Lessons have been learned?

I am laughing my socks off at the various explanations, non-apologies, excuses, denials and downright fuckwittery of the chattering classes, the ‘metropolitan elite’, the ‘social commentators’, the bloggers, Tweeters and apologists for a dozen strains of political belief, indoctrination, received ‘wisdom’ and downright inability to come to terms with the outcome of the local council elections. Spin and counter-spin, lies and deceit. In short, the usual bollocks.

The newspapers have been filled with all the regular post-election soundbites: We hear what you are saying. We will learn the lessons. Clearly there is an issue to address here. Mistakes have been made. We understand the frustrations of the British people. But that’s the point, isn’t it? None of the established parties have yet learned a single thing. They remain perplexed at attitudes that prevail up and down the country; attitudes that Westminster has helped to create and allowed to fester.

For decades, whenever they were asked, in various surveys utterly ignored by national government, millions of ordinary people have expressed distrust with the European Union as they struggled to cope with the fallout from the loss of traditional regional industries. But the MPs that variously tried to represent these concerns were consigned forever to remain backbenchers. While at the behest of big business and the EU the border controls became non-existent, parties both red and blue thought they could buy off the indigenous British with welfare bribes.

Had the intention been that Britons would live in idle luxury while legions of foreign wage-slaves did the work and created wealth they may have been applauded, but the view from High Street, England showed only the expensive suits on the turned backs of political placemen. Closer to home what working Britain saw was declining wages, housing shortages, overcrowded schools and hospitals and ever more resources poured into praising the EU and promoting a mythical multicultural promised land.

But the top-table politicians saw none of this and dismissed as liars and scoundrels and of course, racists, those who dared to dissent, because those with money and power only ever have to encounter the good parts of mass migration of workers. What use is a cheap plumber or nanny when you can afford neither because your own plumbing or nannying skills have been priced below your subsistence income level? Whatever the Westminster mob say they believe, many ordinary British workers feel they have simply become a population which is replaceable at whim.

It is one thing to be a migrant worker, moving to a country with better prospects, but where is that prospect for an unskilled Brit? To a Bulgarian builder, used to working hard all day for little more than £1 an hour, the minimum wage in the UK is a dream come true, but where are the better wages for an English plasterer to be found? The advantages of free movement of peoples within the European Union work in only one general direction: poor countries lose their talent and youth to rich countries and the poor in rich countries become a dependent and despised underclass.

There are no easy solutions to any of this and no leadership equal to and willing to take up the challenge, but until the political and media classes start to actually listen to what people other than themselves are saying there is not even the slimmest chance of gaining back the support of several ignored and forgotten generations. Whoever holds the balance of power in Britain, these issues will be there for yet more generations to come. Meantime, stand by to laugh again as the next shitstorm of prevaricating, meaningless soundbites arrives to accompany the EU election results tomorrow.