ConDemNation

Clamday 1. Mood of the day: Smugg.
Warm bath of columnist approval - Valiant exploits ahead - Deficit Monster Quest - New Age of co-operation and consensus - Dave Disraeli? Why not Good Queen Bess?
- Evil Crookback Gordon well and truly Martson Moor'd - NuLabour delusion dead.
The lesson of NuLabour is that the markets just won't agree to play nice. That if you mess with them, you will eventually wake up one fine morning-after in the bloodstained bed of a dead hooker.
But the ConDems will soon find out that compromise is not co-operation, which the world is crying out for. And Cameron will soon find that his Big Society is co-operating to survive his cuts in public services, and eventually to get him out of Downing Street as soon as possible.
But at the same time, they won't want to replace him with anything resembling NuLabour. Which again leaves room for a genuine alternative to the current poodle-politics. Whether people choose the dark warm burrow of hatred and fascism, or something which celebrates and enables human potential will be largely a matter of presentation. And the message which needs to be delivered is that those who support the BNP are people making a choice according to their lights, not evil mental-defectives. And that they have exactly the same natural needs and enemies as everyone else in their class. That this is not a war among the working classes, but for genuine social justice, with no utopian lies on either side.
Sadly, at present, there are too many so-called socialists who indulge in this kind of Daily Mail language. Who slip into football terrace tribalism whenever the BNP achieve some squalid gain in a windswept Essex estate. The slogan All BNP Supporters are Idiots is as divisive and alienating as the BNP could want. It supports their myth that socialism is just another sneering exploitation of the working classes.
What makes them think that Nye Bevan would have stood on the steps of Dagenham town hall and denounced BNP supporters as being too stupid to have the vote? As being beyond the persuasive power of progressive politics.
To fill the political hole of the future, progressive politicians have to reject completely the language and vocabulary of reaction. Politics are a matter of the words used as much as the policies advanced. It is not possible to advance radical policies with fascist rhetoric. Which doesn't mean simply not insulting natural allies who happen to have found themselves supporting the political enemies of their own class. As we saw with Bigotgate. It means having enough confidence in the ideas to express them clearly and unapologeticaly. This was the failure of NuLabour. The only thing they communicated with their daily drizzle of ungrammatic grunts and mumbles was their political emptiness. They abandoned their principles to get market approval, but had nothing to put in their place.
ConDem have something new and shiny to have faith in. A palpable lie. So they sound convincing. It's just a shame that they have nothing to offer but another compromise with market forces, one even more craven than NuLabour's.
So when the next crash happens, will they be able even to repeat Gordon Brown's goalmouth heroics of autumn 2008? Or even match his part in the negotiations to prevent the collapse of the Euro-Zone? His last act in office, taken when he knew he was an ex-prime minister. Bereft of life, resting in peace.
It is interesting that the period of deepest Brown-Hatred was book-ended by two achievements any politician would be proud of, and which may yet be what he is remembered for.
Cameron and Clegg will definitely be remembered for the embraces of today's fragrant opening ceremony. And for their accidental arranged marriage. But unless Clegg is even more of a sycophant to Cameron than Brown was to The City, and prepared to surrender all principles, and work with corpses like David Davis, Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard, the alliance won't have much time to achieve greatness. It's all hearts and flowers today. But when the looting begins, who will take the blame?
Right through the hard winter, and the long election campaign, and right until yesterday lunchtime, my bird-table was a busy little trattoria for dozens of perky little visitors. Today, nothing. The birds have all gone.