following one of the most impressively disastrous local election results in british political history, my fellow britstacker Keir Starmer has so far resisted all calls to resign. he’s given a speech of some of his most nasal bleats to date, in which he tried to shore up his position by saying things like “i get it, i feel it” and “stories beat spreadsheets.” but a fun game to play if you like feeling bad is: who, exactly, would be doing a better job in his position? who would you rather have as leader of the labour party? andy burnham? wes streeting? it’s all just mediocrities and nonentities, wall to wall, a conference hall’s worth of rubber chickens; a party with any actual talent in it wouldn’t have allowed itself to be led by a spanner like starmer to begin with. anyway the second half of this post is about my impressions of montreal, canada. to be honest this city sort of freaked my nut. it’s a north american city, it could only be a north american city, it’s got grids of tenements and skyscrapers and freeways and a chinatown and rotting industrial architecture and people on every corner with needles sticking out of their legs, but it’s also a bit french. they have half-rapping country-pop, in french. but it’s not even just the language. the supermarkets are full of saucisson and rillettes. the people are less obese than other canadians and more relaxed about marital infidelity. they have posters up for lfi. even the buildings are a little bit french. on the one hand this is obviously cool and there should be more of these. versions of america with some mysterious extra thing going on. maybe if russia had kept its part. if there were a corner of the southwest that was unaccountably hungarian. a second version of florida where everyone speaks swedish. but realistically it could never happen; the french are probably the only people with the cultural arrogance you need to resist the tide of lowest-common-denominator anglo assimilation. the rest of latin america is being subsumed; people don’t notice it because of the relatively minor counter-phenomenon of mass migration, but south of the rio grande they’re all calling their kids edgar and converting to protestantism, in another generation they’ll all be entirely digested. but quebec holds out. the stop signs even say ARRÊT, while in france itself they all say STOP. quebecois seem to have less of france’s cultural cringe before the united states, less of that deeply embarrassing “tu aimes la musique rap? nous avons le rap. tu aimes des hamburgers?” bullshit. probably helps that they’re already americans. but despite all this i couldn’t really like the place. sorry but it’s strange and sinister at night, an eerie hush over the whole place, and the streets are too wide, and if i’m being honest i didn’t love the french thing either. on seeing a big ring between office buildings i couldn’t help but imagine a french candian person going “alors, le cercle grand” and for reasons i can’t quite explain it made me pissed off. the french thing felt generally unsettling. like being trapped in a weird dream. senseless and unreal place where you’re in america but it’s french. the bagels are merely ok. habitat 67 is amazing though, and i’m now going to ritually wind up the worst people on this site by accurately describing it as the most beautiful building in montreal