Steve Whitaker, Literary Editor
Poem Of The Week: 'On A General Election' by Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne and Bridge)
Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne)
The brevity of Hilaire Belloc’s clever polemic is of a piece with the sentiment he expresses: the man on the Clapham Omnibus might give vent to the intuition in a similarly abbreviated form. Similar, but different. What rescues the poet’s single rhyming quatrain from the cliché of unexamined correlation is the condensing of wit into a neat reversal. For Belloc is taking a commonplace view – “politicians are all the same” – and squeezing the stereotype to illustrate what he takes to be an absence of light between the capitalized enormities of Privilege and Democracy. The point appears to be that the banner of Democracy will remain ragged as long as its committed upholders share the same predilection for decadence as those for whom money and indolence are second nature.
The ‘champagne socialism’ of our own era might lend retrospective corroboration to Belloc’s view were both not so manifestly lacking in nuance. I cannot speak for Jacob Rees-Mogg’s taste in ‘Women, and Champagne and Bridge’ but I can say with some certainty that he and his privileged colleagues are testing the limits of Democracy to breaking point.
The ‘champagne socialism’ of our own era might lend retrospective corroboration to Belloc’s view were both not so manifestly lacking in nuance. I cannot speak for Jacob Rees-Mogg’s taste in ‘Women, and Champagne and Bridge’ but I can say with some certainty that he and his privileged colleagues are testing the limits of Democracy to breaking point.