If you’ve been reading the blog since the beginning, you’ll know that I love the musical Hamilton. In fact you can read my post from 7 May 2021 about how enamoured I am by this particular musical by clicking the button below. It was my third ever post!
If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?
Hamilton – Aaron burr, sir
During the first half of the musical the above quote is sung and Alexander Hamilton (in real life) is regularly quoted as saying the title of this post. There’s a chance he didn’t actually utter this quote according to the interwebs, but I’m not too bothered about the genesis of the saying but the saying itself. The above is just an explanation intro of my thought train and to boost an old post. Choo, choo! All aboard!
Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the USA and his one time friend and then nemesis Aaron Burr was also around. They were both soldiers in the American War of Independence, lawyers in the years after and then politicians. Hamilton believed that Burr did not stand for anything and had no conviction. Burr would simply unfurl his sails for the prevailing political wind and promote what was popular when he was a politician. Both of these gents were around in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I am fucking fed up of our current politicians in the 21st century who are exhibiting the same. Same shit, different day. Our (thankfully) ex-prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was the master at seeing where the race was being won and then skipping into the lead and claiming he was there first. Our current prime minister, Rishi ‘I have no idea how to use contactless pay’ Sunak is a pound shop version. He has no conviction that cannot be dismissed if he believes the opposite opinion will win him votes. When he was in the race to become prime minister against Liz ‘Lettuce’ Truss (fuck me, Liz Truss was prime minister of my country) he claimed that he wanted to safe guard the environment because his daughters badgered him about it. Now he’s happy to throw around new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea because he thinks it’s going to win him votes.
The Lego haired man has no conviction. He governs in opposition. Because he keeps hammering Labour for being funded by the same man who also gave some money to Just Stop Oil. He’s always attacking someone else, rather than standing up for his own ideals. And he claimed he was on the side of the motorist when actually more public transport is what we need to reduce carbon emissions. He stands for nothing, other than what is politically expedient.
And the actual opposition, Keir Starmer and his Labour party, also fucking stand for nothing at the minute. I genuinely sat for a full half hour and really tried to think about what he stands for. When has he got up and said, ‘this is my project that I want to complete if I were in government.’ What memorable instance has he given us to cling to? ‘This is my big idea, listen up.’ I can’t remember fuck all. Both sides need to stop being so scared and have some conviction. I think they’d find if they stood up and said, I stand for this… and argued their convictions, we would see actual leadership and maybe, just maybe, the general populous would be buoyed by someone who really wanted to achieve things, rather than tear things down. And if the Labour party want to win the next election, stop squabbling between yourselves and start telling us what you want to achieve. Clear, easy to digest goals.
Fuck ’em all at the minute. Rant over.
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