The carefully constructed six-party edifice trying to woo Pongyang away from nuclear weapons with enticements and the threat of sanctions now stands in ruin, with nobody knowing quite what to do.
The entire edifice of party politics in Newfoundland is built around a bargain-basement führerprinzip, and without its strongman at the centre, the party couldn't generate any new forward momentum.
Millions of users are low-grade subversives, chipping away at the imposing edifice of the party-state with humour, outrage and rueful cynicism.
The tribal loyalties that once propelled the Tories or Labour to power are evaporating, taking the edifice of the two-party system with them: both parties are far short of the votes needed to win a convincing majority.
But the first debate gave the Liberal Democrats an extraordinary boost and it's possible this could even lead to the collapse of that creaky, anachronistic edifice, the Westminster two-party political system.
Consensus on what will come next is practically non-existent: perhaps the same rate of growth; or perhaps a massive demographic slowdown, an over-inflated economy, environmental meltdown and the strains of one-party rule will bring the whole edifice down.
Company TekServe Comparable Soviet edifice Moscow bus station {circa 1959}.
Yours, Joan Dear Joan, One of the things that fascinates about these protests is how many organisers are young people who have abandoned party politics to camp out under the edifices of global finance – in America, the occupiers are the Obama generation, worn out with asking politely for change that never comes.
The Fitzgerald inquiry and Labor's victory under Wayne Goss brought this creaky edifice crashing down, reducing the Liberals to a tiny party of the Gold and Sunshine coasts.
Corbyn stands in contrast to the previous leader Ed Miliband, whose half-hearted leftism failed to convince the voters in May, and even more starkly to Tony Blair, who led the party to three successive election victories by deliberately moving the Labour edifice to the center ground.
At 46, he is poised to become one of Europe's youngest prime ministers, but he is less a new-guard politician than a compromise candidate palatable to his own imploding center-left party and to the center right — a young facade on a political edifice in the throes of collapse.
