Going to Extremes

The overall story after today's Local Elections will no doubt be a swing from the Liberals and Conservatives to New Labour. That's the logic of mid-term elections with the Government doing unpopular things. In the great scheme of things, a load of councillors will lose their seats to a load of other councillors, but thanks to 20 years of centralisation of control over council funds, it probably won't make much difference.

But there's an increasing amount of chat around the fringe parties - Respect, BNP - the National Front, apparently, in some places. I hesitate to include UKIP in that list because they're almost looking mainstream in comparison.

We live in uncertain times. We watch the Eurozone in crisis. We know the last Government spent a load of money they shouldn't have, but we don't think the current lot know how they're going to get us out of it. And those traditional espousers of lost political causes and floating voters, the Lib Dems, are tied into the lack of vision that the Tories are giving us.

Uncertain times give people the need for simple answers. That's often where apocalyptic comes in. For all the weirdness of the imagery, the apocalyptic message is, at heart, simple. There's bad guys oppressing the good ones. The world's falling apart. It's all gonna end nastily, but the good guys will win out. Stick with us, we're the good guys.

At a time of uncertainty, there's simple hope there. And when there's an oppressive regime, a vicious dictatorship, a dehumanizing system - it's a reminder that these things will pass, and an encouragement to change them.

But the visions of the bad guys are splintered today. Are we dealing with an Islamophobic Western conspiracy, or an Islamic conspiracy against the West? Is it that the bankers, Media and Tories are conspiring to grind us all into the ground while feathering their own nests? Cos if so then Labour was just as enmeshed in that as the Tories - better look further Left. Are we being over-run with Somalis, Poles, Romanians or Pakistanis? Whichever simplistic problem you see will determine the simplistic solution you choose. Or is it that the Evil Europeans are taking our sovereignty, dissolving our borders and allowing terrorists to swim freely in our swimming pools? If so, then Mr Farrage is very definitely your man.

Life is messy, our problems are hard and it's not stopped raining since the Drought started. The simple problems and simple answers may well be attractive today. Let's just hope (and pray, if you do) that they don't look so sensinle at the next General Election.