Marx (and for once I
really do mean Karl rather than Groucho) wrote that “History repeats itself,
first as tragedy, second as farce”.
Some of the most
powerful political speeches made during my lifetime were by Martin Luther King,
who told us that he had a dream about the future possibilities. The peak was
perhaps his
final speech, in which he said that God had allowed him to go up to the
mountain and look over. And that he had seen the Promised Land, before adding,
very prophetically as it turned out, that “I may not get there with you”.
He was shot the following day.
Yesterday, Starmer
told us that he too had a dream, and that he too had seen the promised land.
But getting there will take hard work and sacrifice. Based on his government’s
actions to date, that sacrifice will be made mostly by the old,
the young,
and the vulnerable.
In a tragic perversion of King’s rhetoric, underlining the first part of what
Marx said, it’s not so much a case of “I may not get there with you” as
of “You may not get there with me”. I’d really like to believe that it
won’t turn out to be equally prophetic.
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