Friday 19th June 2026. (What are the Fafocene Diaries? See here).
Woke up this morning to the news that 42% of the people who turned out to vote (59% turn out) in the Makerfield by-election voted for a faaar-right candidate (35% Reform, 7% Restore). Fortunately tactical voting by Lib Dems and Greens helped The King Over The Water to a resounding 54%, so it now seems that Starmer and the remainder of his Labour Together (since rebranded because that’s what cockroaches do when you lift the rock) gang will be prised from power sooner rather than later.
Or will they? Will it be one of those new boss/old boss shituations?
I lived in Manchester for a good part of Andy the Mayor’s first term. He’s very good at making big shiny promises (e.g. around climate change and emissions reductions) and then blaming central government and creating other promises to soothe credulous dupes who want to be duped, who want ‘vibes.’ He’s very good at absorbing criticism and turning on the earnest ‘nice’ Andy (see how in early 2019 he handled the ‘school strikers’ who came on stage at the Green Summit). See here, from Hannah Knox
More worryingly, though, was that THE GAP also seemed to weirdly legitimise failure as a form of success. When Extinction Rebellion stormed the conference at the end of the day, shouting out to the now depleted audience, ‘do more, faster, now’, and ‘we demand more’ their critique had already been dampened by THE GAP that already anticipated this call to action. Unfazed, Burnham muted their urgent cries by giving them the microphone and inviting them to put their views across, telling us he couldn’t agree with them more. I don’t doubt his sincerity, but perhaps it is important to do more now than just acknowledge, with policy makers, a gap between strategies and projections. (emphasis added)
I suspect he may find the weight of expectation and scrutiny that comes with the top job a little more trying.
More broadly, we would be fools (and most of us are most of the time, and some of us are all the time) to believe that RMS Andy Heralds (of Free Enterprise) any significant change.
Yes, maybe we will get some form of proportional representation (I wouldn’t bet on it). We may get some sort of informal ‘progressive’ pacts, though Labour is generally really opposed to these.
I can’t for the life of me see any real change on – say, Gaza/Israel/the Middle East, weapons sales, intelligence cooperation etc etc.
If Burnham DOES magically become Harry Perkins, then, well, A Very British Coup will ensue.
We live deep in systems that are at the best of times hard to see (because it’s hard – mentally and emotionally – to see how caught up we are). And – this may come as a shock – but we are not living in the best of times; the strategies of perception management, of “public relations” and now AI slop are such that it takes real work and some previous access to training to get an accurate view of the world (1).
We want a ‘better world’, however you define it, but resile from the hard work and frustration that that entails, so we get excited by a new (Burnham is not, but he’s not been tainted by the last ten years of Westminster) cog that promises that IT will change the system from within, without the rest of us being sentenced to twenty years of boredom for our pains.
The gloss will be knocked off quick sharp, I suspect – he won’t have a very long honeymoon.
Meanwhile, the heatwaves roll in, the supply chains start to melt and the Fafocene is another day older.
Footnotes
- Or does it? I keep coming back to that off-hand paragraph in 1984, where it becomes clear that ‘uneducated’ Julia has a far better understanding of IngSoc than the (somewhat-up-himself) Winston Smith.
“In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connexion to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people frightened’. This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him.”
Was this useful? If so, why? If not, why not?
What did you agree with? What did you disagree with? What have I got right, and, more importantly, what have I got wrong, misconstrued, overlooked.
What should I be reading/watching?
What do you think of ‘Fafocene’ as a term? Does it work for you? What does it miss, beyond the fact that not everyone Fucked Around the same amount?
What other topics would you like the Fafocene Diaries to cover?
marchudson.net 
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