The Ledgehead revolution

Give me an hour and I'll sort it all out

For a little while there, we almost had a bit of peace and quiet. I mean sure, Trump is still wandering like the living embodiment of that pigeon playing chess idiom, but here in this green and pleasant land we seemed like we might be getting back to a semblance of normality when it came to our ruling class.

Spoke too soon, didn’t I? We can’t have boring, sensible politics in 21st century Britain. There’s outrage to stoke, pockets to line, tepid opinions to punt, and division to sow.

Sorry for a fifty-year-old cultural reference, kids. I’m part of the problem really.

Back in May I put a Note out. Normally I just use Notes for a quick and dirty dopamine hit. Needy, aren’t I? Occasionally, though, I can’t stop myself and I put out actual grown up thoughts. This was one such Note:

A decade ago the UK got addicted to some of the purest political psychodrama known to humankind. That shit was uncut and shot straight into the national bloodstream. We have never got off the teat.

After ten years of chasing the dragon, this once great nation looks like those mugshots of chronic, incurable meth heads.

We now have an entire ecosystem of chin stroking pontification, impotent rage, self-important expert opinion and content churn that needs feeding daily, because heaven forfend politics watchers get bored.

Newsflash: Politics is supposed to be boring. It’s show business for ugly people. Politicians aren’t supposed to entertain us. We’re not supposed to like them. They’re not supposed to care about that.

90% of the bullshit that happens in Whitehall should be mundane background noise, the machine at work. That machine is broken, and everyone is too busy raging at each other to fix it.

In the first thirty years of my life there were five Prime Ministers. In the last decade and a half we’ve already had six, and there are thousands of people out there gunning for the seventh.

We are not a serious country and we need an intervention.

And gee, would you look at that? On Monday morning, Keir Starmer announced his resignation.

Seven Prime Ministers in ten years. An average of less than eighteen months. Larry the cat, chief Downing Street mouser, has outlasted six of them.

We are not a serious country and we need an intervention.

Let’s get it front and centre: this isn’t a pity post for Keir Starmer. He’s clearly a decent man who had promise, but he has an unerring ability to step on rakes a la Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons. He bungled every single key decision and burned through good grace, from every section of society, at an alarming rate.

Yet NHS waiting lists are down; rail and water privatisation is being reversed; workers’ rights have been improved and the Renters’ Rights Act passed; net immigration down to it’s lowest levels in years; knife crime down 10%, the murder rate at its lowest since 1977; half a million more kids eligible for free school meals¹. The Lost will tell you he’s the worst Prime Minister ever; he’s not even in the conversation for the 2020s.

That doesn’t change the fact that we’re all still poorer; unless change is felt in the pocket, it’s never really going to sway the electorate. But the fact we’re all poorer ain’t on the Son of a Toolmaker; it’s because of the systems that have underpinned our democracy for fifty years, systems that are woefully out of date.

Capitalism feeds the top of the tree. The more the billionaires have, the less the rest of us get. Trickle down economics stopped even pretending to work a decade ago. Your problems aren’t caused by brown people on dinghies, they’re caused by massive wealth inequality. Until we cop onto the simple fact that we live in a new feudal age, an age where obscene wealth and power essentially controls the rest of us, nothing will change

I’m not here to analyse Starmer’s tenure nor comment on the future. Andy Burnham can’t fix the broken system we live under and Nigel Farage, when he’s inevitably ushered in, won’t fix it. Your mate Nige straight up loves this broken system, it makes him so much richer. So, we’re all fucked for the foreseeable.

While I can’t fix the machinations of global economics, I can end the psychodrama. I can silence the noise and stop the circus that’s hitched its wagons to British politics. I am so sick of it. We all are. Politics isn’t supposed to be entertaining.

