On defeat (a range of responses)

it has all happened before and will happen again

horsemouth supposes that we are back with the days of looking to the house of lords and the general synod to defend us from the government. back with decades of uninterrupted tory rule. back, in fact, to the eighties. (gawdelpus)

 had it been different it would still be the same

of course if things had been different they would still be the same - this is the beauty of the stability of the british political system (a million people will vote green - they will get one seat). instead of five years of horrific destruction of the welfare state under the conservatives we would have had five years of mealy mouthed failure to defend it under labour (the originators of the marketisation of the nhs lest we forget).

when horsemouth's friends voted labour they were voting for the bevanite dream of the nhs and the welfare state but they would have received a blairite reality check from ed balls and (at best) a less steep deficit reduction curve.

bring forth the scapegoat

let us be frank - 'immigrant' and 'scrounger' kicking plays well not just in the provinces but nearly everywhere. it is much easier to blame people of low social status who are near to you for problems than to blame people of high social status who are far away, or indeed global economic systems. indeed the labour party succumbed to 'the politics of fear' themselves in issuing anti-immigration mugs, failing to embrace the SNP, and to cap it off will probably now be playing a brisk round of 'blame ed milliband he does look a bit funny doesn't he'. prognosis: rightwards lurching, embracing of marketisation etc.

the country and the city

friends have been reading raymond williams' the country and the city, there may be something in this. horsemouth always used to think this whenever he left hackney and got the train back to his parents in the wilds of herefordshire - as the green rolled by horsemouth's sense that revolution was imminent (the way it looked in hackney in the eighties) would evapourate like mist on a summer day.

it's all the fault of the proles (who are stupid and smelly and racist not like the cosmopolitan elites who are intelligent, well-groomed and er... cosmopolitan)

 (st. george of orwell says it so it must be true).

one of horsemouth's problems was that the first thing he did was check social media and horsemouth's friends are pretty much of the same opinion (broadly) as horsemouth (this is why gchq and the nsa like it so much), it was only later that he checked the mainstream media and realised the full extent of the defeat. from horsemouth's own experience anti-east european racism simmers away among builders we are just not confronting the arguments like we should.

tories for scottish independence if you combine the labour and SNP vote it's still a defeat (but a narrow one). but if scotland gets independence it's a permanent defeat that cannot be overcome. think on that you conservative and unionists.

if you didn't vote you can't complain. if you did vote you voted for it in a democratic system so you can't complain.

complain as you like but do as you're told.



if it happens again I'm leaving (UB40)

horsemouth has no problems with being in exile (as long as there's sun). cambodia is the new thailand. horsemouth's friends sing the praises of burma.

 any other good responses horsemouth hasn't considered yet?

------------------------

 ok next time (business as usual) - a beautiful quote from benjamin that's just like platonov.