Politics is still boring

as it should be.

This is not a politics publication. Among other things it should be an antidote to all those dull earnest politics publications. But I wanted to say a few things about the upcoming UK general election — not because it is interesting, but because it is so impressively boring.

Don't get me wrong. I expect to be excited by the outcome of the election. The UK has had a Conservative government since 2010. Everyone will be very pleased to see them go. It is only a few days away now — what glorious words to be able to write! — but in the mean time all we can do is sit and wait. There are attempts at political campaigns, and debates, and media speculation, but I know no-one who is interested in any of it. We just want it over with.

I arrived in the UK in 2010 only a few months into the new Tory government. I did not pay a lot of attention then, nor for some time. UK politics are hardly interesting, except to journalists and the most severely drooling partisans. I had been spoiled by living in the US for eight years, where not only do they know how to make a thrilling spectacle of their politics, but it also actually matters to the world. I was still much more interested in following the progress of the Obama presidency. (By contrast my new UK friends and neighbours were still frothing that Tony Blair supported the Iraq invasion. Tony who?)

The one policy detail I was aware of was that the government had just introduced a university tuition fee system, where universities could set whatever fees they wished, to beef up the funding they already received from the government, so long as the fees were no higher than £9000 per year. Everyone was shocked when every university immediately set its fees at £9k. Since it is never politically wise to raise university fees the number has not changed since. (Yes, it has been 14 years.) The inexorable progress of inflation means that this policy eventually becomes economic starvation. Does the imminent new Labour government have a solution? They have not said. So — hard to see any point to paying attention.

In further support of my disinterest, I have noted that the majority of university academics who get energised about politics tend to be the kind of delusional ideologues who used to support Jeremy Corbyn. (I know, I know: they still do.) I prefer to stay out of that nonsense. I was happy to support him twice to be Prime Minister, because I knew that there were only two real choices, and however bonkers people claimed him to be, the alternative was worse. One could argue my case was not water-tight the first time around — he might have sunk in the Brexit storm just as badly as Teresa May did; that could be an almost interesting debate — but at his second election there could be no doubt. At that time no-one had discovered an object in British politics worse than Boris Johnson. It is a testament to world-beating British political research innovation that it took less than three years to unveil Liz Truss.

As you see, for all my protestations, I have paid some attention, but it was all post-Brexit and pre-Sunak. Since Truss's departure nothing interesting has happened. Indeed, it's hard to think of anything that has happened at all. (Something about the post office?) The Tories were likely toast from the day Boris left, and they were guaranteed toast from the day Truss left. Since then we have just gritted our teeth and taken our medication and waited out the remaining two years.

It was nice to have the wait truncated by six months, but otherwise nothing else has changed.

We are now in a situation where the main item of fascination is how boring it is. We cannot celebrate, because the votes haven't yet been cast and counted. We cannot be tense, because everyone is confident of what will happen. We cannot be excited, because nothing will be fixed overnight; there are many things we doubt can ever be fixed at all. The Tories have tried to entertain us with another scandal, but we've had enough of those.

It is hard to think of a time when I am about to get something I have wanted so, so much for so, so long, and yet find it so, so dull.