Here I go again…

I was in retro mood yesterday and bought a CD by the Hollies. A lifetime ago they had a hit with Here I go Again. What’s the use/I’ll just give in/try as I may-and I do/ never win, never win/baby I never win. Well this could be a mantra for your favourite team, those unlucky in love, wannabe lottery-winners and Tim Henman.

Politics across the globe is full of wannabes who dump principles for advancement. And with Europe in schism the opportunists who initiated the disaster  of our depature (you know – Boris the Spider, Pouty Gove, Farridge, Ian drunken Smurf, Liam ‘sly’ Fox et al) have been replaced by the opportunists who see the main chance to win their own personal lotteries. Across the Channel the immoderate voices of the far right battle with the revenge-seeking eurocrats who want to beat the misguided and disenfranchised of Lincolnshire and the Potteries to pulp. Let’s hope Le Pen isn’t mightier than the sword because neither prospect is welcome.

Over here little Jimmy Krankie in Scotland has seized her chance. What a joy Brexit has been for her. While we mortals are staring at isolationism, economic meltdown and losing our euro mates and the rest of the UK, she is grabbing her personal zeitgeist to get what she wanted when she was deputy to Alex Salmond : a place in history. A straight fight it is then, between Mother Theresa and the Krankie.

What other opportunists will emerge from the ashes of Brexit? Comparisons made with 1930s Germany may not be so far off the mark. But opportunists don’t always wear Fascist armbands. The rich get richer, empty vessels make more noise and vacuums are filled by those who are desperate for the spotlight. The rest of us hunker down and hope that all will be well. After a period of remoaning about the iniquity of it all we retreat into ourselves and let the opportunists get on with it. We shouldn’t but we do.

As the Brexit Bill passed through both chambers yesterday, I noted the heavy Labour support in the Commons. Corbyn’s opportunist game is to see the Tories, eventually, fall on their swords and hope to pick up the pieces. Scotland is a lost cause for Captain Birdseye, so he might as well concentrate of messing up England and Wales. Oh dear. Come on Tim Farron! Become an opportunist. You’ll get book deals and paid dinner invitations galore. And you might, just might put the UK back in a fairer, more outward-looking and moral place. Faint hope now perhaps, but I’m sure Timmy could take a course in opportunism. The Trumpet Major across the pond must have several running at his conditioning centres/universities.

I have broken my promise not to write about things Brexit-associated. My Remoaning wounds still need licking though. For the first time in my life I have thought of myself as something other than British/English. I am the son of an immigrant, a Dane who came over here after the war and married my Mum. My Dad was proud to keep his Danish passport but also loved Britain where he lived for the rest of his life. Were he alive, I suppose he would be feeling vulnerable, alienated and sick.

Oh, Here I go Again. Let’s change the track. He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother. Now that’s a title that the opportunists just wouldn’t understand.