“Politics is show business for ugly people,” said US Democratic strategist Paul Begala in the 1990s. Wasn’t wrong, was he? Boris Johnson was our Prime Minister and that man looks like a smashed meat pie in a Matalan suit. Politicians should be dull and unremarkable. We should barely even notice them, let alone like them. Although if you’ll allow me to be real for a moment: I’d drop everything I know for Justin Trudeau.

There are so many things wrong with politics that none of the so-called experts have any answers. Proper political correspondents stand there in front of a camera like vampiric familiars, desperately trying not to drool at the tiniest, juiciest little titbit.

So listen up, Kuenssberg, you ghoul - it’s okay to not know something, shut that flapping chasm in you face for a minute. Someone get over there and silence the reanimated corpse calling itself Chris Mason, its words are nonsensical mush. Silver bullet to the WerePeston please, its howls have tormented the land for far too long now.

The unrelenting urge for these apparent experts (not to mention the undead hordes of podcasters) to punt out any sort of narrative renders effective government moot. They’re like football ‘journalists’ during the transfer window, every utterance is a plaintive wail for attention.

And we, the people, are very much part of the problem. We’re all addicted to this low grade political opium. We demand drama. Which means that the people we elected to represent us are all too busy trying to shove their gobs in front of microphones to do anything else.

So, here’s where the revolution starts. We’re stopping this bullshit rollercoaster stone cold dead. None of this is particularly controversial, unless you’re getting rich off the status quo, of course.

Proportional representation, immediately. No consultation, certainly no referendum (we’ve had enough of those) just a graph of the last few election results with all the different pretty colours on them and a big sign saying SEE?. The two party system is dead. Yeah it’ll be chaos for a bit, but it’s been chaos for an entire fucking decade already so those cries don’t wash with me. I don’t care what colour your rosette is, just get in the room and make us all feel a little bit less miserable, please.

Leveson 2², immediately. The fourth estate is hideously intertwined with Whitehall, like the split-faced Thing from The Thing. Journalists and politicians drink together, they all went to school together, and they flit from one side of the divide to the other like greedy little hummingbirds.

Sky’s Sam Coates and Labour’s Wes Streeting, yesterday. Credit: The Thing Fandom

I shall cut through the ties that bind with a fucking chainsaw. No more cosy chats, I want politicians and journalists who proper detest each other. I don’t want interviews to be gentle dance, I want them to be verbal pugilism. Do your jobs, hold their feet to the flames.

I will mandate that sit down interviews come with two little buzzers. If the politician fails to answer a question sufficiently, their buzzer gets a whack and a small electric shock is delivered to their backside. The interviewer shall receive the same treatment if they try for any sort of gotcha question. The arbiter of this new system shall be me.

And one little thing: stop calling them by their first names. Kemi, Andy, Zia, Zack. They’re supposed to be deeply serious people, not fucking Teletubbies. Address them by their surnames. Do you think Margaret Thatcher would’ve stood for Robin Day calling her Maggie? Of course not.

Still on the press, nationalise it. No billionaires, no foreign ownership, assets taken into public hands. A code of conduct drawn up by a working panel of former journalists, serving MPs, and randomly selected, jobbing Substackers with fewer than 1000 subscribers.

Said code of conduct to be published on the website of every newspaper and broadcaster in the land. What’s the line that always gets used against us peasants? “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” right? So get in line, you rabble, you work for us now.

All political donations to be capped at £100k per person per annum, and absolutely zero funds from overseas. No single individual should be able to influence policy so heavily, especially from so far away. If you care so much then get back here and pay your taxes, rather than throwing millions at your favourite pet from a beach in the Far East.

No second jobs for politicians unless they fundamentally benefit society. Doctor, lawyer, plumber - all cool. But you can’t go and dish out advice in some shady boardroom. And you are absolutely forbidden from paid appearances on TV, radio or in print. Sorry, GBeebies, it’s just Bev Turner for you now.

Jumping parties triggers an immediate by-election. No way someone like little Bobby Jenrick should be able to slink off and deny the consequences of their actions.

