The Conservative Party conference is in full swing and, according to Telegraph political sketchwriter Michael Deacon, it sounds like an absolute laugh-a-minute riot of colour, imagination and excitement.
Alongside this rollercoaster-style thrillseeking, the annual get together of the current ruling party has been characterised by a somewhat disturbing lurch to the right in terms of language and tone.
In the wake of June's referendum result, and all the political chaos that followed, the big discussion has been how on earth to actually enact Brexit: would it be 'soft' - continued access to the European Single Market, dependent on continued freedom of movement of people - or 'hard' - an end to free immigration between the UK and Europe but no access to the Single Market.
It now seems clear, from the speeches on show in Birmingham, that Theresa May and the government is angling towards the latter, seemingly believing that people's desires to control immigration are overriding their economic concerns - a not inaccurate conclusion, given the way that the Brexit vote was campaigned for.
Given this, Deacon unearthed this passage, written back in 1946 by George Orwell, taken from one of his columns in Tribune magazine (which were collected in Seeing Things As They Areearlier this year) which eerily seems to describe exactly what is currently happening:
Clarifying the context of the writing, Deacon added the following:
As the nation awoke to headlines that wouldn't have been out of place in 1930s Germany, we can only wonder at where all of this is heading.
