Situation Abnormal

Ken Clarke said she was a bloody difficult woman; it seems she is worse than that. Theresa May has won again. Despite being possibly the worst-regarded Prime Minister in living memory she is still – and it seems will be for some time – firmly in post and if anything might be strengthening her grip on the party. The hideous Chequers ‘deal’ via which we tear up our membership card, but still pay the fees and abide by the rules is looming large and it seems that we are going to get a settlement which is equally unacceptable to everybody. What in the name of hell is going on?

The rebellion is over and done with, MPs putting their jobs ahead of any principles they once pretended to hold. The European Research Group has backed down and mumbled something unintelligible about it not being their job to come up with an alternative, even though that is exactly what they were telling us days ago. Ian Duncan Smith, bizarrely, came out of the woodwork and issued a weird rebuke about people being ‘silly’; it was a hideously unrehearsed, clumsy and targetless little rant which made him sound not like an authoritative figure, but a random heckler in the crowd.

And Boris, the straw-headed man, cowardly lion and clown prince of Parliament, has bottled it once again and gone into hiding. A couple of days ago we heard open talk of toppling the PM, with a challenge to be mounted even before conference. This morning we are told rumours of, maybe, an April coup. April? By April Brexit will have been fumbled, passed to the opposition and drop-kicked between the posts to score a resounding victory for Brussels. The EU problem will not have been dealt with to anybody’s satisfaction and the war will rumble on.

War? Of course; we are at war; against our leaders; against their leaders; and against their leaders... and those who tell them what to do. If only we knew who any of these people were. This is what the whole Trump/Brexit/AfD/Front National/Orban rebellions are all about. Divide and rule, they say and boy have they achieved that. Here we are, pitchforks at the ready and we don’t even know which way to march but, blood up, we want to blacken a few eyes. Those orchestrating the madness are relying on us turning on ourselves and it seems to be working.

Under such circumstances the disjointed, inconsistent, hypocritical rainbow coalition of leftist causes is busily seducing the disenfranchised; anything must be better than what we’ve got, yes? Despite the Marxist rallying cry, the power has not been with the people for a long time and Jeremy Corbyn’s inclusive cant conceals the contempt of those in power towards those ruled - government is for the few, not for the many – and always will be.

Trust in nobody

It can’t be too late, surely, but it is clear that the New Tories will never deliver Brexit, Old Labour has no intention of doing so and nobody else has the teeth. There seems little point in trusting ANY political body to work for the good of the country so, once again we learn that we cannot rely on government. In or out of the EU, in peace or war, in sickness or in health, the only reliable mantra remains: every man for himself.

Desperate Measures

What a time to be alive! What a time to be in politics. Welcome to the circus. Since the referendum the establishment has by covert and often overt means, sought to reverse the result. But all along they coated it with the gloss of ‘doing the right thing’. Nobody, they argued, voted to become poorer; and “now we know more about what Brexit really means, we should have the opportunity to reconsider”, etc...

The basis of UK parliamentary democracy has always been the principle – however illusory – that if we are unhappy with the government we can replace it. Much like the old communist saw “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us” we pretend to vote for change and they tell us, in the face of zero evidence, that they are providing it. Unfortunately, this time round we were no longer pretending; we really did vote for change. But were we too late?

Has the British government been so long in thrall to the Brussels project that they have taken on its features? Once again, George Orwell seems to have been uncannily prescient “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Because the way in which recent governments seem to have pointedly ignored the concerns of the people who put them in charge looks like nothing so much as tyranny.

The mood in the country has darkened. This riding roughshod over the expressed desire to leave the bloc – which result was returned despite the appalling alignment of the entire establishment against the people – looks like nothing so much as the very thing we voted to reject. Febrile is how the media reported the atmosphere in the Tory Party. Furious is how it feels out here. You can feel it; you can almost touch it... and you can certainly taste the bitter gastronomy of betrayal.

But why? Why put it to a vote then ignore it? Well, of course there’s been no planning for a no-deal Brexit because, just as Cameron and Co couldn’t countenance losing, May and her merry mayhem makers have no vision for a Britain outside the EU. In fact they are behaving exactly like the EU, assuming they can simply ignore the people who have been asking for a way out for many years.

But remember, nothing is immutable. Treaties can be torn up. Contracts can be cancelled. The vote to leave the EU was a vote to tear up the travesty of the last 45 years and become the independent nation we managed to be for centuries. Ripping up the common rule book? Hell yes. And after this weekend’s lesson in autocracy Teflon Tess has shown that she is a true politician, as perceived by the electorate; motivated purely by power.

This may or may not be the truth but as the CPS has demonstrated lately, perception trumps intent. Of course, her biggest weapon is Jeremy Corbyn. If you don’t like it, you’ll hand the keys to Magic Grandad and his motley crew, she threatens. But that threat is hollow. People know that JC has long been an opponent of the EU and sometimes extreme times call for extreme measures. If her calculation is that no former Tory could possibly vote for Corbyn she might want to remember that Cameron thought Remain was in the bag.