Are YOU the Baddies?

A frequent demand we hear from Remainers, confused and afraid of a future without anybody to tell them with what they may wipe their arses, is to name one tangible benefit of leaving the EU. Just one they cry; and then, when a dozen perfectly respectable reasons are presented, they dismiss them as unicorns. ‘You don’t know’, they insist, to which we all chorus, ‘neither do you’. But there is one very real benefit which we receive every day, even before we have extended so much of a toe into the greater world beyond.

It is a benefit which brings me joy unconfined. Forget the execrable dirge, Ode to Joy and give me, every time, the true Brexit anthem – the massed weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth and garment-rending of those with such poverty of ambition they wish to cling onto Mutti Europe’s apron strings forever. Oh, how flat the Libdems jolly ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ tee-shirt jape fell as they just looked like kids on a massive sulk. And even better, Molly Scott Cato – Green MEP – announced on Twitter that they had actually stopped Brexit. Ah the innocence of the fresh-scrubbed mind.

But oh, the wrath of the media and the self-righteous cheerleaders for supranational governance. No masked thugs of Antifa, no hysterical TellMama lies about non-existent offences, no milkshakes, no braying idiots with megaphones, no face paint, no 30-year old idiot children in shorts and overly-tight tees, no idiot in a cape; just a quiet, dignified refusal to honour the undemocratic de-facto country called the EU. That was all. The Brexit Party had intended to sit for the odious anthem, but when it was insisted they stand they simply turned their backs.

No bricks were thrown, no fists were raised and not a single reputation was impuned. They didn’t even say Bollocks to No-Brexit, or Fuck-EU; they just quietly turned away from the tune which Hitler, on more than one occasion, chose for his birthday celebrations. Remember Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange – the ninth was used for that very reason. You’d have thought that the association of Beethoven with some of the world’s more extreme ideologies would have been food for thought when selecting an anthem for a supposed peace project.

Anyway, the FBPE hashtags were in a froth right out of the gate. Then they decided to double down with the incessant Nazi Party comparisons; ‘you know who else turned their back?’ etc... Oh, the irony of the fan-boys of the Hitler inspired German dominance of Europe fabricating equivalences were there were none. Even the recently self-nonentitied Gavin Esler tweeted out that very foolish and very easily demolished post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Esler: the search for relevance continues...

Unlike Nazism and Communism and Socialism and Corbynism and islamism and all the other isms inspired by political thinking and deep-rooted desires to re-shape the world, ‘Brexitism’ is not a cabal of power-crazy conspirators whipping up the crowd. There is no ideological kernel, no plot by supposed rich backers or rogue states to destabilise western society and rake in profits. With the Brexit Party what you see is what you get. Ordinary people, dismayed at how their voice is ignored, fighting back; fighting for survival; fighting to be heard.

If you want to dress that up as the resurrection of Hitler himself that speaks volumes about your poverty of empathy, your inability to accept simple things at face value, your refusal to face facts, your loathing for individualism and most of all, your impotent rage at losing a vote. Because, for all your pretending you are the only ones who see the light, you are the ones who are being played. Like a cheap violin. You want to see Nazis? Look in the mirror.

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.