To use the parlance, the years 2015 to 2019 saw plenty of self-defined radicals show their arses. With the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the upending of everything they understood about politics, the veneer of progressivism fell away as reality defied their expectations and they scrambled for excuses to oppose the left wing upsurge. But without any cogent argument to explain why they had turned against previously adopted values and aspirations, their collective discourse slipped down the personality/character assassination route. As such, absent anything but vibes, the insult and the swear word were substituted for political argument. It wasn't as though it began as forthright and frank polemic. There was no transitional period. One moment countenance of moderation, the next straight up abuse. It was sound and fury signifying nothing, except their frustrations with the collapse of their world view.
But we have to place our courageously cursing crusaders in another context: that of the attention economy. Those who find a niche and keep plugging at it can build a following, a hefty Patreon, and tot up the writing and broadcasting gigs. And to keep their corner of the market squared, they need to bang out the sweary content to entertain and to ensure some upstart doesn't come along and do a better job. This partly explains the endless proliferation of compound swears. Cockwomble, asshat, shitgibbon, you've heard the lingo and if you haven't cringed, you're part of the problem. This has sprouted an accursed ecosystem of social media users competing to lodge their own witty coinages in the popular consciousness, which the stars of this godforsaken firmament freely dip into to feed their shtick, whether it's "commentary" or "comedy", its edge.
Unfortunately, some of this has to do with the legacy of The Thick of It. Mainstream politics has always been a sweary business behind the scenes, but the satire expressed by Malcolm Tucker and friends was assimilated and embraced as a positive by insiders and the self-fancied politics cognoscenti. The culture of sweary centrism draws on this, calling on the show's absurdity and naffness as a marker of their in-group. It, along with an accompanying fetishising of ruthlessness and the dark arts work as markers of authenticity. Signs of them "getting it", of knowing what politics is really about. It also shows that no matter how "stinging" and fruity their descriptions of the Tories and their works are, they are telegraphing their acceptance of the rules of the game.
In other words, it doesn't matter if they carpet the Tories with clusters of F-bombs and C-incendiaries. The damage they can only ever do is superficial, because there's nothing there. Which fits centrist politics and its desire to preserve what is very well.
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The Blairites tend to be very bullying and aggressive too. Really nasty.
«fetishising of ruthlessness and the dark arts work as markers of authenticity. Signs of them "getting it", of knowing what politics is really about»
An interesting report by a commenter here not long ago:
«Starmer on the Andrew Marr show. He was asked what had happened to the Ten Pledges. The answer, “Look, I’m a pragmatist, not an ideologue.”»
«<Labour Brexit chief urges party’s Remainers to ‘get over it and move on’ in conference speech [...] “It sounds a little bit harsh to get over it and move on, but that’s what the public have said to us in 2019, and how we move on [...]”»
«Starmer on the Andrew Marr show [...] “Look, I’m a pragmatist, not an ideologue.”»
Another pragmatist, a role model, of the switch from "Yes we can" to "Too big to prosecute":
https://www.thenation.com/article/mr-obama-goes-washington/>
«“I don’t think in ideological terms. I never have,” Obama said, continuing on the healthcare theme.»
BH Obama then continued by pointing out that a very expensive private healthcare system has the big advantage of diverting a lot of money to useless bureaucrats and their employers:
«“Everybody who supports single-payer healthcare says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents 1 million, 2 million, 3 million jobs of people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”»
I guess that's something Wes Streeting (and every previous Conservative minister) may be thinking as to privatising even more of the NHS for the sake of boosting the revenues of Blue Cross, Kaisers, etc.
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