:Some people on this board ought to read this passage and take a long look in the mirror.
And so we face the likelihood, as incredible as it sounds, of the government using the majority it won in the last election to pass a bill widely perceived as intended to fix the next — and contesting that election in the shadow of illegitimacy the bill would cast. It will do so, what is more, not in spite of the opposition it has aroused, but because of it: because it has convinced itself that all such opposition, from whatever source, proceeds from the same implacably partisan motives as its own.
This is how you get to 28% in the polls: when every criticism is only further proof that you’re right. It’s one thing to fleece the rubes in the grassroots with this nonsense —They’re all out to get us! Please send money!#— but when you start to believe your own rhetoric, your brains turn to mush. It makes you incapable of acknowledging error, or even the possibility of it. And so it blinds you to the train wreck to which you are headed.
On the other hand, can it get any worse for the Tories? They are already down to the hardest of the hard core: the people whose faith has remained unbroken, through every blunder, broken promise and scandal. Would even the perception that they were trying to fix the election shake this support loose? Could anything?
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