Stylization, 'aestheticisation',Tony Blair as an extension of Britain's pop culture - these were new trends in politics a decade ago, and the cause of considerable commentary.
Though in many respects what they are doing amounts to the extension of Blair, the Cameron-Clegg combination does not attract anything like the same attention to the way they are doing it. It is not noticeable; in the precise meaning of the word, it is not aesthetic.
Not that there is any more substance or ideological coherence to what they are doing; rather, the absence of these is longer noticeable.
This suggests that the stylization of politics was a temporary phase; a tacit acknowledgement of the lack of substance, articulated as concern with what is noticeable, i.e. aesthetic. In this way, the emptying out of politics went relatively unnoticed: acknowledged but not as such.
Today, the lack of substance needs no introduction. It is simply what we do, in all manner of fields far beyond the political.
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