When Thursday Comes

So the Conservatives are dead. Not just here in the UK, where they have been on life support despite best advice for decades, but in Spain, too, it seems. The supposed ‘fascist’ ‘far-right’, ‘extreme right’ resurgent Nazi party, Vox, has split the right-wing vote, but the jubilant declarations of victory for the left have a hollow ring. The socialists didn’t manage an outright majority and some commentary suggests they only held the seats they did because people believed the negative campaigning against the ‘voice of the people’.

Make no mistake, Vox’s party name is not chosen in vain and its equivalent across the westernised, socialised world is growing in confidence. Socialism sounds so good when you only hear the aspirations, but humans have a habit for acting in their own interests. When a political party promises milk and honey the do-withouts are naturally drawn to them; why would they do otherwise? But when they realise that the left is just as authoritarian, if not far more so, than the right, many find the promise turning sour.

Yes, of course, if you are at the bottom of the heap, of course you should want better. And from that position there appear to be far too many who sail through life without lifting a finger; inherited wealth, cushy positions, more money than they can spend in a lifetime, etc. The sort of people who openly display their good fortunes (boastfulness also being a human trait). But they are just the visible targets, largely because the rest of us are quietly toiling away, getting by and hoping not to be rinsed by the system.

For the fact is, tax and welfare is a zero sum game. Just as you can’t borrow your way out of debt – no matter what Jeremy Corbyn might think - you can’t tax yourselves into prosperity. Yes it could be fairer, yes some people could and possibly should pay more tax, but the reality is that profligate governance got us where we are now and the election of an uber-profligate replacement will do nothing to improve the situation apart from some highly visible, highly popular, but ultimately doomed redistribution.

But it won’t be taxing the rich to feed the poor it will be – as always – taxing the coping to prop up the needy and – as always – it won’t be enough. The only outcome of same-old-socialism will be even more support for the right in the future; and it will come from the very people on whose side the left always claim to fight. Instead of the moderate right who are currently winning support, socialists will embolden and empower the sort of ignorant far-rightism they are currently crying wolf over.

The voice of the people - coming to a country near you.

So, this Thursday and quite rightly, the Conservatives are going to take a hammering in the local elections, but will they learn from it? Of course not. Labour won’t suffer so badly, but will they understand why? Almost certainly not. Brace yourselves for your council taxes to increase again, your potholes to go unfilled, your street lighting to splutter and die and your town centres to decline still further... yet expect no realistic solutions to come from any quarter. Politics as usual.

Rebellion Extinct

The revolting kiddies– Extinction Rebellion – have eschewed their chocolate eggs to take to the streets, rend their garments and openly weep into their iPhones about how they may never get to be parents. Give me strength; having survived the any-four-minutes-now imminent assured mutual nuclear destruction hysteria of the nineteen sixties and seventies and the great extinction scares of the nineteen eighties, please excuse me if I call bullshit on ‘the end is nigh’. Repent, sinners, they all seem to say: the religious, the climatists, repent and admit thy sins and... what? Go on, what?

The climate will change and no doubt we will have some effect on it, but running all our transport on coal isn’t going to help a jot. A recent German study claims that electric cars are environmentally more disastrous – if that disaster can ever be proved – than diesel. True or false one thing is for sure and that is, once governments stop raking in the massive fuel duties, expect the price of electricity to soar. Once again – like solar photo-voltaic farms, or planting forests, or carbon trading - the costs will be disproportionately borne by those least able to gain an economic advantage. It’s the poor wot gets the blame, etc.

Yet here we still are. Despite the regular-as-clockwork predictions of running out of food, water, oil, oxygen, etc, the human race keeps on finding solutions to the problems it creates. Unique among the animals, when we do shit on our own doorstep we can always find another, lesser, human to clear it up, but I expect nothing less than a Malthusian event will ever satisfy the weeping wall of climate alarmists busily recording for a posterity they believe will never be realised just how terribly sad they were about it. But look around and see how much the world gives a shit.

Ukraine elects, by a landslide, a comedian as president. The religion of peas shoots up Sri Lanka and well, the earth continues to turn despite all the protestations of an immediate cessation of such rotational activity. Climatism has far more in common with religion than it does with science - there can be only one orthodoxy and all else is heresy - and to continue that observation, it is much more like islam than it is any other faith. Who else but climatists and islamists would go to the extremes they do?

