Can we please stop pretending this is a normal election? Everyone’s at it. Gabbing about NHS funding, arguing over energy price caps. Everyone’s acting as if it’s 2015, or 2010, or any other election year of the modern period, when mildly right-wing parties and mildly left-wing parties argued the toss over fairly technical matters and voters decided which was most trustworthy. It’s pantomime, a performance of normalcy in an era that’s anything but normal. Because we all know, somewhere in the attic of our minds, that this is an election like no other, and that it’s about one issue and one issue only.
You don’t even have to name it. It hangs in the air, a perfume of liberty to those of us who like it, a foul stench to those who hate it. It infuses everything. It exercises the hopes of swathes of the public, and chills the hearts of much of the political class.
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