They Never Learn

A poet I love is Phillip Larkin and this terse and yet poignant evocation of a dead love that still cannot relinquish hope is a favourite .The small tragedy of knowing to ask is pointless and asking anyway uses a Parliamentary metaphor which must be a rarity .
It sprung into my mind when I read this on the Coffee House blog about a funereal PMQ`s today.

“It is becoming pitiful to hear Brown return to his bleat about Black Wednesday, minimum wage, low interest rates, yada, yada, yada. It is like R2D2 running into battle armed with nothing but a war cry. He later mentioned floods, foot and mouth and terrorism in his defence. How far away those days seemed now..................”( Fraser Nelson)

“Since the Majority of Me
(P Larkin)


Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways.
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of majorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.”


Brown is becoming a pitiable figure for a Politician that is the end whether he admits it or not