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WE’RE A FEW weeks into our new government and ‘Starmergeddon’ has yet to materialise.
There’s been no swarms of locusts, no flooding, no Woke Horse-People of the Apocalypse. Instead there’s been a feeling of calm. A safe pair of hands behind the wheel. After 14 years under the Tories, the change almost feels like popping a Xanax.
I moved here in 2016. The country had just entered the tantrum phase of its imperial decline. Politics became panto for an astonishing eight years. The Conservatives treated government like a boozed-up posh family playing Monopoly at Christmas. The economy stagnated as the real-world consequences of shoddy leadership began to bite.
Critics who argued that Keir Starmer wasn’t radical enough misunderstood his appeal. Most people just want to get on with their lives without having to check the news every hour to see whether the Prime Minister has done anything mental. Without any great personal charisma or rogue ideological streak, he quietly swept into power with an eye-watering majority. Winning elections is radical, and it’s something his party predecessors hadn’t done since 2005.
While his campaigning lacked rhetoric, in office his government has so far been aggressive. Perhaps emboldened by the scale of his party’s win, he promised the House of Commons ‘nothing short of national renewal’. The opening volley of proposed legislation has been ambitious. While Boris Johnson talked a big game but failed to deliver, there is hope that the opposite may now be true.
The stakes are high. The feel-good factor of bashing the Tories won’t last forever. Already the scuttling sound of nasties can be heard on the periphery of power. Something much worse than Rishi Sunak looms on the far-right of British politics. If progressive centrism fails, the zealots of English nationalism will be ready for their turn.
With the values of a Wetherspoon’s ashtray that’s become sentient, Nigel Farage’s personal popularity has never been higher. Though his Reform UK party only won five seats due to Britain’s Darwinian electoral system, over four million people voted for them. This makes them more popular than the Liberal Democrats, who earned fewer votes yet absurdly won 71 seats.
Therein lies the truth about the shaky foundations of the centre-left landslide. The result of tactical voting more than any great enthusiasm for Starmer’s vision for the country, its ability to survive will depend entirely on Labour’s competence in power. Reform’s surge, meanwhile, has been built almost entirely on the cult of personality surrounding its leader.
Now an MP for the first time after eight failed attempts, Farage has fallen in love with himself all over again. Parading himself around the Republican National Convention, the man looked radioactively bronze. He’d either spent weeks sprawled on a sunbed, or simply slathered himself in fake tan. The bad boy of British politics is having whatever the opposite of a Brat Summer is — let’s call it a Racist Uncle Vacation. Unencumbered by the burden of governing, he’s likely to spend the next five years spouting the same kind of divisive hyperbole that has dragged the United States to the brink of insurrection. Less ‘Guns and God’ and more ‘Pints and Fags’, but just as dangerous.
Reform’s chances of ever forming a government are slim. But Farage’s ability to drag policymakers towards his position over the years has been remarkable. The immigration question is not going to go away and the government will need a coherent position on it. One path leads to extremist fantasies like deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Another path could be to grow the economy and fund public services to the point where working people don’t feel like they’re scrambling for an ever decreasing share of the pie.
Labour cannot continue to allow themselves to be outmanoeuvred by toffs in mustard trousers on issues that matter to workers. The absurdity of a privately-educated former stockbroker like Farage portraying himself as a man of the people needs to be attacked – relentlessly and with purpose.
The son of a nurse and a toolmaker, Starmer has five years to demonstrate to ordinary people that he ‘gets’ them. Being a bit ordinary himself might yet prove to be his advantage. Voters have had enough excitement to last a generation. Tory rule was like a long weekend in Ibiza – too loud, immoral, a fantastic waste of money. Bleary-eyed and nauseous, the British public are due some boredom.
Peter Flanagan is an Irish comedian and writer. You can find him on Twitter @peterflanagan and Instagram @peterflanagancomedy.
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Boo hoo .. God love the poor mites . Maybe we should give them free sweets and drinks and molly coddle them just a wee bit more to get them through this horrific time in school .. Think of the Children
@BL Music: I’m going say or hope you don’t have kids…
@BL Music: you obviously are not a parent. Or you had a tough time in school and think kids have it easy in school when not all of them do . Not every child is cut out for school I had to move my son from a primary school because he was being bullied. ..by his teacher so unless you know better cop on
@Karen Marten: 3 kids .. I was generalising .
I do realise school is tough for some and it’s not for everyone. Most kids are ok with it though
@Clare Power: I bet you don’t have a sense of humour
@BL Music: oh its funny now. Is it after you’ve been called out…I see pet..
@BL Music:
@BL Music: I feel sorry for them when was the last time u actually asked them are they OK or have you left that job to their mother
@BL Music: well then why be such an a ss and post that comment
@BL Music: having a sense of humour what’s so funny about kids feeling isolated and bullies at school so badly that they taking their own lives and not just teenagers primary school students . Because school do nothing to quash bullying or bullies .
@BL Music: There is a big difference between snow flake kids and kids being bullied. today bullying is constant, with social media kids can’t get away from it, different years ago when you left it in school and got some resbite from it. No wonder so many kids suffer with anxiety.
But responsibilities lies with head teachers, and staff, as I heard of many victim blaming saying the kids are to sensitive.
That’s not an excuse.
They have a duty of care and should be zero tolerance of bullying. Both sets of parents should have to engage is solving the issues
@BL Music: one third are not. That’s one third to many.
@Karen Marten: sounds like your kid is a spoilt brat, I’d say the school was delighted to be rid of the runt
I have a niece that was relentlessly bullied in school by a group of girls, she had to change schools as while the teachers etc tried to help, it was the parents of the little darlings that cudnt accept they were bullies…..
@Clare Power: Just like the dogs, it’s always the owners.
@Clare Power: perhaps your niece is the problem
Everyone is different. For some people school years are the best for them. They love the academic routine and it’s structure, rules and way of life and that’s perfectly fine. For others it is just pure torture, some people need some years in the real world working with their hands to experience for themselves or see the managerial jobs they might like and then decide to go and study for the qualifications at 23 instead when are more determined and focused. Nothing wrong with that. I hated school and went back to college in my 30′s. Have my technical and academic qualification now and have my own house, wife and kids and doing fine in life. Not liking geography biology and history at 17 doesn’t mean your life is over. The teachers themselves could do with explaining that to more students.
The comments from some of the people on here makes me hope that they don’t have kids. I’d say if this poll was run when I was at school in the 80s the percentage of people saying they don’t belong there would be even higher. People forget what it feels like to be a kid and they try to rationalise it with their now adult minds. But being a child can be scary and if you don’t understand that please stay away from kids.
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: “Back in the day” some of us were glad to make it past the bicycle shed unharmed on the way home. That was terrifying but made you socially smart and run damn fast.
Can’t see this happening nowadays, no wonder some kids don’t know how to toughen themselves up, something parents should be concerned with.
@Athena: it may have
“toughened” you up. But how many kids take their own lives due to bullying, whether it by by fellow students or abusive teachers in the past? Is your response to that “oh well they weren’t tough enough” ? Have some compassion. Not everyone is like you.
@Gearoid MacEachaidh: Indeed, not everyone is like me. I was bullied for wearing glasses and being in the unfortunate situation of being a teacher’s kid at the school. Got it from both sides, some kids as well as the teachers. So what? Toughening up is the only way to face it, a great lesson for later in life
Kids now can switch off bullying.
Don’t use your socials.
Do Karate or Taekwondo for building self esteem and if someone comes after you, you hit them where it hurts most. Go in first and go in hard. Go in smart and cover your back, especially when going in against your teachers or other parents who would punish you over a lost tennis match against your dad.
Has served me well but it doesn’t mean you trade that in for empathy or compassion.
God help them if they were sent down the mines as they would’ve been in the past, they wouldn’t be long saying they miss school
@qffaffaf affrafrfraf: you forgot to say back in my day…
@Clare Power: What does it matter, the Sloth master is right though.
@Athena: Our stoned friend isn’t really that convincing and is basically saying that if children could experience the sloth ‘interpretation’ of reality (which is actually just a massive assumption) they would be ‘different’… I’m not convinced by this hypothetical truth tbh.
@qffaffaf affrafrfraf: what a stu did small.man.you are
@Thesaltyurchin: I grew up in a mining town where non academically inclined boys went to the mines about 2,700 feet underground from age 16, that was life as we knew it. Have a funny suspicion that those non belonging kids (who probably focus too much on the emotional side of life rather than embracing the rational one) wouldn’t do too well down in them shafts either.
It’s not like the workers were collected by buses for the various shift starts either, nor were the steel cookers.
@Athena: Probs only live til they were 35 or something. Maybe this third of school goers (tho stats don’t do it for me) feel like they don’t belong because class sizes are huge and a lot of schools are under-provided for where space and time are concerned, When I was at school there was 18–25 in a class (it was the second biggest national school in the country at the time) it’s double that now and any of my local schools are exactly the same with zero infrastructural investment in some 30 years. (we Irish only like to build for others, much like the mining!). Anyway this is all the guesswork of some keyboard crusader’s
What a load of self-indulgent nonsense
@Joseph Lenihan: that’s right Joseph..a good thrashing is what they need..like in you’re day…didn’t do you any harm did it lol
@Joseph Lenihan: addressing bullying is self indulgent? I’m hoping you just jumped to the comments after reading the headline and don’t genuinely believe bullying isn’t worth dealing with.
