Everything is Awful

Everything is shit when you’re part of the vote.

A non-comprehensive list of the non-options on offer

Normally, I’m not one to be cynical about politics. “Both sides are the same” is a lazy, stupid lie perpetuated by lazy, stupid people who refuse to live in a world of nuance — otherwise known as reality — and instead would rather their ideal party declare socialist revolution or a return to the “good old days”. Nonetheless, in the upcoming 2017 General Election, the potential Prime Ministers are the following:

• A woman so inept she failed to see a passport crisis coming a year in advance, despite explicit warning, failed to move an immigration target in even the right direction, and pretty clearly had no idea what to do when England’s major cities descended into chaos; also a woman who doesn’t seem to disrespect civil liberties so much as not even understand they're there. A woman whose idea of “strong and stable” includes putting Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt in senior positions of government.

or:

• A man in charge of the supposed party of organised labour, who celebrates and supports a regime that executes trade unionists, who has so much baggage in so many other areas it’s barely comprehensible, and seems to keep hiring people who make the aforementioned Cabinet ministers seem respectable.

or, at the very outside:

• The leader of the party of social liberalism, who doesn’t seem to have a grasp on what social liberalism is — or seems to have views which preclude it, or:
• A Nigel Farage cosplayer who can’t seem to stop lying, but also can’t seem to be remotely convincing about it, or:
• A bunch of nationalists more obsessed with independence and identity than actually making their areas of the country good, or:
• the far-right, as evil as ever, or:
• the far-left, more irrelevant than ever.

No, they’re not all the same. They’re 57 varieties of terrible. Which is why, to be honest, I find myself hoping for coalition government again — or at least minority government — maybe the terribleness cancels out.

But we’re not going to get it, are we? Cue the lyrics to R.E.M.’s “Ignoreland”. There is one hope, however — after the 2015 election, three party leaders resigned, and all three resignations eventually stuck. Nicola Sturgeon is the only leader of a party polling over 1% to have stuck around in the last two years. It’s possible this election will have a similarly cleansing effect. Let’s hope so.