This was an election of two illusions.
The first helped persuade much of the British public to vote for the very epitome of an Eton toff, a man who not only has shown utter contempt for most of those who voted for him but has spent a lifetime barely bothering to conceal that contempt. For him, politics is an ego-trip, a game in which others always pay the price and suffer, a job he is entitled to through birth and superior breeding.
© Charles Fearn/Channel 4
Eton toffs: young Boris Johnson and David Cameron in their supper club clobbery.
The extent to which such illusions now dominate our political life was highlighted two days ago with a jaw-dropping comment from a Grimsby fish market worker. He
said he would vote Tory for the first time because "Boris seems like a normal working class guy."
Johnson is precisely as working class, and "normal", as the billionaire-owned
Sun and the billionaire-owned
Mail. The
Sun isn't produced by a bunch of working-class lads down the pub having a laugh, nor is the
Mail produced by conscientious middle managers keen to uphold "British values" and a sense of fair play and decency.
Like the rest of the British media, these outlets are machines, owned by globe-spanning corporations that sell us the illusions - carefully packaged and marketed to our sectoral interest - needed to make sure nothing impedes the corporate world's ability to make enormous profits at our, and the planet's, expense.
Comment: It seems the tit-for-tat measures are ramping up, and this is happening just as the US and China were beginning to talk about easing some of the trade restrictions. Although we've seen these hints of sabotage a number of times before which leads one to wonder whether a faction within the US is seriously against good relations between the two countries: