The day before voting in the General Election, I found myself in an unusual dilemma. My current work in progress, a novel of some hundred and eighty thousand words and rising, relies upon the continual negation of hope. It relies on the continuing austerity and declinism that would have been implicit in a resounding victory for the party of the rich, because that’s what my characters are reacting against.
Take all that away, restore some sort of hope and an optimistic trajectory with a victory for party of the poor, and my characters would have had no reason to be. The novel, two years in the writing thus far, would have collapsed as history overtook it. I hasten to add I would gladly have made that sacrifice, finding from somewhere sufficient magnanimity to claim the novel was never meant to be finished anyway.
Right now though, days after the result, I don’t know where I am. And neither does anyone else. Neither rich nor poor have secured a victory over the other, and the only certainty for any of us is a period of continuing uncertainty.
I was on a fairly safe bet, I’d thought – I mean as an author determined to finish his story and still have it mean anything. No one seemed to think a proper left leaning party had a cat in hell’s chance any more, that we were still five years away from an election anyway which was time a plenty to finish my story against the backdrop of a society – at least from my northern provincial perspective – worn threadbare, of shoes busted at the toes and our backsides hanging from our trousers, of racism, misogyny and petty nationalism whipped up by a vile, potty mouthed media and all the while the prospect of a crushingly cruel BREXIT.
The election was called because the received wisdom of the right was that a sweeping victory for the party of the rich was assured, because the other fella, the mutton headed Mugwump, they called him, vilified, shamelessly misrepresented, and smeared for years, was so unelectable you’d be sweeping him and all the other upstart lefties into the dustbin for ever.
And though I liked the cut of the Mugwump’s jib, and I wanted him to deliver an ever so polite bloody nose to the arrogance of the gold plated millionaire political class, I felt overwhelmed by the media opposition, by the voices telling me the Mugwump and I were misguided in our beliefs that even middling Socialism had anything left to offer the country, that even the poor were convinced they must vote for the party of the rich, that this was an age of the self over others, and a race to the bottom.
But the Mugwump’s not looking too bad right now. Sure, he’s been making politics interesting again, drawing the crowds, calling time on the illusion things can never be any different than they are now, that the powerful and the rich will get away with whatever they can, while the weak and the poor suffer what they must. But that the party of the poor narrowly failed to secure a victory means their positive policies must be shelved for another time, and in the mean time it’s more of the same, also more political upheaval, possibly even unleashing dangerous demons from our past, launching the spectre of an ever volatile Ireland back onto our front pages, as the miracle of a hard won peace accord is unpicked in order that the party of the rich might cling on.
But for now my story is still afloat against the same old background of confusion and upheaval. There may be another election in a few months that settles it, time enough maybe to finish, though far be it from me to urge upon society a reality that renders my novel still meaningful. Because it’s just as story and the real story of our times is more interesting and important than any of that.
Perhaps the times are too febrile, too transient for the writing of ponderous contemporary social drama anyway. Maybe the novel is dead, the times more suited to Haiku.
Next time I’ll play it safe and stick to fantasy.
The Rivendale Review 
That’s done more to explain the situation more than the dozens of articles and hundreds of tweets I’ve ingested this week!
Thanks Tom. It helps me to understand it if I try to explain it to myself.
Hi Michael
How about this to get the novel back on track:
1. I think you are right about the times being very febrile right now. Also, in both the EU referendum and the latest general election, it seems to me that the mistake made by the side which believed they were going to win was to “fight the last war” so to speak. For example, the Remain side in the referendum played on fears about the economy (which seemed to work in the 2015 general election) – but people rejected that and voted for the more hopeful but in my view largely bogus prospectus of the Leavers. And now in this year’s GE, the Tories thought they could win by making it about Theresa May being all strong and stable in the face of those beastly Europeans trying to screw us over Brexit -but that was not what the electorate wanted to hear either.
2. If this pattern is followed at the next election, Labour will presumably try to do more of the same as it did at this election ie offering a more optimistic vision – and no doubt hopes will be raised of a return to a more compassionate politics. But what if things have turned yet again and the electorate, faced with a worsening economic outlook due to Brexit, opts for perceived economic safety with the Tories (despite their numerous recent screw-ups)? The Tories, I suspect, will be offering more in the way of a positive vision themselves, so that will make it more of a question of which party do people trust to actually deliver it – as opposed to the choice at this last election, which was do you want the stern, miserable Maybot or the avuncular, optimistic Jeremy? Hopes could therefore be raised only for them to be cruelly dashed – which just makes the sense of disillusionment all the more acute. Could something like that be a way of keeping your characters in being? Or is it just too cruel?
Anyway, just a thought (albeit a rather depressing one!).
Paul
Thank Paul, good to hear from you! An astute analysis here – so much riding on Corbyn now, I hope he doesn’t fall into the trap you describe. Look forward to seeing him headlining at Glasto!
Regarding the novel, I should have known better than to expect clarity one way or the other. A hung parliament gives plenty of scope for the continuing uncertainty the story needs – just hope they don’t call that next election too soon!