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.
