Poor Zoe Williams. So desperate is she to fulfil her production norms at the Guardian that she plumps up the column space with total nonsense about Nostalgia:

What is it with bunting, anyway? And The Great British Bake Off, and “vintage”, and Victoria sponge, Kilner jars with home-pickled currants, gingham and Cath Kidston and tea roses on crockery, crochet and craft and posters saying “Keep Calm and Carry On”? What drives this nostalgia, which is so much more than a visual reference or even a set of new dietary rules? It is an announcement of identity – but what self does it declare?

It seems to me that two ideologically disparate movements have smashed together – or, if you were to take a Marxist stance, that one has been appropriated by the other. The first is a reimagining of craft from a feminist perspective, and a repurposing of thrift as a feature of environmentalism.

Phew. Some of us might see it as a bit of a stretch to link bunting and spongecake to feminism and environmentalism. But lo!, Zoe springs across that chasm!

Anyway, on it goes. Odd how the Guardian loves nostalgia when it comes to sucking up to elderly communists or recalling the halcyon days of romantic candlelight when Arthur Scargill turned off the nation’s electricity.

But other than the straining absence of substance (a piece on allegedly surging nostalgia also might have something to say on why there is a groundswell of opposition to the repellant anti-values articulated by R Brand and others lauded by the Guardian?), the language crashes into a parody of bad writing and lazy analysis:

Try to imagine, now, how the current government could have swung its agenda – the radical, hyper-modern destruction of state support structures – without the fictional stoic Britishness embodied in this meme.

Focus, Guardian. Under this government state spending and state debt are UP. That’s the problem.

The word “austerity” conveys an atmosphere that is the exact opposite of the society it actually creates: blitz spirit, togetherness, community, waste-not-want-not (the results of the spending cuts have, contrawise (sic), been mutual suspicion, alienation, and a huge amount of want).

Does she mean contrariwise? How much of that ‘huge amount of want’ has been caused by, say, heavy numbers of poor immigrants turning up and depressing wages and crowding houses? Some? A lot? None? The Guardian never even asks the question.

She saves the best for the end. The climax is magnificent, mixed metaphors billowing in the hurricane of her dialectic!

I put it to Mary Berry et al that the whole vintage package – which started as essentially a rediscovery of simple skills, tying generations together and serving as a visual cake-based bulwark against modern turbulence – has been used to sugar-coat a free-market nationalism that isn’t sweet at all.

A vintage package starts as a rediscovery of skills that ties generations and serves as a visual cake-based bulwark against turbulence while it sugar-coats a free-market nationalism!

Time for a change, Guardian. Give Zoe a chance to cool down. Let radical yet tasty feminist environmentalist Victoria Sponge have a go!

Meanwhile, back in the UK general election this is all you need to know.