Me, not Us..

I don’t want to add to the general misery but…What struck me about Theresa Maybe’s speech was the plethora of ironies which smacked my face whichever way I turned. in her baggy tartan suit she chose to set out her Brexit vision in the very place, Lancaster House, that Mrs Thatcher famously praised the single market. Mother Theresa, a Remainer just a few short months ago, warmed to her ‘hard’ Brexit theme. Along with the other Brexit charlatans (Boris the Spider, Pouty Gove, Liam ‘sly’ Fox, Ian Drunken Smurf  and, of course, Farridge) she has convinced herself that 48% of the nation are now on her side and that the Europeans whom we are stabbing in the back, front and everywhere else we can think of, should lie down and purr as we stroke them with our terribly reasonable demands.

That disentanglement from the EU is dreadfully complicated, is clear. The implications have never been properly thought through and, certainly, many of the marginal majority who voted for Brexit, have not the remotest idea as to where Mother Theresa is taking us. How she has embraced Brexit, though! It has enabled her to get the top job and, as she sees it, enjoy a mandate for shoving our liberal-minded, centralist, outward-looking nation into a right-wing, protectionist, small-island haven for bigots.

The ironies just go on and on. Many of the laws emanating from Europe have protected or enhanced: jobs, conditions of employment, consumer rights, environmental issues,  health and safety…the list is endless. Our finance sector is far better regulated than once it was. Watch what happens when we cut ourselves adrift. The rich will get richer and the man and woman in the street will, slowly, have a number of rugs pulled from under their feet. The 20% fall in the pound, the escalation in petrol and grocery costs…just the start. And the money, the economics is far less important than the culture of inclusion, cooperation, open borders and open minds.

I notice that Pouty Gove has reinvented himself as the interviewing mate of the Donald and the Times is paying him £160,000 to write a few articles. Along with Boris the Spider, who still has the Gove dagger sticking out of his back, he hasn’t done too badly out of political opportunism. Nor has Farridge, of course, who will be quaffing the Trumpmeister’s champers on Friday. These guys are self-seeking, self-publicising opportunists. For them, it’s all ME,ME,ME.

The lack of credible voices of opposition using cogent, liberal, centre-ground moral rationality is distressing. JC, our erstwhile Marxist Captain Birdseye, has failed to offer any sane, articulate alternative voice for the UK to rally behind. Tim Dim Farron can’t do for the Lib. Dems what Cleggy once did. The good people of politics – those for whom US is a far better pronoun than ME – have fled. Cameron, Clegg, Milliband (x 2), Hague, Hunt (Tristram, not rhyming-slang-boy) Balls etc etc. There is a lengthening list of those who have cut and run to after-dinner speechifying, book deals, directorships and dancing. Guys and girls who were in politics ‘to make a difference’ leave the stage at an early age to pursue burgeoning bank accounts. And we can’t really blame them when the man on the street wants Polish brickies to fuck off, along with the rest of a (mostly) nonsensical wishlist. Banging your political head against a brick wall can only go on for so long.

The extraordinary inauguration of the Donald is a must-see event on Friday. Whatever teeth we pinko, mild centre-lefties are gnashing in the UK, it must be a dentist’s dream over the pond. A man and a family who reek of ME, ME, ME  have persuaded Yankee Doodles that they are really an US clan. I wonder if the man and his nation can live up to the pronoun? Theatre has become reality. Are lunatics running our asylums or am I just a Remoaner in a Coma?