Think about it. It isn’t long ago that islamic terrorism was being blamed on the wicked climate change of the west. Are they the last generation, the ExtReb children tearfully asked? God, I hope so! But no, there will be plenty of future generations of needy, whiny, entitled idiots, persuaded that they have relevance and that anybody gives a toss what they think. Their new messiah appears to be a Swedish child, Greta Thunberg, now being touted as the next Nobel Peace Prize winner. Children are the future? Take us now.

Get us out

The Tories are metaphorically holding a telescope up to their blind eye and declaring “I see no rocks!” while steering a course directly for the lighthouse. But then they are also pretending that the Conservative & Unionist Party still has a cohesive identity. It is clear that the EU issue which has riven the party for decades should now precipitate a serious discussion about their purpose and their future. It is too late for the local elections, far too late for the unnecessarily upcoming MEP elections and given the parlous state of their leadership contender list probably too late for the next general election... and the one after that.

In the meantime, frantically bashing the Brexit Party isn’t helping either Conservatives or Labour, rather it is aiding and abetting the BP and the Tories are probably receiving the worst caning of their electoral lives. It’s like they just haven’t ‘listened’, or ‘learned lessons’ as they so often insist they must. Have they not seen the ginger ninja over the pond and how his popularity grows with ever publicised excoriation?

Vituperative comments about Nigel Farage - Mr Brexy M^cBrexit-Face himself - are just recruiting slogans for him, especially enticing for the literally millions of people disenfranchised by the open contempt in which they are held by Parliament for daring to vote with their own agency and not as directed by their lord and masters. The blue rosette brigade may claim they are not afraid of Farage but, as much as David Cameron may forever seek to deny it, isn’t this the very reason the referendum was held in the first place?

And what of the non-Farage alternatives? See how both left and right (that is, far left and centre left; Labour and Conservatives) have united to condemn all pro-Brexit parties as fascistic and see how much of a dent that has made. There comes a point while you are being consistently insulted that you realise it is just a bunch of words. And when those words have no basis in reason, no factual validation, David Lamey, Anna Sobriety and Caroline Mucus can call you a Nazi until they are blue in the face and it makes no impact. If ‘they’ are against them, those parties must have a point.

As for a new politics, however, we are firmly back in the usual territory with every side expending all their resources in attacking the others and none actually plotting a course to steer us away from danger. And we are thoroughly fed up of having to vote for the least worse and knowing that our first-past-the-post system and the electoral boundaries condemn us to hamstrung, minority, same-old-parties governance.

So, as much as I know this to be mere wishful thinking, I harbour a hope that Farage and Co can do as much damage as possible to both Labour and the Conservatives and gain enough seats to hold the balance of power. I want to see the Tories recognise that their split over the EU is a genuine and deep one and that they need to burn their current constitution and form two new parties from the ashes. I want Labour to divide into a middle-class luvvies party which every other voter will despise and a genuine workers’ party, which may regain some dignity.

Corbyn comes to May's Rescue

And as for our future relationship with the EU, I want none. Nothing political at least, except recognition that we are not the same and possibly never will be. Listening to various EU leaders and their stooges it is clear they don’t give a fuck about us, so why don’t we reciprocate? I am pretty sure I am with millions of others who will abandon their traditional political allegiances and lend their vote to whatever option at the ballot box will re-send the clear message we signalled in 2016. Get. Us. Out.

Broken

In the advanced world, in the enlightened west, poverty should be a thing of the past. Nobody should want for shelter, food and warmth and nobody should suffer the relative privations of denial of access to education and the opportunity for advancement. The old Labour Party used to fight on this hill and made great strides... long ago. But rights can be tricky things; once granted, removal is seen as punishment; if ‘he’ gets something why shouldn’t I? And the bar on what is considered essential is continually being raised.

But where does the wealth come from and who deserves what share? And possibly more importantly, who gets to decide? That is, if I make a little bit more than it takes to lift me off the breadline should I surrender my comfort for another’s, or do I deserve some greater reward for my efforts? And at the other end, whose needs are greater, more pressing? Even were we of one mind in this regard – good little socialists, all – the task of providing for all would still prove monumental, but we are human and it is therefore insoluble.

