Bleak House

The interminable wrangling over Brexit continues as Theresa May’s beleaguered government weathers gaffes and embarrassments and tries to push its EU Withdrawal Bill through the depressingly confrontational House of Commons. Knocking on for eighteen months after the referendum, the result of which, the electorate were promised, would be executed by HMG, no progress has really been made. Half of ruling party don’t want Brexit to happen at all and the opposition will do anything to frustrate it, even if they actually want to leave the EU themselves. Never has the phrase ‘playing politics’ seemed so apt. Nor, ‘cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face’.

But all the talk of deals and divorce bills, of compromise, offer and counter offer is nothing more than a soap opera. And like the characters of a soap opera they are doomed to repeat the mistakes cast in stone by their creators; captive to their character and in thrall to the script. For make no mistake there is a narrative here and it is relentless in driving the storyline around and around in relentless circles of despair and helplessness; yet there is a purpose behind it all – the survival of the EU.

There is no deal to be had, this much must be apparent to any impartial observer, but look at the jobs created in not achieving an agreement. Armies of lawyers, lobbyists, experts and advisors, all working to one end – stalemate. A state of inertia suits everybody except the majority and if we have learned anything these past few years, the will of the majority is irrelevant in the mutant form of democracy we practise today. Referendums have been held in a handful of EU member states and their outcomes overturned or simply ignored.

This is now the way of the west and it reminds me of nothing so much as the miserable and cynical case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, so eloquently derided by Charles Dickens in his excoriation of the Court of Chancery. And like other bullshit industries built on the inflated constructs of grievance, self-esteem, gender identity, race, religious sensitivities, etc... we are drowning in the salty crocodile tears of self-pity and indulgence and up this particularly shitty creek nobody has paddles; we are just bobbing around on a maelstrom of misery, imagining we are helpless to do otherwise.

The EU negotiations summed up...

The EU gives us nothing that we couldn’t have as an independent nation, but it can never admit this. It is a self-justifying money pit, creating ever more inventive ways of wasting talent and resources which could be better put to productive use in the national inerest. Our leaders need to wake up, sniff the caffeine, breath the fresh air of freedom and crack on with getting us off the merry-go-round. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step – the mission to bring down Animal Farm begins with Brexit.

Being British about it

I never knew the empire, but my grandfather did and having been a child in the First World War, served a brace of His Britannic Majesties before, during and after the Second great unpleasantness. Because of the efforts of his generation I grew up English; I remember being curious that my nationality was called 'British' and I was taught and understood who the other British peoples were, but I was and will remain an English man. It was and still ought to be something to be proud of. Of course, some of the less noble excesses of the British global adventure were known about, but we glossed over that and we knew, innately, that we were indeed a special breed.

One of the features of my very early years was the succession of countries being granted, or claiming their independence from British protection, while yet wishing to remain a part of the recently founded Commonwealth of Nations. Today, I suspect the citizens of some of these countries act and feel more British than we are allowed to do. Because, as I was growing into adolescence and then into adulthood, something peculiar was happening. My first stirring of political interest came when Ted heath appeared to give away our sovereignty even as he assured us he was doing no such thing.

Two years later I watched in some dismay as the 1975 Project Fear won the referendum on staying in The Common Market. The promise of holding that national referendum – the first in British history – was in no small part the reason a Labour government got into power the year before. Save British workers, save British independence, save everything British was the rallying cry. Were there riots? Were there underhand attempts to frustrate the outcome? No. We were assured we would remain every bit as British as we had always been, but we would be stronger, more prosperous as a result of joining hands with our European partners.

Well, we did get prosperous, but how much was a direct result of European partnership may never be known; the whole of the western world became wealthier as we paid down the war debts and looked to the future. But we didn’t stay British, not in the way that used to be recognisable the world over. New generations who had never known a world outside what became the EU were told of our abhorrent past; of how we only did harm wherever our expeditionary forces set foot. Newer generations still were told how it was the EU which had saved us from further conflicts. The latest generations have no notion of the Britishness I grew up with.

No wonder we can’t have a level conversation about Brexit. Those who have never known independence are understandably nervous about the future, but instead of facing up to that future they think they are staring into a black hole. What happened to cheerful Tommy Atkins? What happened to the phlegmatic, ‘mustn’t grumble’ attitude of the generations for whom making do and carrying on was Britishness to the core? We played the cards we were dealt; we didn’t demand the croupier deal again.

Which brings us to now. Had the 1975 generation any notion of where we would end up they would have voted to leave. Nobody voted for an emasculated and dependent nation, in thrall to foreign masters; nobody in the general electorate had any vision of us becoming a European administrative region. So, for me, you can forget all the economic talk – history has proved that no one knows what lies ahead – the most important part of Theresa May’s speech yesterday was about coming together, regaining our confidence and forging ahead as a proud, self-governing people.

Coffee? Are you some sort of fifth columnist?

If that means facing tough times, so be it; it likely won’t. But if the sore, tremble-lipped losers continue to do their damnedest to weep crocodile tears over spilled milk, it will take so much longer to achieve. Self-fulfilling doom prophecies are no help at all – I’m talking to Nick Clegg, Tim Farron, Emily Thornberry, Anna Soubry; the list goes on – the PM has spoken and the project is underway. Project Hope, Project Forward, call it what you like; we are where we are, for better or for worse and the only grown-up thing to do now is roll up our sleeves and crack on. Be British about it.