@Joseph Lenihan:
Nobody “belongs” in a school. It is a presage for the wider world. They need to be helped to cope with it as they will have to cope with the big bad world later on.
@Padraig O’Brien: Plenty of people manage to get on just fine in the big bad world with all its different personalities and characters and still feel a sense of belonging be it at home, with friends, in education or in work. Being out in the big bad world doesn’t preclude someone from feeling confident wherever they are and have the ability to get on with most people, and deal with the ones who are determined not to get on with anyone. No good reason a child should feel isolated in school.
@Padraig O’Brien: It’s very easy to see how institutions like the Magdalene Laundries survived for so long in Ireland with attitudes like this. “Shur it’s just they way things are, they’ll have to get used it.”
If a third of students feel this way then maybe the school system isn’t functioning very well and needs to be improved and it’s not all those students fault for a lack of “cope”, is that such a radical thought?
Ok so my experience with both primary and secondary schools . Primary schools are not teaching kids properly . Was just discussing this with my kids . My 11 year old has the same monotonous home work every day for years English work book and maths. She’s exempt from irish . No proper maths homework like what we did in school .no history no geography except for one or two projects . We had infirmary school history geography maths English and irish home work most days. And spelling sand tables and no They are not setting kids up for secondary school they haven’t a clue what to expect stuck in subjects they know nothing about for 3 years then loaded with home work they never experienced before . So I understand where these kids are coming from .
@Karen Marten: And yet children today perform far higher on pisa tests than any other generation before, they perform much better in the leaving (which hasn’t changed) and they perform better in college than any other Irish generation. The countries that still do primary they way you want it done, perform much worse than our kids on independent tests. That is a fact.
We enjoy abusing and dismantling our services, why would Education be any different.
Even reading the text what happens outside the school happens outside the school makes me angry. Yes of course if it didnt happen in the school yard the school isnt going to be driving the bus on dealing with it but the school has a unique opportunity as a neutral body to teach children how to treat each other. Part of the issue is the shrug of the shoulders by the educators. Many also feel their kid is “winning” if they get away with it but the child loosing the most is the one that is not corrected and shown how to behave… long term, time after time, the are the one who ends up loosing out. Lets teach our kids to be nice, to the best of their ability, to include each other, to help each other and to just simply not be mean. My eldest is only 8 and I could already write a short story on exclusion, bullying and being mean. In my experience in Primary school this is driven from home. I can not imagine these children in Secondary.
Some of the nonsense being spewed in the comments on an article focused on the bullying of children is astounding. Some people are shameless.
@Sun Rise: their childless or their wife’s raise the kids while they sit in the pub…..if you were a half decent parent, you would understand the struggles a lot of kids face in school
Bullies thrive in an environment where they can’t be punished. We have made our school system such an environment and bullies sre thriving.
Maybe it’s all the woke stuff going on….
@N.F. Court: or maybe its people who use wokism as an excuse to bully others.maybe if schools were inclusive, and kids were excepted, all would be better in the world.
@N.F. Court: What are you on about? All the evidence says that schools with well implemented inclusion policies have less bullying, happier children and better academic performance.
People seem to want there kids to go to college which is fair enough I get that. But not every child is suited to the academic life. Most kids are more practical. Lots of money to be made in the trades. Nothing wrong with making money with physical hard work
@Michael o Dwyer: oops their. Just for the linguists
Really poor headline. Misrepresents the statistic by not including “or don’t feel they can express themselves “
@Eric O’Flynn: Six of one…you don’t need to be the same as everyone else to feel like you belong amongst a set of people. I feel a sense of belonging amongst my family, my friends, my little team in work, we’re all quite different people with different personalities and interests but I still ‘fit in’.
@Megan Ward: no it’s 2 different things. Not fitting in is one. No being able to express yourself is another. Saying one third is the former is simply not factual. I’m not disputing that either is happening or of concern. I’m just saying the headline is inaccurate.
Hard to express yourself when you are crammed into a small room with 30 other people.
Kids too soft now adays mams and dads babying them too much . I was quiet and sensitive when younger especially but had to toughen up
Well the futures looking bright living in mammy and daddy’s for many long years ahead regardless of how many hours worked. Let them enjoy whatever times there is in school and you g ages because once they hit 21 on great times ahead thanks to ff,fg and cabbage head. Save up and emigrate for a future best of luck to them we have failed them and made a normal life next to impossible now.
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