Instead of being pragmatic – cancer trumps gender dysphoria, hunger trumps nicotine craving, etc – we are stubborn in clinging to our illogicalities. We each have our own set of priorities which don’t necessarily chime well with others. White supremacy, climate change, the third world, pollution, potholes and the eternally impossible bloody ‘equality’ are all crusades which clamour for resources. It’s a far cry from the old ‘mustn’t grumble’ attitude which got us through two world wars and many national crises.

But today it is different. Certainly I have never known a time when so many of my countrymen are at each other’s throats over a matter which should have been settled three years ago. In an earlier age Britain would have accepted the result and most would have worked together, grumbles aside, to shape the future. Instead we are stuck in a politically constructed situation whereby the fractured loyalties driving a thousand different self-centred agendas prevents us from holding common cause.

This is what loss of nationhood means. In fact the EU model of a Europe-wide identity means we are further from being one people than ever before; paradoxically the socialist model brings not “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” but incarceration, inequality and antipathy. Over such confusion the detached, supra-national governance of technocrats need not exercise order but simply watch as we tear our own society down. It was a cunning plan and it damn near worked.

We didn't start the fire

But why does it take the devastating conflagration of Notre Dame Cathedral for the French to become French again, at least for a short while? And what will it take for the English – British is already lost as a uniting identity – to become English again? Our whole society is burning, the social contract torn up, the wolves at the door. And nobody – especially not the special interest lobbyists, especially not government – knows how to fix it. Well, here’s an idea; put aside your banners and your slogans, shut up for a moment and think, for once, about what you can do to save yourself.

Rock On!

“And where do we go from here?” As David Essex sang in his breakthrough hit ‘Rock On’ all those years ago, when life was so much simpler. And even though Heath was, in that very year, illegally consigning our national sovereignty to the dustbin of history, the actual EU was but a twinkle in a despot’s eye. The lies that took us in, the lies that sustained our continued deeper entanglement and the thoroughly outrageous fear-mongering which accompanied the Remain campaign in 2016 were mere harbingers of the apoplectic threats and approbation being bandied around today.

We have come a long way from 1973. Back then, while there was (and always will be) poverty and hardship, much of the population at least recognised the fruits of success, of empire, of being quite literally world-class in every field. But still more were growing up to experience a lower tier of nationhood. Coming second, third even, against nations with a stronger sense of self, supreme among which was the United States, it seemed logical to some that a European economic counterbalance was necessary.

The next forty years – except for a brief respite in Mrs Thatcher’s decade of hope - were spent in attacking the bastions of privilege, disparaging the notion of free enterprise and carefully rewriting the record to show the British not as a proud, successful, happy breed, but a mongrel nation, utterly dependent on others for its every triumph. This trend was accelerated over the last twenty years, as Tony Blair’s fanatical embrace of all things EU set in train the full surrender all autonomy to the Brussels cartel.

Today, you can’t turn on the television, flip the pages of a magazine, or even pass an advertising hording without being bombarded by a bizarre and unreal depiction of Britain as this weird ultra-cultural, post-national experiment; an amalgamation of  all proclivities as equal participants with every possible departure from the mathematical mode now recognised, illiterately, as ‘normal’. Two daddies, three mummies, every-inch-tattooed-and-pierced circus freaks, paedophiles, degenerates and all possible ethnic and gender self-descriptions accepted as absolutely equal in value to the societal model which drove our evolution for millennia. This can’t be entirely right.

Acceptance and tolerance are good; they are wholly to be encouraged. But normalisation of the abnormal opens gates which may better remain locked... or at least heavily guarded. And nobody knows how this rapid overturning of all that was understood, by things which are not understood, will end up. In a country with a strong sense of self, there would be curbs on dangerous freedoms, constraints on those who went too far. But we have been turned into a non-nation and berated for daring to hold to former standards. When anything goes, you’d better watch where it’s going.

So into this febrile, shape-shifting landscape enters Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and what an entrance it has been. One poll puts them almost level with the Tories and totting up support for both the BP and Ukip it easily bests both the Tories and Labour. What welcome is received by this new attempt to honour what seventeen million people voted for? Why, to be branded universally as racists by those who peddle race as their entry card into every debate, assume difference as their credentials to speak for the many. David Lammy, in particular, uncannily echoes Joseph Goebbels, in repeatedly demanding that those views should never be heard.

