New Labour

 The Labour Party have won the election. Sir Keir Starmer is the new Prime Minister. It was a landslide defeat. The Tories were resoundingly trounced, several of them losing their seats. Rees Mogg, Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps and Liz Truss are no longer MPs. It was an ignominious defeat. Basingstoke, my home town, is Labour for the first time ever. My ultra-left friends think Starmer is the devil, of course, somehow worse than the Tories who have been in power for fourteen years and have destroyed the country while lining their own pockets and the pockets of their friends and donors, who are the same people. I don't feel that way. I think change, and that's what Labour represent, has to be for the better, and while the views of Starmer and his party aren't my own, at least they aren't a bolus of institution raffling sociopaths. 

Until that's what they're revealed to be. 

And it has been funny watching the Tories being destroyed. Waking up and smelling their privilege burning in a skip, alongside rubber insulation and cat hair. Delicious. I should be cracking open my socialist champagne. 

But there are two problems. 

I live in Northern Ireland. I don't get to vote for the proper political parties. I get sectarian puppet governments. And where I live the DUP got in again. The previous leader of that party - who has grown a Rolf Harris beard since he was charged with historical sexual abuse, because you wouldn't want to look like a pervert - seems to have had very little effect on the popularity of the DUP to their sheep-like voters. People are delighted Ian Paisley Jnr is out of office but he lost to Jim Allister of the TUV! He's a fucking lunatic. 

And Farage got in. Eight time's the charm for the frog-mouthed, camel coated purveyor of "common sense". Four Reform candidates got in. All the famous ones. People are still voting like it's Strictly on Blackpool week. "I saw him on Question Time. Yes, he blustered and hectored and lied, but he was on telly, unlike these other no-marks. So I'm voting for that."  

My fear is that all the far right, populist, lunatic cranks squeezed out of office like so much rancid primula, will defect to Reform and it will become a viable far right party. My fear is there will be a surfeit of common sense forthcoming. Common sense always seems to impact negatively on the weak and poor. I hope those days are not coming, but Farage - sponsored by Uniball - will be the face of endless cruelties meted out to the defenseless. Because that's what he's all about. A beer, a ciggie and kick in the face of a homeless person, extra points if they're black or queer. 

I'm going to celebrate the Tories losing. Quietly.