OLD wives reckon a generation to span about 20 years, and that each new generation ushers in a big change in the way we do things.
Looking back on the political events of my life, the old wives might just have a point.
Back in 1959, SuperMac ended 1950s austerity, telling us we’d never had it so good.
Twenty years later the fall of Sunny Jim Callaghan finished off the post-Second World War consensus and Maggie swept in.
Fast forward to 1997. John Major’s Tories are mired in scandal and are engulfed by smiling Tony and “things can only get better”.
I make no comment on the quality of those seismic shifts: but ground-moving they certainly were.
Now, 20 years after Blair’s landslide, are we due our next re-calibration?
This isn’t a party political point. We have a Parliament where many members seem to be embroiled in financial or sexual scandal.
A Government in a shaky coalition resorting to odd tactics to avoid confronting views they don’t agree with.
A population hugely split on many matters and increasingly distrustful of their representatives as power shifts to person-centred social media.
How will the country go forward? Is it to be Nigel’s robust libertarianism, Jeremy’s allotment socialism or something entirely new and different?
One thing’s for certain, we can’t go on being governed as if government was just an extension of the high jinks, teenage tantrums and dodgy deals that are readily to be seen in the sixth-form common room of any minor public school.
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