Representing Nobody

When, in 1998, I told a disbelieving Australian backpacker that the UK would not join the Euro he mocked. “What?” he said, “The single European currency that’s happening next year?” We were in the USA at the time and a small crowd of ‘Mercans gathered as we debated the point. Yep, I said and expounded my belief that while it might work for some unknown country called Europe, it would never be to British tastes. He argued that it would be just like the dollar in the fifty United States. I argued that Europe was a long, long way from being a single country with a single constitution, shared struggle, traditions and political values. He was young, so he didn’t really grasp why we couldn’t, you know, like, come together, dude.

So imagine my utter lack of sympathy for the plight of the Eurozone today... Now I’m not claiming seer-like powers of prophecy but I knew a bad idea when I saw it. I admit my aversion probably had more to do with being English – avowedly not European - than having any deep economic insight, but I felt that was enough and besides, my forecast proved to be the equal of - better than - any economist on earth. And so here we are today; me with a strengthened confidence in my original convictions, Europe, mostly fucked. I try not to laugh, but you know, up yours Delors and all that.

Another fabulous ideal of the EU was of course the free movement of people and some deaf, dumb and blind kids still fly the flag for the Schengen zone. Hey, I’m all for treaty partners having agreements which make border checks more perfunctory and allow employment wherever you may find it, but once again the disparity of the member states has created unnecessary turmoil. As I retweeted yesterday, courtesy of @OffencePolice, “If British businesses need foreign workers, they can make the case for visas. If the case is ‘We want to pay staff less’, they can piss off.” 

The result has been a labour drain from poorer EU countries to richer ones, making it impossible for those poor states to retain talent and they now largely rely on the charity of the rich states whose taxpayers resent them for doing so. And of course, the formerly working poor of the rich states are being parked on benefits as business prefers to exploit utilise cheaper and more compliant/grateful employees.  As for the absurd notion that legions of low-paid, low socially-involved migrant workers will somehow do anything more than fuel the inevitably catastrophic model of ever greater consumerism, long warned against by people like Aldous Huxley, that dream, too is coming unstuck very rapidly indeed, isn’t it, Mrs Merkel? 

Of course, once into Europe – that great big soft touch with the flimsiest of borders between it and Africa – migrants from anywhere in the world can feast on the hard-won riches of the west without ever making any contribution other than by fouling the shallow end of the gene pool and causing mayhem. And then there’s that Calais thing. Anna Soubry may believe – as she stated yesterday - that we didn’t have a positive debate about immigration, but, given that a majority of her own constituents disagree, maybe they already had that debate and she just wasn’t listening.

It's a jungle out there...

And that, in a nutshell is it isn’t it? Politicians not listening. In a representative democracy we don’t want or need a referendum on every issue; we elect our representatives and then we expect them to actually represent us and not just assume that after the vote we will leave them to govern in a vacuum for five years. But since John Major we haven’t had representative government but assumptive government. Tim Farron can whinge all he wants about Brexit showing us up as fools but his party could be said to be the most representative of them all at  the moment in that virtually nobody gives them the time of day. If he can figure out why that is - and that is a pretty long shot - he may be in with a chance of understanding why nobody gives a toss what he thinks.

Soon be Monday

Say what you like about David Cameron – and I am as guilty as anybody of slagging the man off in recent weeks – but his measured, if delayed, reaction to the glorious news was exactly right. He blamed nobody, threatened nothing and sucked it up to say it was time now to regroup, rebuild and get back to business. He was also honest enough to understand the mood in much of the country and step down gracefully. The time for fighting is over.

What a shame millions of others could only wallow in their cosseted, wished-for misery. The level of whining butt-hurt out there yesterday was off the scale. And as it was already at a cosmic level beforehand, that was fuckwittery from an alternative universe. Having ramped up the fear and hatred over the last few months how dare the sky not fall in? It was as if they were demanding their homes be invaded by jack-booted Stormtroopers to evict their freezing cold babies into the streets and disappointed that no immigrants had been herded into cattle trucks to be deported... via the ‘showers’.

The BBC did its best to help. In every news bulletin it was reported that the economy had tanked, that it had ‘plunged’ over a cliff and the pound was now worth less than a Weimar Republic mark in 1924. Such cataclysmic reporting had its own momentum, like a supertanker trying to change course; when both Sterling and the FTSE bounced back to show relatively modest changes on the day this went almost entirely unreported, so generation snowflake continued to rend garments, gnash teeth and look for somebody to blame.

In the Labour Party the fault was that of Jeremy Corbyn and his fellows lined up to stab him in the front for somehow telepathically causing former Labour core voters to embrace the hate and become racist Faragistas. Nicola Sturgeon lost no time in pointing out that, just as in sports, Scotland hated England so much they would support foreign rule from any other source. And across the world, from luvvies in Los Angeles to irrelevant, forgotten tax exiles in tropical climes berated the people who live in cold, wet Britain for exercising their democratic right.

But most of all it was ‘the old people’ who took the flak. The old people whipped the rug out from under the country’s youth and condemned generations to penury. It was the old people, who fought wars and rebuilt the country and lobbied for workers’ rights that, having taken advantage of all they had gained, now wanted to pull up the rope ladder after them. It was the vicious, nasty, bitter and twisted old people that want to turn Britain into Nazi Germany. No, really. What makes it all the more delicious is that fully 75% of the 18-25 year olds who are whining about the old people denying them their promised future didn’t even bother to turn out and vote... and of those who did vote, a third of them voted for Brexit.

Man up, snowflake!

But the weekend will come and go. The celebration barbecues will be had, or the wakes will be held and there will be some thick heads in the morning. Then, on Monday it will be business as usual, except for one thing. The future is now entirely in your hands. Embrace what is and stop mourning for the illusion that was. And while the rest of Europe is having its own long dark nights of the soul and the inevitable decline of the EU hastens, be glad that we are on the outside, roll up those sleeves and start digging for victory.