On the day this piece was written the nation was waiting to find out which of the two rival (Tory) candidates was about to take control of our nation, Hunt or Johnson. Both were hollow men, diddy men. Johnson was widely expected to get it, so no great surprise was expressed when he did. In the meantime, one was vividly aware that another (Labour) hollow diddy man was still leading Her Majesty’s Opposition, our alternative government in waiting. We were thus surrounded by disaster and the hollow bringers and products of disaster. Hollow men. Diddie men.
And the parrot’s question stands. To what extent are our political parties, and the system that supports them, effective vehicles for a swift and accountable response to present national and human need ; or, on the contrary, mere outdated refuges for those who inhabit them, dim slogans where there should be living speech, mirages and fixed repetitions and ideologies of familar thought and incantation, where there has to be the urgent addressing of reality by people fully fit and fully present to it, undefended ? The implication is that the second option is the true one. In the UK, both the Tory and Labour parties, and the individuals on their walls and in their halls, are mere self-serving inadequates and throw-backs, insufficient to present storms. And here comes Flotsam Johnson, to complete the nightmare.