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Tuesday 13 June 2017

239. Britain - from global power to ‘Greece’ in 14 years…

…minus the compassion for migrants.

In the preposterous 2017 UK General Election, young folk at least saw they can make a difference if they register and VOTE and the UKIP boil was finally lanced. Also ex-Liberal leader Nick Clegg – who pissed on the under-35s – lost his seat. So yes, out of the rubbish heap it was possible to pluck those three shiny things. And the UK’s current political state can be summed up thus ‘The Worst of all Possible Worlds.’

Choreographed stagnation. Self-inflicted paralysis. Socio-political constipation with the rock faced anti-liberal Irish DUP politicians providing our minority government Prime Minister with her only negotiating laxative.

IF, shortly after the illegal invasion of Iraq, two gremlins sat on a dung hill next to an open sewer near an unregulated landfill and meditated in the stench on a route to take Britain to the worst scenario possible (for a country that,  in 2003, still had status in the world) they would have plotted the path to Friday 9th June 2017.

Corbyn campaigned to get into power with a Viagra verve he never showed in 2016 when he flip-flopped, floundered, faffed and failed during the desperate (unnecessary) EU referendum debacle. And it is that result which will define Britain for my young grandson’s generation, not the ridiculous 2017 General Election.

Theresa May’s catastrophic display of Grammar-school-girl-who-should- be-running-a-small-branch-of-the-WI-not-the-country plus a Labour Party manifesto which (if you ignored the credibility gap) should have been an inducement to anyone who is not a soul-less tax exile, makes it not odd that we ended up with a hung parliament but odd that the Tories weren’t beaten. But at the end of the day – the long weary same old same old day – we have the worst of all situations. However, in view of similar previous claims, I make no assertion that things cannot get worse. We seem to be breaking records right left and centre in the new Olympic sport of shooting yourself in the foot.

Put simply, thanks to Cameron’s weakness and poor judgement added to fear and xenophobia towards the very refugees we helped create plus a general corrosive and illogical anti-EU malaise, we are out of the EU. Having been a Remain advocate, Theresa May, for some reason best known to herself, drove the cart hard for a full-on, over-the-cliff Brexit. Then, with the negotiating clock ticking in the background like a large ball of TNT in an Acme cartoon, we were plunged into yet another spurious election.

Britain now has a minority government hatching an unholy alliance with 10 Irish MPs who look as if they still believe the earth is flat. We have ensured no one wins. We will end up with a lot of the things the rabid neo-imperialists did not want – including rights for EU citizens (see blog 214 – The 3 Million and Aleppo) and a trade deal that invariably means staying with the EU Court – yet, we will not have the benefits of being a full member of the EU and part of the future. Putting all that to one side, it is the UK's loss of credibility that is most corrosive, most damaging, most hurtful economically, politically and socially. That is something which will not be redeemed in my life time.

Britain’s standing in the world has plummeted over the last few months in a way only matched by the US under Dump.

In case no one noticed – the banks and much else of the financial industry already snuck out the back door. Our under-funded universities, historically a huge British asset, are dropping like lead down the global league tables. Prices in the shops, which we’re told rose this year by 2% have, I can personally attest, risen by, in some cases, ten times that amount and EU nurses have all but stopped registering to work in the NHS.

Pollution – the biggest issue of our time, if you are a biological organism reliant on oxygen and averse to poison, has floated off like methane fumes into the stratosphere while people bicker and bite over fake self-made problems. IN this most difficult of times, the UK has a line-up of bloodless ‘leaders’ lacking in inspiration and imagination that must have every EU leader snickering up their sleeves if they are not simply incredulous.

Like road kill – our post- EU referendum situation didn’t look good – now after more political traffic – our economy, our global credibility and our future are smeared all over the highway.

Across the Channel Napoleon Macron has achieved a mandate for change with an impressive and much wider margin than could have been anticipated. The UK has a mandate for chaos, also with a much wider margin than could ever have been anticipated.

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