The audacity of hope

This Guardian article by Zadie Smith encapsulates everything that's been frustrating me around this election campaign.

On the one hand, she duly shoots a few fish in the barrel, playing to the gallery with references to "this particular group of high-rolling chancers, who do not seem to have a thought in their heads besides their own and their donors' enrichment" and "a bizarre subset of people who do not actually believe that government should serve the people".

She also makes the valid point that "historical nostalgia should not be the sole preserve of the right": "The left can also make use of it. We can remind ourselves that a more just society is possible, if only because a few of the necessary conditions have at various moments actually existed upon this Earth, and in the not-so-distant past."

But on the other, in declaring "here comes the sun" in the form of a Labour victory, Smith fails or rather refuses to acknowledge that there is practically no evidence of Starmer's party offering any hope that things will indeed be significantly different under a Labour government. On the contrary, they've bent over backwards to court the centre-right vote - chuntering on about "wealth creation" and immigration, lacking any backbone on Palestine, ramping up the anti-trans rhetoric and abandoning anything approaching principle and tradition. That "more just society" for which she's misty eyed simply doesn't seem to be on Starmer's agenda. It's a case of blind faith.

I won't be alone in feeling that the decimation of the Tories will be a somewhat hollow, bittersweet victory.