A week in the ‘UK’ can be a long time in politics. This does not mean that the week has been longer, i.e., more than 7 solar turns, or sleeps in child talk. Each week of 7 calendar days has been exactly the same length as any other, because life on Earth is dictated by the facts of the Universe, which are not a mystery cult with enlightenment at the end, but time marked by the gravity of Helios, Sol, Grian, holding Earth in orbit, with the spin of Earth creating light and dark, from which we measure our time. Fortunately each week is exactly the same length as any other and we hope this will continue for a long time to come. But it is a different matter in British politics.
That a week is a long time in politics is the British way of speaking slightly tangentially, slightly ironically, slightly understating which then creates the serious statement but someone would have to speak or understand native English to get the point rather than take it literally. It was Harold Wilson who spoke the phrase ‘a week is a long time in politics’ during the sterling crisis in 1964 and we know what it means.
That week of July 7th 2026 was one such. After the roller coaster of political extremity in the ‘UK’ of last few years and the left’s hatred of elites (especially males), and rich (Richie Sunak was seen as not understanding daily life even though people who build businesses do very much understand daily life and work 20 hours a day hard graft) and the left’s creation in the new far left of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’ in Your Party, a very, very democratic party amidst the collapse of err democracy, a fairly horrible scene unfolded in Clacton-on-Sea. The name Clacton-on-Sea is as English as could be, and lovely for that, in the decades of the pleasant Angles, cheerful and funny, fish and chips in newspaper, the restored Victorian pier with all the traditional amusement arcades and rides from the times when such things were amusing (before the digital disaster), and the lovely sandy beach for summer sunbathing and swimming, and winter brisk walks.
Yes, this horrible scene in British politics has ended political continuity for good. A new battle line was drawn, and an entirely new contest is ahead between the earthling and the independent space warrior. For the ‘UK’ this is seen by many, ‘at home and abroad’ as the saying goes, as the final proof that politics has run its course, had its day. And who could imagine this situation happening in any other national Parliament anywhere on the Earth’s surface? It does not look good for those who wish to spread the light of liberal democracy to all mankind.
And yet, in Nigel Farage’s egotistical and thuggish rant on ‘putting two fingers up to the establishment,’ he not only short circuited any credibility he might have had, but put himself out of any social discussion on who are the people and who are the establishment? Because he is the establishment, he has a long political career, and has a lot of money. He must be thinking of himself as ‘the people’, but the problem is that ‘the people’ don’t act like this. Who is the establishment and who are the people has long since dissolved into confusion in the last decade or two, but Farage was in the EU from 1999-2000, during which time life in the ‘UK’ has collapsed. The two-finger sign, or the V, means ‘F*** Off’, and why that two-finger sign should mean F*** Off is hard to see, but it did. It did… not now. No, life has become much simpler in recent decades on one thing, and that is the versatile and multi-function of the F*** word, and really no longer is it rude. It is very, very useful, and a major component of linguistic expression up here in northern reaches of England and often 75% or more of Scottish parlance. So for Nigel to threaten the two-finger sign to the establishment just sounds dated really. And to position the people and the establishment against each other in a one liner, it just does not exist.
However Nigel has possibly unwittingly opened an altogether new avenue for British politics, given the amount of time and money and resources and research and development and ambition and futuristic talk that has been given to Life off Earth, on the Moon or possibly even Mars. And that is that in this brave saviour of democracy, Count Binface, who stepped forward to save the day and give a proper contest in Clacton-on-Sea, that it is exactly the time in history to prepare for human-extra terrestrial dialogue, and who else but Count Binface? When he is elected as the MP for Clacton-on-Sea the Westminster Parliament will be the first Parliament in the world able to land running on the Moon or Mars, for Intergalactic Summits and the signing of contracts for all the valuable minerals and metals required to prop up the digital consumption on planet Earth. The small problem of surface radiation will easily be overcome from his ability to speak with the far reaches of galactic linguistics, able to get underground works going, arrange to get water – from somewhere, food, medical systems, good cheap transport to and from Earth, maybe a high speed rail link HS3 on the Moon and HS4 planned for Mars, goods sent from Earth as gifts to keep the inter galactics on our side in case another country realises this new development arising from the ‘UK’ Parliament, and soon every civilization in the universe will see the logic of democracy.