Cometh the hour, cometh the man. An hour in mourning, or a longer PM?
If omens are your thing maybe you have noted a partial solar eclipse over Westminster today.
The photo image is a lunar eclipse 28th September 2015, but the eclipse effect similar to that seen today.
If celebrations are your thing, maybe you noted a festival that celebrates good conquering evil the day Rishi Sunak was announced our next PM.
If fiction is your thing, then at 42 years old, his age happens to be Douglas Adams’ Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy answer to “life, the universe and everything”.
If concern for others is your thing, then perhaps it is to such coincidence that one must turn. Symbols of hope, when symbols are all that is left to present reason to think the change coming next is better than of recent past.
For me privilege begets privilege. I grew up in its light, and sit comfortably in my skin. For others this is a day of celebration because of the symbolism of a what, not a who, the door to No. 10 now lets in.
I too applaud what this symbolises, if such symbolism is what this day proves to become. But with a cautionary note that symbols reflect both belief from our past, and possibility of a future. Symbols quickly become whatever those empowering belief and possibility intend. So the talisman of hope anyone reads into symbolic interpretation, had better be backed up with future actions that suit.
I hope this one platform of personal change reflects more profound change, and is not simply further endorsing debate about Winchester vs Eton to get into Oxbridge. In the Rishi example, thereafter a means to study an MBA at Stanford, and experience the “real” world of work life from the walls of Goldman Sachs and various hedge funds. And the small matter of marriage into true wealth.
This could still yet just symbolise what the UK is perhaps most symbolic of. A dual society that continues to put the Masters of the Universe, as a them. Can we hope this is a perspective that can now quickly be set toward enabling the many to build just as capably too? Colour-blindness perhaps, or just further blind-eyes turned inward to the few.
Hardworking parents, sacrifice toward building a platform for the next. Symbolic perhaps of the role of us all, to the generations yet to come. As symbolism of today, perhaps this is a moment of eclipsing what has come before, and seeking new meaning of what is indeed good over evil. For me that is certainly the only choice of light over dark that should ever have been. But if this just becomes another shade of wealth privilege and the self-serving of the few, I fear for what more let down may symbolise for the many, and what they may next choose to do.
Good luck, Rishi. The latest unelected stewardship servant with much to do. Symbolism aside, it is in the belief and the intent of your next actions, to which we place all eyes upon you.