THE NOON DAY REST (1889 - 1890) 20.10.2025
With the directives of AI now becoming evermore present in our lives, we may be advancing without fully realizing the human and environmental cost that this ultimately involves. Where we are headed in our world divided by difference and the demands for more, will make what Vincent captured towards the end of his life an impossible dream of no longer belonging to a time that was accustomed to wait and become managed by the simple needs of necessity. Our histories are that of saving ourselves, but we now need to save what remains of our belonging. We are beginning each day consumed and negotiated by social media. Steadily accumulating a dysfunction of lost community living, through non-integration and avoiding the need to learn an appropriate level of English, whilst having to be accommodated within a culture even to the point of joining a queue, but always inline for the benefits.

The result of the General Election was for many an impossible dream of time waiting to be managed by a generation straining to lead in response to the demands of economic necessity. A year on and taxpayers have become increasingly frustrated by the lack of ministerial ability from that same generation in delivering purposeful policies. The electorate voted overwhelmingly for change in response to the financial and social incompetence of the previous government and not a contest of factional dominance from within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Clearly, the electorate were never made aware of how radical the PLP would need to be in addressing the needs of our changing world, with far too many who voted for change, wanting to remain within outdated thinking and some seeing their role as challenging the credibility of what was actually achieved in July, with open defiance of decision-making and generating costly U-turns we cannot afford.

What we urgently need now are contributions that the electorate can recognize as interventions of learned parliamentary skills. Skills put to good use by those tasked with bringing ministerial potential to the attention of an expectant electorate, such as the recently acknowledged hands-on delivery from Darren Jones and James Murray. Because apart from Yvette Cooper, John Healey and Shabana Mahmood, delivery from the frontbench continues to remain stuck fast between the lost opportunities of the last fourteen years and the aspirations of progress from those who need to realize that their time in government is that of commitment and the continuity of loyal service. This means working to deliver policy-making and keen to avoid those strands of unhelpful influencing from the Mayors of Manchester and London, or those using personal distractions and the deviance of self-aggrandizement to undermine the progress of government.

What has been achieved so far is plainly credible given the enormity of the inherited task. However for many it still lacks heads-up vitality from a Labour Party unfamiliar with government, although courageously trying to endorse their mandate. In other words, a government unable to apply the realities of making what brought them into office, fit the frameworks of prosperity alongside the prospects of fairness. Because, although immediacy requires the ending of small boat crossings, the daily heavy-weight pressures of an economy is a make or break for a government trying to hold onto the indulgence of delay. Open approval of leadership is in short supply, with government incorporating alternatives that were once seen as unnecessary, but now essential for an electorate desperate to be professionally governed through streetwise politicians. Bring on the hard realities of experience and learning by doing. If not, we are in the hands of electoral manipulation, where thinking is knee-jerk and long-term accountability non-existent. Demonstrate the advantages and then let us feel the benefits in our everyday, because only then will we know it's been something worth waiting for.

Copyright Bennett cla 2025 research@cla-associates.co.uk

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