The Last Day of Tory Rule: Prorogation Ceremony Ends Business in Parliament

A Farcical Finale to 14 Years of Tory Trashing

So the threadbare curtain falls on another act of Britain’s interminable Tory tragicomedy. The usual Renaissance Fair pantomime of antiquated ermine and doffed caps duly performed to prorogue this shambling parliament. A quaint, ceremonial full stop to over a decade of conservatism conserving nothing but decay.

The pomp and circumstance of Black Rod summoning the Commons representatives, the doffing of bicorn hats, and the proclamation of “the King wishes it” in French all seem like relics of a bygone era, ill-suited to address the pressing issues facing the nation.

As our bewigged pantaloons strutted through their musty rituals, one couldn’t help but reflect on the devastation inflicted by successive Conservative governments since their regicidal return in 2010. A deluge of austerity dogma, sovereignty tantrums and authoritarian overreach, culminating in this current maelstrom of economic ruin, institutional decay and shredded civil liberties.

All neatly bookended by David Cameron’s smirking complacency at the start and Rishi Sunak’s haggard flop sweat ushering in the bitter end. That the outgoing Prime Minister couldn’t even get his piddling vice policies passed without a comical dash for the door exemplifies the impotence into which his party has dwindled.

The Bitter Aftertaste of Tory Rule and Uncertain Future

And what fresh hell awakes us as the curtain rises anew? More of the same, only rebranded in shambolic Labour wrapping? For all Starmer’s breathless promises of novelty, his party remains utterly anchored to the fiscal hairshirt economics and punitive scolding that’s been Whitehall’s monotonous chorus for over a decade.

The cynic within whispers that the cycle of broken promises and disappointed hopes is destined to repeat itself, as it so often does in the political arena.

No reprieve from a cost of living crisis, tuition fees another false promise, no mercy for families trapped in the brutal two-child tax tourniquet, nothing but the same dead-eyed fealty to managerial dullardry and green tinselling.

At this rate, even the faded spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn taking the fight to his erstwhile comrades as a prodigal indie feels like manna in our depleted ideological desert. Good luck Corbyn at least you deserve the win!

As the campaigns unfold and the rhetoric reaches a fever pitch, it is incumbent upon us all to demand more than empty platitudes and hollow gestures. To demand a government that truly serves the interests of its people, not just the privileged few.

A government that recognises the urgency of addressing the pressing issues of our time, from economic inequality to environmental degradation.

All the while, as our mummers dance their dance, the wails of Gaza’s slaughtered innocents drift across the Med, damning our institutionalised callousness. Starmer’s ethical cowardice in the face of Israel’s genocidal onslaught stands as a fitting monument to the soulless politics we’ve inherited.

So let the election preamble bluster and blare. The smart money’s on more of the same tin-eared oafs thundering their empty slogans while the ship of state slowly lists. Unless some upset or outlier bucks the two-party duopoly out of its smug rigour mortis, we’ll all be left bailing bilgewater and praying the crew haven’t bartered away the last life vests.

There’s always hope…

…You see there are two flames burning in the human heart all the time. The flame of anger against injustice, and the flame of hope you can build a better world. 

Tony Benn

Yet, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope, a flickering flame that refuses to be extinguished. A hope that the collective voice of the people, amplified by the ballot box, will demand real change – change that transcends party lines and puts the welfare of the nation above personal ambition.

The question now is, will the British people find the courage to break the chains? To vote away the mainstream parties and put an end to the duopoly of Labour and Tory?

The question is whether this disillusioned nation can finally find the courage to shatter its rusty electoral shackles. To vote away the twin malignancies of Tory and Labour and embrace some semblance of actual transformative change before we’re forever entombed in this neoliberal purgatory.

Do the people still possess the unbroken spirit to reject their supposed “choices” and rally behind the outliers – the Independents, the emergent leftists, and all those daring to dream of politics loosed from this two-headed zombie monster’s merciless jaws? Those like the Workers Party boasting firebrands like George Galloway and Chris Williamson, upstarts or mavericks such as Andrew Feinstein spoiling for a political fight on Starmer’s very doorstep.

This 4th of July could be our Declaration of Independence from the entire wretched system if we can simply summon the defiant pluck to reach for it. An emancipation from the scourge of managed decline and shackling austerity consensus that’s become our dismal inheritance.

But such revolutionary aspirations will prove stillborn without the popular will to make it so. Too many have been lulled into resignation by the cloying homogeneity peddled as the only plausible “choice.” Shaken from their somnolence only by the occasional pantomime jousting between shades of the same dreary authoritarian managerialism.

For a truly liberating political renaissance to take wing, we must revive that most endangered of virtues – the eternal, inextinguishable human thirst for something more. A craving for politics elevated beyond technocratic bean-counting and petty culture skirmishes into a catalysing force for justice, democracy, and the boundless realms of possibility our species was born to conquer.

Such a reawakening may seem a fever dream after decades bludgeoned by this dismal uniparties cudgel. But the future has never favoured the feckless cynics shrugging off the audacious frontier as mere folly.

On this July 4th, we would do well to rekindle Emmeline Pankhurst’s immortal exhortation: “To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that.”

The chains are there to be shattered, the duopoly’s twilight reign to be finally eclipsed. Whether this nation retains the fortitude to enact that liberation in its coming electoral crucible will be the truest test of its enduring revolutionary spirit.