AND NOW, THE END IS NEAR

It’s time to draw the final curtain on the Tories’ utterly amazing election campaign.

The Titanic was a metaphor from the moment it hit the ocean floor. Thomas Hardy, who never missed an opportunity to write about death, was quick on the scene: in his 1912 poem ‘Convergence Of The Twain’ he pictured sea creatures swimming around the new wreckage, an immediate symbol of Man’s “vainglory” in the face of icy, implacable Nature - terrible, but also thrilling, if you like that sort of thing, which he did.

Some decades later, Josef Goebbels commissioned the film Titanic. Not the film Titanic you’re probably most familiar with - unless the film Titanic you’re most familiar with is the Nazi propaganda film Titanic. With his keen eye for symbols, Goebbels imagined an epic masterpiece revealing the arrogance and greed of Britain’s officer class. On seeing the finished work, though, he quickly realised it wasn’t quite the win that he’d hoped for: by 1943, it was very clearly a film about the Nazis’ hubristic bid to rule the world. He promptly banned it from being shown in Germany.

These days, the metaphorical import of the RMS Titanic is no great mystery revealed only to the sacred few. Which makes it all the more surprising that Rishi Sunak chose to spend his first full day of campaigning at Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. In another film called Titanic, the character of Jack Dawson is seen standing on the pre-iceberg prow, punching the air and hollering: “I’m the king of the world!” Standing on the quayside fielding questions about sinking ships, Rishi Sunak didn’t look like he wanted to do the same. But at least the Tories weren’t the first political party to fall foul of Titanic metaphors - a fact his ‘close aides’ might have offered as consolation.

During this campaign, Rishi Sunak and his advisors have definitely done things their way. Only the day before, he’d chosen to announce the election wearing his “well, this sucks” face in the rain. What might he choose to do next - walk the plank? If there was a disaster metaphor in the vicinity, they unswervingly sped towards it: launching the car crash manifesto at Silverstone; deserting the troops at D-Day - or the veterans, who used to be troops, at D-Day commemorations - it’s basically the same thing; the election broadcast that featured a Union Jack flying upside down, which I’m pretty sure can sometimes raise the devil.

What was going on? This was the party that wins all the time; last time, they’d torn the country apart and installed a maniac as prime minister and still won a landslide (now that’s being a natural party of government). This time, they couldn’t win for machine-gunning themselves in both feet. The hyper-real quality has made the whole thing hard to fathom. Were they somehow trying to replace the Titanic as the ultimate in disaster metaphors? 

From a schadenfreude point of view, it’s been great, really gussying up a campaign which was often just two men honking on about tax. Schadenfreude: that lovely German portmanteau word combining ‘harm/damage’ and ‘joy’ - taking deep pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. Which isn’t very nice, but then, you don’t always have to be nice. 

Once the risk of some mythical narrowing lessened, the glee was palpable and the media leaned in with some strikingly morbid metaphors of their own. The Tories were in a ‘doom loop’/’death spiral’, evoking an uncorrectable plane hurtling to earth. Nigel Farage ‘gingering up’ the election - with dog-whistle racism and then Reform campaigners’ racism-racism - was another ‘hammer-blow’ to the party's chances. D-Day was the ‘nail in the coffin’ - there were more final nails to come. 

Soon, Tories were joining in: Nadine Dorries heard/spread rumours that Sunak would “fall on his sword” before the election, evoking the double-demise of Brutus and Cassius after the second battle of Philippi. Daily polls promised an ‘extinction level event’ (don’t believe the hype: Tories will not go extinct - anyway, they could always be replicated from strands of DNA). Clearly, something was getting released. Maybe all the figurative savagery hinted at the violence lurking within civilisation. Maybe it hinted at the violence lurking within Nadine Dorries. 

And on it goes. Right now, it looks like Betgate is the final final nail. But who knows? Perhaps tomorrow we’ll find out that the Sycamore Gap sycamore had actually been felled by Tory MPs.

It all led to a sense of wonderment - at all the stupidity, yes, but also at how Sunak kept going; Andrew Marr in The New Statesman wondered how he hadn’t hit anyone. Was it sort of impressive? Or uniquely unimpressive? Who could tell any more? And did this interest in Sunak’s inner life signal new levels of empathy for this not notably sympathetic figure?

Personally, I’ve seen all of Succession and about 20 minutes of The Crown so I know even morally compromised members of the super-rich elite are sort of human too. And, well, there was that moment… after the D-Day ‘events’, when Starmer declared: “For me, I knew there was one choice - which was to be there.” On hearing this, I immediately imagined Sunak’s response: “Oh, just fuck yourself.” So, in a sense, I have walked at least a few steps in Rishi Sunak’s tiny shoes. I think it might have made me a better person. 

Unpacking the reactions to this real-time disaster metaphor, it can look like ‘worthy’ feelings are rubbing alongside ‘unworthy’ ones - but is there really such a strict divide? If we consider the malicious gloating - of which I’ve definitely done loads - as ‘bad schadenfreude’ (badenfreude? No, that’d be ‘bath joy’, which is different) maybe there’s a good kind too? According to studies, capuchin monkeys and toddlers feel something called ‘inequity aversion’ which is… well, it’s having an aversion to inequity. And, by implication, to those bringing it: hello, the Tories. So this is core stuff. And in terms of harm/damage, I really think they started it: did any of them ever seem bothered - genuinely bothered - by all the harm/damage in, say, A&E corridors? If they did, I definitely missed it. 

To conclude, then, I’m putting my cards on the table and saying I think they’ve lost this one - the unsinkable Tories are now very, very sunk. And while it’s quite possible that you weren’t worrying about relishing in their defeat, I would still urge you not to worry, even though you probably weren’t going to. Just to be clear: I mean, it’s silly even saying this because you weren’t going to worry, but if there were any qualms about taking deep, deep pleasure in the Tories’ utterly miserable collapse - and there probably weren’t, but if there were - do be assured: you’ve absolutely earned the right to engage in gleeful, possibly malicious, rejoicing - and hollering, and punching the air. It’s all about giving voice to that pro-equality capuchin monkey within. 

I wonder if there’s a German word for that.