The PM is deliberately not recognising hardships he is responsible for. We are being gaslit. The nation is in an abusive relationship with the PM.
At a time where the abuse women suffer at the hands of men is rightfully front-of-mind, it is worth considering the Prime Minister’s behaviour through the paradigm of an abusive relationship. Denying what is evident, deepening hardship - with the universal credit cut, and generating an alternative narrative of an economic transformation which makes you question a poverty-increasing cost of living crisis unfolding before all of our eyes is gaslighting.
As set out nicely in an article by Solace, a leading domestic abuse charity, gaslighting originated from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play called Gas Light, where a husband drives his wife mad by dimming lights and moving items around the house then denying that he’s done anything. It translates into our interpersonal relationships as a form of psychological abuse, which involves “manipulating someone to make them doubt their own sanity”.
Whether you like it or not, as a UK resident, you are in a relationship with the PM. Though we live in a democracy, the country’s change of leader is infrequent, so you do not get to “walk away” when you want out, and the more dependent you are on the state, the tighter your enforced bonds with this man. To me, these dynamics make it clear that there is an ethical imperative for the prime minister of our country to treat all who are bound within this relationship with dignity. But this is not an understanding that seems to naturally fit our prime minister’s perspective.
Food prices rising, fuel prices rising, taxes rising, queues at the pumps, pigs being slaughtered, vegetables rotting in fields. We can all feel something is up, but when it is put to the man who we need to put a plan together to sort out a worsening situation, we are met with a denial. “This is the plan! The brave plan! Can’t you see it?” we are told. It is us who are insane.
Though it is speculation, and a personal one at that, I wonder if the women Boris has left in the past faced something similar. Knowing something was wrong but being told everything was fine and dandy… tormented by an inescapable feeling of unease which they began to blame on themselves… until they realised, no doubt with an accompanying jolt of emotional pain, that they were right and should have trusted themselves all along.
Perhaps that will be the fate of those who struggle to put food on the table and the heating on this winter. Boris is talking about his “high wage economy” on PMQs but for some reason it hasn’t made its way into your life yet. You are suffering, yet a guilt creeps in that you were not able or willing to instantly transform yourself into an HGV driver. Just like the guilt that exists in an abusive relationship, it is a guilt that any reasonable individual will see is misplaced.
As someone with a great personal interest in psychotherapy I have found that the patterns within our personal relationships seep into all aspects of our lives. We are in a relationship with a man who gaslights, who moves onto something new without suffering the consequences, who leaves you to pick up the pieces yourself. Why wouldn’t he do it to the nation?