On 7 January 2023]
I'm concerned for the world in which our children and grandchildren are growing up, and I want to be a good ancestor. I appreciated an article in the Guardian recently by Jonathan Freedland - 'After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power - but the truth is they can't govern.' (6 January, 2023)
It seems like a good time to read this, just after reading that former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has graciously conceded power …. no …. has fled to (where else?) Florida.
"Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence."
In politics, rather than slogans and 'poetry', I much prefer the 'prose of competence', and I prefer that 'prose' to be gracious or at least civil in both victory and defeat. Government based solely on the personality, the will and the power of the leader is brittle because it tries to deny what we know to be true - that we, and all systems, are mortal and human, and therefore subject to anxiety and delusion. Even self-appointed 'Presidents-for-life', will die and will need to be replaced, either in a destructive scramble for power, or in a peaceful transition based on a functioning democracy.