Bring out your dead

In the Alician wonderland of politics up is down, left is right and a rout can clearly be re-worded into a triumph. History can be Tippexed and typed over as if it never happened and the mere stroke of a pen can turn a surrender declaration into a heroic rallying cry to the troops. For what is the war in Westminster if it isn’t a war of words? It takes a special kind of reptile, of course, to perform these lexicological gymnastics, but in the search for the next political toad no stone ever goes unturned.

The full scale of the Europarl election destruction has yet to be realised, but as the smoke clears on the battlefield it is clear that the claims of victory by remainers is flimsy at best. To assert this they have to believe – actually believe – that everybody who didn’t vote for the Brexit Party definitely voted for remain... and by the usual convention this includes the non-votes of all who abstained. Even this morning, the BBC referred to Nigel Farage’s ‘strong performance’ as if the BP had come a brave second, instead of now being the biggest single party in the whole of the EU Parliament.

The losers are, of course, the two parties which have dominated UK politics for a century, but while Tories are beginning, slowly, to accept that their worst electoral defeat since the nineteenth century, some are still peddling the lies that brought them so low. Brandon Lewis, astonishingly, declared that their resounding thrashing signalled an electorate desperate for the Tories to come up with a deal. No, Brandon, they voted for Brexit because they want to leave the EU and nobody who has been paying attention expects any form of ‘deal’ to be palatable.

But on the Labour side it is possibly even worse. Adonis (to give him his full, earned title) even went so far as to feed his EU wet dream by tweeting that had Labour come out for remain it would have actually won overall because – and bear with me here on his tortuous logic – if you count Labour’s vote as a vote for remain, then remain won, so therefore if Labour managed this historic victory without even endorsing remain, imagine how many remainers would have abandoned the firm remain parties and lent their vote to the party which has yet to come out with any actual agreed policy on Brexit.

I think that what was what he was suggesting but then it is so hard to listen to Adonis without hearing the perpetual whine which accompanies all his utterances and the grinding of the gears as his towering intellect turns dross into gold; EU pension gold. If anything the very existence of a creature such as ‘Lord’ Adonis – conjured into life by the bizarre alchemy of Blair’s cronyism – shows us exactly why we should resist anti-democratic institutions wherever they raise their many heads. But at least, for now, there is small recompense to be found by remembering that Handy Andy remains an unelected squeaky gob on a stick.

Looks like a winner to me.

So what was the result, really, overall? Anna Soubry and Heidi Allen are claiming that zero MEPs elected for Change UK (or whatever their actual name is) is not a bad result for a party which didn’t exist a few months ago. People voted Green mostly because they have been in thrall to a hysterical Swedish child, not solely because of their EU stance. If you definitely wanted to remain in the EU, the Lib Dems were the only unequivocal vote for that position. They did well, but nowhere near the brand-new, single issue party which won, beyond any doubt outside the bubble. Whichever way you add all of this up you get the same number every time and the number is – we voted for Brexit, let’s get the fuck out of there.