimcrack electoral system in place. Labour under Starmer got less votes than the unelectable Corbyn and yet were awarded a landslide victory rather than complete humiliation.

Portsmouth North won't be Labour next time even if Amanda Martin proves to be beatifiable.

I'll vote for her but the electorate as an entity is a fickle thing, even a tacky thing, they put you down, they say I'm wrong. Dissatisfied by not having been delivered from perceived hardship by miracles, they will rebel, rebel to the extent that, not having been given enough time to forget what the Conservative party were like last time, they will have to look elsewhere.

Populism is not to be underestimated. It does what it says on the tin. It cares as little about analysis of what it says as the Bay City Rollers cared about what jazz purists thought about their gloriously mindless songs as they were thoroughly exploited when continually making no. 1 in the hit parade. 

Other countries have seen candidates come from the outskirts of what had been seen as the political landscape and 'take power'. We've been brought up in the UK to think that no such thing could happen here but we're not a 'big club' any more. We might not even be Manchester United.

We might think next time that a Lib-Lab pact might be something to save us when that illusory Labour majority evaporates like an early morning mist but the Liberals are at their giddy limit of seats, holding all they naturally do and as many unhappy naturally Conservative seats as they can expect to.

There are three reasons why we might vote. One is because we vote for what we think makes things better for ourselves, another is that we'd like to make the world better for everyone and the third is that we vote against that which we seriously object to. I'd like to think I was in the second category but sometimes I'm in the third. But, gladly if not sometimes almost perversely, I'm not like most people.

Labour's flimsy majority is blown apart already. Much of what there was of it, such as it was, won't be departing to Liberal candidates. Those are votes that come from the first and third categories, possibly from places like Rotherham or Workington where Waitrose does less business, where the Proms, the Booker Prize and the show jumping are not the main concern and where people feel 'left behind' while Stephen Fry offers them one last book explaining the importance of the Greek myths.

Would that it were, Mr. Fry, would that it were.