The waking nightmare
In real life, dreams end when you wake up. In stories, they turn into nightmares. Goldilocks gets confronted by three disgruntled bears. Jack disturbs a furious giant who wants his bones for bread. The clock strikes midnight and Cinderella’s carriage starts turning back into a pumpkin. Macbeth’s nightmares return in the ghost of Banquo, pushing him deeper into a nightmare of murder from which he cannot escape.
If we take a sharp turn from fairytales and fables into recent British politics, take your pick – the nightmares keep coming: David Cameron, entering office with smug handshakes and leaving in a nightmarish Brexit maelstrom of his own design. Theresa May picking up the reins and becoming embroiled in scandals, plural, over a ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants. Then Boris Johnson winning a huge majority in 2019, delivering Brexit for his supporters, and then descending into a nightmare of corruption, secret parties during Covid lockdowns, and various exposed lies. And let’s not mention Liz Truss, who couldn’t last as long as a cabbage, swiftly tanking the economy and leaving under a chorus of boos at her incredible, unbelievable incompetence.
For us, the unfortunate subjects of these nightmarish political administrations, the problem is that the people responsible for disaster are too often immune from feeling the effects of the nightmares they create. In politics, none of the PMs listed above have really suffered or been held to real account for their failings. In fact, they often get rewarded by leaving the nightmare to enter a new dream sequence. Boris Johnson is being investigated for his Covid failings, but, at the same time, has been given a job presenting on GB News. His career continues, un abated. Liz Truss is probably at home eating toast happily right now. And the current PM, Rishi Sunak, is in a storm of social unrest, economic decay and international conflict, but, you know, he hangs around with billionaires. So he’ll wake up in another money-lined dream, I’m sure.
White nightmare
White supremacy might be on the cusp of a well-deserved nightmare.
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