Once you’re out, you’re out. Persistent failure shall not be rewarded. Get out in the fields and pick fucking cabbages or something. By all means become a lobbyist, but every single utterance shall be documented. And not on WhatsApp, you chancer. Failure to adhere sees you blackballed for the rest of your waking days.

You don’t get to feather your nest by exploiting your former working relationships. David Cameron, the porcine automaton, drove us all of a cliff in 2016, raked in coin from Greensill in 2020, then was Lorded up in 2023 and shoved into government. And look at how the stench of Peter Mandelson knackered Keir Starmer.

So, no more second chances. If they fail, they are gone. George W. Bush spends his days painting, they can all go and do something like that. Someone chuck Liz Truss a box of crayons.

The economy of noise around British politics must be curtailed. Do you know how many polling companies operate in the UK? Forty. No normal society needs that many people asking retirees in Costa which MP they think cares the most about owls. It’s total busy work and it adds nothing. Smash all of these companies into, like, three, and call it an efficiency. They can fight about the name amongst themselves, it’ll keep them off our dying High Streets.

The podcast landscape is even worse. I just searched ‘UK politics’ on Spotify and counted 126 results before I stopped counting and started to question my life choices instead, especially coming so soon after the chicken thing. We simply do not need this much opinion. I propose league tables, with relegation clauses and everything.

I’m partial to The Trawl now and again and always have time for Lewis Goodall³, but they need to be on rails. If you’re a Professional Political Opinion Haver and you find yourself doing a fifty minute navel gaze just to hit your release schedule, then you’re not on your A-game and you should be busted down to the podcasting equivalent of the Isthmian League. The ex-banjo player out of fucking Mumford & Sons will just have to go and get a proper job.

Now, to you. The masses.

Local authority elections are not midterms and shall not be treated as such. We are not America. We have the Fixed Term Parliamentary Act. You don’t like the Prime Minister, Colin? Tough luck. Sit down, shut up and wait until the next time you get to put your little tick in a little box.

While we’re on that. Under my glorious leadership, voting shall be mandatory. But, there’s a catch: an option for ‘none of the above’ will be on the ballot. If NOTA wins then it’s instant coalition time, baby! No more “holding your nose” in that booth, no more explainers, just clear choices and clear outcomes. Accountability rests with every single one of us, this ensures it.

Finally, and this one is going to sting, I’m turning social media off three days a week. Step away from the endless scroll, stop trying to win an argument on Twitter, cease getting agitated by your Facebook feed. Get out in the world, even if it’s an oven outside like it has been this week. Hush your mouth and get amongst your neighbours. Interact with real people, maybe even develop empathy and understanding.

The Three Day Reset shall be arbitrary from one week to the next, just to keep you on your toes, and if Elon Musk doesn’t like it I’ll call him a friendless nerd while laughing in his stupid face. That’s the only language trillionaires understand.

There, I fixed it. You’re welcome.

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Thanks for being here. It’s long been established that my ego is vast yet fragile, so please show some love before you go - reader interaction makes this gig so much more fun. Have your say in the comments, or restack the piece to help people find it. Or you can just bang the like button on your way out, even that will help the algos find me. If you’re really flush, please consider buying me a pint - you’ll make an independent writer’s day. Cheers, hope to see you again soon.

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1. All sourced from Labour Reddit. I am not a political journalist and never claimed to be.

2. The Leveson Inquiry was a public enquiry into the behaviours and ethics of the British Press following the phone hacking scandal. It found rampant collusion between press, politicians and police. A second inquiry was cancelled by Culture secretary Matt Hancock in 2018, saying that “the ‘world had changed’ since Leveson's 2012 report and the press had cleaned up its act.“ Yeah, okay mate.

3. Because if there’s one name you can trust, it’s Lewis. Ever met a bad Lewis? Exactly. Hamilton, Capaldi, Moody, Collins, Reed, Holmes. All great eggs. We’re like the anti-Jeremy. Jeremys are a bit off, aren’t they?