"The Retromania Election"

Piece in the New Statesman by Fergal Kinney on the stagnant and deja vu condition of British politics takes for its title "The Retromania Election" - and not only has a para on my book-of-the-same but also a para picking up on recent points I made in this interview with Shawn Reynaldo for his First Floor newsletter. 

Talking about the way that British pols routinely reference distant predecessors and slogans from  bygone electoral campaigns, Kinney asks, " Do British politicians and their advisers have any reference points beyond themselves? If these people are able to draw from history or finance or literature, they’re doing an excellent job of hiding this. British politics’ retromania is what happens when politics is drawn heavily from those who have studied politics – the line is blurred between practitioners and, well, fans. It creates a language that’s off limits to younger voters who might look for inspiration to figures in tech or in activism instead of cultivating a working knowledge of Labour’s grand old men."

Here's a good gag:

"That sense of every decade happening at once has recently become part of British politics. “If you think our job in 1997 was to rebuild a crumbling public realm,” Starmer said in May this year, “that in 1964 it was to modernise an economy overly dependent on the kindness of strangers, in 1945 to build a new Britain, in a volatile world, out of the trauma of collective sacrifice – in 2024, it will have to be all three.” Labour in government: the deluxe Greatest Hits box set."

Tangentially the piece reminded me of the way that "retro" type insults and accusations were wielded in previous UK elections - each side accusing the other of being a nostalgic reenactment or tribute act. 

It's much the same in the USA, where looking-back and dynasticism (the longing for hereditary monarchy and regal succession that's buried not-deep in the American political consciousness) results in grotesquerie like RFK Jr.'s campaign and - out on the loopy-loo perimeter - the bizarre fantasy of an undead JFK Jr returning to form a double-ticket with Trump.