I hear endless talk about how Keir Starmer is “destroying the country” and is the “worst PM ever” and it just makes me feel irritated.
Not because I support Starmer but because this sort of rhetoric happens against all politicans.
Before Starmer, people were saying how the Tory PMs whether Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss or Sunak were “incompetent” or “evil”. Funnily enough, as soon as Cameron left office people said May was the worst PM ever - worse than Cameron; as soon as she left office people said that “May may have been bad but not as bad as Johnson”; as soon as Johnson left Truss was branded the worst ever and Johnson was said to be better; now people say things like “at least Truss wasn’t as bad as Starmer”. And it’s that word “at least” that’s crucial here, it’s like people are always wanting to castigate the incumbent PM as “the worst ever” or “evil” or “very useless” and love to employ exaggerative terminology like that. Rest assured, Starmer’s successor - whether Labour, Tory, Reform or other - will likely be branded as the “worst PM ever” and Starmer will be contrasted favourably with the same people conveniently ignoring how just a few months prior they were claiming he was the worst PM ever. Then, what the new PM is succeeded by the next one, the same thing will happen.
And, then on Twitter and other social media sites there are endless users - including politicians from opposing parties, celebrities and ordinary people - who say things like “Britain has fallen”; “we need Trump to save us”; “we are live in a dictatorship” etc and this language is used against Labour but was also used against the Tories and again is just exaggerative terminology cooked up by people who dislike certain politicians and the policies they promote.
I want to understand why people act like this and why they feel the need to be dystopic and exaggerative and pessimistic. Even if Britain has had “bad” politicians, you couldn’t objectively argue Starmer is the worst PM ever or that Johnson was a tyrant etc.
Have things always been this way with people being so political? If you recall the pre-Internet age, were British people constantly claiming that the ruling government was the “worst ever” or that Britain was set to be bankrupted or that it “had fallen” or is it a recent thing?
On Twitter, Liz Truss comes across as really angry and radical with her posts and exaggerative terminology criticising the state of the world - and think what you may think of her - but in interviews or podcasts she comes across as more civil, more mature, less angry etc.