Life is total nonsense, to the point that spending it moving chickpeas from one pot to another, as one of the characters in La peste does, is the same as jumping off a bridge. For Camus we can adopt the attitude of putting an end to everything or of looking for our own meaning in things, but in any case it doesn't matter. And for the Danish philosopher Kirkegaard, the reality of God was so far beyond human comprehension that it was absurd by definition to believe in him.
In literature and art, absurdism or philosophy of the absurd is the tendency to avoid the limits of logic, experience and reality to indulge in the irrational and the arbitrary. And in politics, this is what we are seeing these days in Great Britain, a country that has been intervened in practice by the markets, a prime minister humiliated and forced to completely abandon her neoliberal program and make a 180-degree turn, where the de facto boss it is the Minister of Finance, Jeremy Hunt, who has lost two elections for the leadership of the Conservative Party and in the summer came last with only 18 votes from the deputies. But still, he now he wields the ultimate power.
The absurdity went up one more step yesterday with the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Suella Braverman, from the extreme right wing Tory, enthusiastic about sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, in favor of denying them any consideration if they enter the country illegally and of reducing the entry of immigrants to “tens of thousands” a year. She has officially resigned for the infraction of having sent an official document to another deputy over an unsecured network, through her own email. But things certainly go further.
Liz Truss, who has the political instincts of a household appliance, wants to increase immigration to stimulate growth, because there is a labor shortage and this affects productivity. The problem is that this goes against the fundamental principles of Brexit, which are something like those of the National Movement in Franco's time, an unquestionable axiom. And Braverman, with the support of the most radical Eurosceptic bloc, stood up to him.
It may be one thing, or the other, or a combination of both, or a decision by Jeremy Hunt, the boss, who wants to wipe the slate clean. The same as Truss, who, as if absolutely nothing had happened and was not completely disempowered, wants to evolve from the most radical economic right to the moderate center as a lifeline. More than fifty parliamentarians have asked for her head, six of them in public, while intrigues continue to find her a consensus successor and get her out of her misery.
Braverman's resignation letter was devastating, saying that "the Government is not serious and is not going anywhere", and that she accepts her mistake (sending the official document by email), "not like others who also commit them , but they don't recognize it and behave as if they could be fixed with a magic wand." Continuing with her absurdity, Truss has replaced her with former Transport Minister Grant Shapps, whom she dismissed upon coming to power for not having supported her candidacy for her leadership. Her successor did not thank her for her appointment, but Hunt.
Truss survived yesterday so she could die another day. It passed the parliamentary control session and a Labor motion to make fracking illegal (326 to 230 votes, with the shouting and shoving dissent of a handful of Tory MPs), guaranteed that pensions will rise to the level of inflation under pressure from the press right-wing, but hinted at drastic cuts in social subsidies and the budgets of all ministries, and additional taxes on the profits of banks and energy companies.
What is the point of a prime minister forced to renege on everything he promised just three weeks ago and conservatives who have no choice but to go against all their instincts and raise taxes? Truss is like the doctor who has amputated the wrong leg, he asks for forgiveness and holy Easter. Camus and Kirkegaard would see it as a vindication of the theory of the absurd.