We're going to need a bigger boat...

You see, to Lammy and his camp followers, their own very clear Nazism is good Nazism, the righteous end justifying the means, while ordinary people are held as too stupid to tell the difference. Ordinary people, despondent at the loss of their democracy, fall prey to the bad Nazism of national pride, shared identity and tolerance of others, not seeing (in their ignorance) that to be a 'good' Nazi you must root out tolerance wherever it is found. It is madness and no end is yet in sight. Where do we go from here?

No Compromise

None of the interminable discussions, negotiations, debates or demonstrations was ever going to result in a ‘deal’ acceptable to both sides because each side wants polar opposite outcomes. And make no mistake, there are only two sides here; for all their bluster those seeking to agree a way of getting the Withdrawal Agreement passed are (whatever they may say, or even believe) signing off on a way to remain under the thumb of the unaccountable burghers of Brussels. Those who wish to leave have always known that anything less than a complete exit is not Brexit.

The indicative votes, the amendments the extraordinary refusal of Parliament to recognise that a compromise is never going to happen when every ballot is pretty much split down the middle are all evidence that what we voted on were the only two possible outcomes. Any form of customs union, single market membership and in particular any arrangement which allows a foreign court to have supremacy of British law is far worse than either extreme.

We know that if we stay in our voice is but one against, currently, 27. But pretending to leave – as all compromises will necessarily be – will silence us forever. One argument for remain has been about how our standing in the world would diminish outside, but Leavers don’t point out vociferously enough that the entire purpose of the EU is to diminish individual national influence. The half-arsed, half-out capitulation that May was handed by Merkel extinguishes that influence altogether. Out, we genuinely would have a bigger voice than in.

On trade, the future is a veiled, cloudy affair and we may well make enormous leaps on the outside which would be impossible restrained by the EU. Inside we could expect at least a form of moribund consistency. Surely we are better than that; much better. Some of our fellows would argue that we are all Europeans now, but equal numbers would most vehemently reject that notion with a rousing chorus of Rule Britannia. The two sentiments are profoundly irreconcilable.

Currently the House of  Lords is also pretending to be grown up and maybe their cumulative years has injected a slight check on the unseemly haste with which they were initially tempted to rush through the wrecking bill cooked up by Letwin and Cooper. But make no mistake, although they have stopped to draw breath, pass it they will, come Monday. And where will that put us? Oh yes, back in the hands of the EU – quell surprise.

It is little wonder then that supporters of independence now judge Parliament to be, to all intents and purposes, illegitimate. They want to pretend to honour democracy by ignoring a democratic vote and framing a new offer, but the second referendum they propose will only contain two options: Leave in name only and accept second-class citizenship as EU slaves, or stay and help to shape the laws that will ultimately enslave everybody equally; suffer alone or recruit others to our misery.

There were only two options on the ballot

Even the most Remain of Remainers must be able to see that it would be a Hobson’s choice and our flaccid Parliamentary members are too weak or too venal to walk away from this trap of their own making. The only true choice for Britain has to be between remaining in the EU or leaving the EU. If only such an in/out referendum were possible. If only the British people could somehow indicate to us which they would prefer. Come on, chaps, Parliament is listening...

Nightmare

It’s not about Brexit any more; Brexit is gone, betrayed, smothered at birth by an avalanche of mealy-mouthed, self-declared bien-pensants who genuinely believe in their own beneficence and that they know better. Along with millions of others I waited – pretty patiently, I think – to have my say, having been a year too young to vote to leave in 1975. I have watched as young people “whose futures have been stolen” did nothing while my past was being misappropriated, dismantled or rewritten.

Since I attained my own majority I have seen my country, my England slandered and libelled and cast as the villain. I have seen our history overturned and I had to stand and watch as Tony Blair’s treacherous administration deliberately altered the face of my fellow countrymen, so that we were no longer recognisable to each other. I listened to the lies. I heard a succession of paid men tell us that sending all that could scrape a few desultory GCSEs to university was some form of progress; they were told that they were too good to wait at table, or pick fruit.

