25/04/2012
Even though there is everything to play for in the French presidential election,
Reuters is listening to a Merkel wannabe by the name of Sahra Wagenknecht. And she is
suggesting that we could be seeing a drift to Left in Germany.
Without taking this too far, or getting immersed in the arcane details of Germany's internal politics, we can concede that Wagenknecht might be onto something. Every now and again, we see this sort of seismic shift throughout the whole of Europe, where for apparently different reasons people suddenly decide to change direction.
If we are on the edge of such a shift, then this could have interesting implications for the UK, with its local elections next week. The Tories are looking increasingly dodgy and the only thing they can expect in the near future, by way of light relief, is a Hunt Ball â
in duplicate.
On this, it is a fair bet that the last thing the Tories wanted to guide them through an election campaign was a Labour and media circus demanding the resignation of one of their wunderkind. But, if the blues bomb next week, without even breaking one of their oars, it could be a reflection of that emerging seismic shift, rather than a side-effect of the Murdoch show.
The difficulty with analysing this is that the current situation is that it is beginning to look like a Julius Caesar assassination scene (or Murder on the Orient Express?), where the dead body has so many holes in it that it is difficult to pin the deed on any one assassin.
It could even be that, rather than seeing anything particularly profound, we are simply seeing the "switch" in action. This is the phenomenon we see when new governments can do no wrong, however crass they might be, until one day sentiment turns, and nothing they do is right.
Should that be the case, then we are not looking for a single mortal wound, but for a death by a thousand "cuts", so to speak. Every hand that wields the knife shall have partaken in the murder.
I would like to think, though, that we are seeing old-fashioned cyclical politics, but for one reason and one reason alone. It this is a seismic shift, a trend, that there is very little an incumbent party can do about it. The Tory demise will be rather like the fly trapped in the web, as the spider gets ever closer.
They say about politicians that you should be careful who you offend on the way up, and you may meet them again â on your way down. Cameron and his pals might have heeded that advice. We are in the land of the mixed metaphors here, and they can be fatal. We watched them climb, and we will watch them fall.
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