Reflecting on a chaotic week in British politics. I keep thinking how exciting things must be for anyone doing an A-Level in Politics at the moment or starting one soon. I can't help comparing this to when I did my politics A-level from 1992 to 1994.
In the preceding decade there had been one change of Prime Minister - when John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The big "current" story was analysing the gap between the polls - which predicted Labour would win the 1992 General Election - and the reality, when John Major won a slight majority to extend Tory government for another five years. In the USA, Bill Clinton won the Presidential Election against the incumbent President, which was slightly unexpected because incumbents usually win. We did one year on UK politics and the second year on US politics, so Clinton's win was well-timed to be current.
And that was just about it. The various seminars I went to in the course of my A-Level had very little else to discuss except for those misleading polls. I heard lots of theories about it, including from Tony Benn and Alastair Campbell before he became the infamous master of spin for Tony Blair. The most obvious reason for it was that people were ashamed to admit they voted Tory so lied to pollsters.
Compare and contrast that to the situation now. A decade ago we were in the middle of the first official coalition government of my lifetime. There was a referendum on independence in Scotland. Then there was a General Election where the Tories won an unexpected majority as the Liberal Democrats reaped the reward for their alliance with the Tories and were immolated at the ballot box. That was 2015 - seven years ago - and everything has gone all kinds of crazy since.
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Anyone studying "recent events" since then would struggle to keep up. There was the Brexit referendum (I voted to Remain). David Cameron quit as Prime Minister and was replaced by Theresa May. She gambled on getting a larger majority to push Brexit through against her own rebel MPs, and then lost the governmental majority in a general election in 2017.
Although Theresa gamely struggled on, she was effectively sacked by her party in 2019, replaced by Boris Johnson. He then called another election - in 2019 - and won a massive majority by promising to "Get Brexit Done". That got fast-tracked and the UK had a 'hard Brexit' in January 2020 ending the 47 year membership of the EEC / EU. And then we've had all the ongoing shenanigans, corruption and lies culminating in a resignation that wasn't really a resignation.
And that's just the UK. The USA political scene hasn't been quite as dramatic, although the election of Donald Trump, thanks in a large way to the weaponisation of evangelical Christians in a 'Culture War', and particularly the end of his reign with an attempted insurrection on the steps of the Capitol, could keep an A-level student in essay topics for days. (Incidentally, the Tories have attempted to co-opt religion over here - it's just not such a massive demographic to tap in to.)
I really don't know where people would start studying all that. Even so, part of me is kind of jealous when I think of how boring politics was in the early 90s.
However, my envy for the current generation of A-Level students is tempered by knowing they are going to have to live with the consequences of all this nonsense. Particularly Brexit, which is already having dire economic consequences. But also the way the country now seems to have a choice of frothing right-wingers intent on pandering to racists and bigots to be its next leader. Who knows what fresh hell will be unleashed from the people eyeing up the job of Prime Minister.
Today's students are going to have to live with these consequences for longer than I will. They might have more to write about in their A-Level work, but at what cost?
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