Then I watched as millions were imported to do those character building jobs that my generation and generations before did, jobs that shaped our work ethic and determination to succeed. And as the new graduates settled into a life of unemployment the whole fraud was heralded as some form of economic miracle. A miracle indeed when you can displace perfectly able workers while paying others a wage which attracts no tax yet somehow pays for the pensions of all those complaining ‘old people’. There’s your enemy, kids, your own grandparents, they said.

And I now find myself possibly part of another problem, because having rejected academia, for which they are not suited, thousands are turning to manual trades. So in part I am helping to serve an industry which is not about turning out quality tradesmen but feeding a voracious appetite for qualifications. Qualifications demanded by an ever burgeoning bureaucracy which – like Parliament – prefers credentials over competence. And still our British trainees are regularly overlooked in favour of incomers who push wages even lower.

Brexit was about being British, not European – not some sort of insubstantial allegiance to nothing – it was about reclaiming a sovereignty that was almost unique in the world, an actual sovereignty of the people. Now we see that has become just a sham. Brexit wasn’t meant to be about reclaiming that sovereignty from the grasping hands of party politics; it shouldn’t have been necessary. But now we see the political class for how they truly are... the biggest part of the problem.

The Tories have turned a shade of red I hoped I’d never see. Labour has long abandoned its heartlands for the sunny uplifted faces of the new British, those who have made their homes here because Labour wanted to rub the right’s noses in diversity, unaware of, or not caring that their interpretation of  the right’ included their own bedrock voters; a horrible twisting of political covenants which is mirrored across the continent as more and more Eurosceptic parties emerge, organise and begin to take back control.

Time to kick the EU out of Britain.

This isn’t about Brexit any more, this is about the destruction of the EU. From within, if needs be, but in any case by that attrition as more and more countries rise up against the tyranny of the velvet-gloved tyrants of the new communism. A civilised, orderly parting of the ways was not just a dream, it was eminently achievable and could have paved the way for a reform of the EU’s more extreme ambitions. But now, whether Britain is in or out, this is about ending Verhofstadt’s federal dream and filling his nights full of mares.

Feet of Clay

Now we know, beyond any rational doubt, that our elected leaders are venal greasy pole climbers without a shred of decency or competence, isn’t it time for action? Not a general election, not a re-shuffle and certainly not a Parliamentary debate about the way forward – consulting Jeremy Corbyn, for fuck’s sake? We need a Cromwell moment and the whole Palace of Westminster needs to be shut down, its sitting tenants evicted, turned out onto the streets and an entire new order imposed.

What, no government? Well why not? The government clearly has no power, abuses what authority it has and is a primary cause of division in the country. Labour offer no useful opposition, seeming to believe that simply opposing is their primary function and proposing no workable alternatives to the same tired old tropes. Fairness, equality, social justice and all those nebulous, airy-fairy notions are chimera; there is no such thing in human society.

But what we do have is an ability to exploit opportunity and the total shit-storm in our supposed seat of democracy is ripe for exploitation. The party system, as was, has come to its inevitable end. Neither party offers a genuinely acceptable way forward and no matter who is in power it constantly has to battle opposing ideologues to make even the slightest progress. Progressive education and the lunacy of cultural relativism has created a population easier than ever to manipulate, easier than ever to penalise. The police are discredited, the judiciary exposed as frauds. The scene is set for chaos.

And maybe chaos is exactly the tonic we need. Let the civil service and local authorities carry on with running the day-to-day business as best they can and set the dogs on Westminster, political correctness, the university training grounds for political malcontents, common purpose and all the pointless agitators for ultra-minority power. Release the vigilantes, set free the conditioned minds and let’s have one massive societal punch up.

Oh, there will be no clear winners, but – apart from the carnage (and you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs) – a period of utter, desperate, dog-eat-dog, fear and uncertainty might just be the catharsis we need. Find out whose side you are really on, not whose oily words salve your political theology. It’s perhaps not ideal but it’s what seems to be happening anyway; might as well get it over with.

May announces latest genius idea...

Clear out all the old, corrupted crap, usher in the new, the fresh, the untainted. It might still be rubbish, but at least it will be new rubbish and who knows what might emerge from it? In Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has starred for three years in a television comedy (Servant of thePeople) about a man who accidentally becomes president. Right now Mr Zelenskiy is front runner to actually become president. Maybe we could do with a bit of that.