Many people who were previously indifferent to politics, and especially to party politics, are finding a sense of wonder and excitement in this the most enigmatic election of modern times. Something extraordinary is churning out there. The immediate casualty is two-party politics and the pendulum-swinging assumptions that go with it: first one major party holds office for a while, and then the other, and no one else gets much of a look in. This is beginning to seem as out of date as the competition between two superpowers.
My friends in the old order, and their cheerleaders in the press, have long been assuring me that the public revulsion against MPs’ expenses was a passing phase that would have lost its momentum by the election. They believed that once the obvious miscreants had been purged (though many remain, including certain absolute crooks), the politics of the status quo would return, slightly purged but still intact.
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