Brown survives

As Jonathan Freedland says in today's Guardian, in the end Gordon Brown survived the various attempts to unseat him, and the worst election result for decades because,

the plot to replace Brown lacked two essentials: an alternative candidate and an alternative programme.

And this statement pretty well sums up the state of UK politics.  There is widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the country, indeed the world, and the failure of politicians to provide a lead.  None of the main parties have a credible way out of the current crisis - a crisis which is economic at it's root, but which infects all branches of society and culture - because none of the main parties understand, or are willing to admit, the underlying causes of this deepening malaise.

But then the electorate is not much better.  What do they do after the economic order imposed by politicians of the right brings the world to its knees and they get chance to vote in elections to the European Parliament?  Most stay home, and those who do bother to vote give their support overwhelmingly to parties of the right.

It's surely time for a radical new poltics of the kind espoused in the UK by the Green Party, or by Compass on the 'left' of the Labour Party.  But how we get this imperative to register with the majority of ordinary people, or with mainstream politicians, I really don't know.

We get the government we deserve?  You bet we do.