Waking up today to an inconclusive election result, it seems that after all the voters have been doing some wider reading than the leaders’ choices of Blake (three votes) and Owen (one). A surprise declaration, then, for John Keats of the Negative Capability Party. As his manifesto says:
Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.
And to think he wrote that in 1817, long before even the 1832 Reform Act! Still, to quote a more demotic voice, ‘it ain’t over till it’s over’, so keep your poetry books ready for more turns, conceits and tragi-comic outcomes.