AT PACE

If there’s one term that sets my teeth on edge to Dexter/Patrick Bateman–degree-type levels, then it’s Keir Starmer and his Westminster wonks when they use the expression “at pace”. God knows who came up with this dreadful phrase that so perfectly exemplifies the witless and most historically unpopular prime minister on record (minus 49, according to the latest BMG Research survey), and the deadly dull civil servants who help him run (or ruin) the machine of British politics as if it were a computer manual.

There’s an assertion at the heart of the wording “at pace” that suggests efficiency is underway in the carrying out of policies and political decisions, and that this, in itself, overrides any need for scrutiny or questioning from the public, media or opposition. It’s this club-footed, Dalek-like propulsion towards the Labour Party’s delusional idea of “progress” that perfectly demonstrates the brainless, heartless, humourless drive to get things done, as if speed alone will solve a broken nation’s problems.

Spoiler alert. It won’t.

Surely a better phrase for this calamitous and corrupt administration would be the phrase ruina imminens — a perfect summation of the current state of affairs in Westminster and the country, as Starmer’s government heads “at pace” (either deliberately or through sheer incompetence) towards a pending and total collapse of our society and its culture.

For make no mistake, the fall of Rome (or, in this case, the UK and the West) is without question playing out “at pace” before our very eyes.

In this sense, perhaps it is an apt phrase for these apocalyptically accelerationist times after all.

I shall now undertake an 'about-face' (U-turn) 'at pace' and take it back.