Politics controls the spectacle by making itself the spectacle. We vote not for the winner, but for the tournament, the psychodrama of the struggle to win played out & analysed move by move in public. Politics, supported by its commentators with their insistent quacky voices, markets not its ideas or intentions but the minute-by-minute narrative of its own inner workings and techniques. It is like an advert that sells being an advert. Meanwhile, the material infrastructure of the country steadily falls apart. Actually, I am so fucked off by this I could spit.

— M. John Harrison, what we can learn from listening to Radio 4, 2025