I simply cannot be bothered with all this politics.” Our crumbly group is becoming increasingly grumbly of late and it’s not surprising. Joyce’s words summed up a collective tristesse generated by the Neverendum that has deteriorated into a sort of Brenda from Bristol mantra at the prospect of a general election, and has become commonplace among my generation – in the community centre, at the checkout and on the streets. The conduct of what should be the lodestar of parliamentary democracy will be a repeat of the same tired themes and immoderate memes that have dominated political discourse for the past three years and have led to the sort of civic fatigue betrayed by her outburst.
I understand the sense of exhaustion; I feel it too, but it nevertheless scares the daylights out of me. It expresses a renunciation of responsibility, a cop-out that is probably a greater threat to democracy than any political ideology. Today’s world is the outcome of yesterday’s politics, and no generation has gained more advantage from “politics” than ours. Our longevity can be traced directly to the political priorities that gave us access to health, education, care, housing, security, the social cloth that feather-bedded our lives and, in defiance of the Darwinian paradigm, continues to support our increasingly “unfit” survival. Those priorities were and will continue to be the outcome of politics. And of course it is politics that will determine whether the planet on which our grandchildren will depend for food, air and water remains habitable.
So, however toxic the conflict between the far left and ultra right, between remain and leave, their passions at least represent a political engagement without which society would be in a permanent state of anarchic chaos or political sclerosis. I have more respect for the arch Brexiter than I have for an apathetic crumbly who cannot be bothered with politics. What makes it worse is that this apathy has become respectable, even virtuous, the call to “just get on with it” a statement of political machismo. It is the battle cry of the disengaged for whom impatience has become a virtue, presumably the same collective reflex that drives hordes of lemmings over precipices.
There has been much talk of a divided country since the referendum, with political commentators and social geographers bandying statistics to support their various opinions. Of course statistics don’t lie, only those who misuse them, but we crumblies were peculiarly vulnerable to the Brexodus project and its Moses and this will be reprised in the general election. The Tory party has always played the nostalgia card shamelessly, with hyped reminders of the sunlit uplands of our blue remembered hills while, as some social geographers claim, at the same time appealing to the psychological legacy of empire. The Brexit issue provided something new, a spirit of defiance that is seductive to my generation. Old age is a time of creeping concession, as our horizons narrow, our bodies decline, our energies fade. Yet our appetite to belong remains, to make a difference, to be taken notice of. So we are hungry for something, anything that will remind us of our technicolour years, that will put a swagger in our final steps before oblivion, a last hurrah in a life that has become taupe and tame.
So “do or die” is our very personal anthem, its binary option resonating with our existential reality. Brexit also triggers memories from our pre-adult years of those early icons of defiance like Just William and Dennis the Menace, standalone disruptors, lovable rogues, diamond geezers, quintessentially English. And in Boris we have the perfect talisman, a charismatic cross between TS Eliot’s “rough beast lurching” and Winston, hands in jacket pockets, shoulders thrusting forwards, a restless bullock about to charge as he barges up steps, through doors, past crowds. At once a funster and a thug, his increasing caricature of a Europe seeking to retain our service to an undemocratic project and his demand that this Pharaoh should “let my people go” resonates with the geriatric sense of helplessness.
Perhaps Joyce’s disenchantment should be encouraged. After all, it could result in the abstention from the democratic process of the one generation that seems most likely to bring about a catastrophic result and least likely to suffer its consequences.
Stewart Dakers is an 81-year-old community voluntary worker
