There are some things you don’t want to be right
about – even for the childish satisfaction of I-told-you-so -
I told you this branch wouldn’t hold
I told you I was dangerously allergic to shell fish
I knew this bridge was about to collapse
But the thread of this blog ever since June 2016 has
been that the UK is reaping the harvest of decades of self-obsession, outdated
grandiosity and the selling-off of a nation’s assets to the highest bidder.
Since Thatcher began the process in the 1980s it has not stopped. There is
nothing left to sell now. Neither of the two established parties have been able
to find leaders that can lead. The family silver is all gone. Add to that the
disastrously destabilising and illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the
financial crash of 2008 from which we have not recovered and the setting is all
in place for the kind of insecurity and panic that leads to a country ending up
with Nigel Farage as its poster boy (see my latest letter today in The Guardian).
What we have left is the thing Britain was always
good at – IRONY.
The populist right wingers peddled xenophobia and jingoism
like cheap circus acts and the clarion call was ‘reclaim our borders’ - an echo of
Trump’s MAGA. In fact we have made ourselves a laughing stock and our stock of
credibility has dwindled globally to nothing.
As the UN report on extreme poverty and human rights
in the UK hit the fan last week, British democracy is looking more and more
like a third world car crash - see UN Report and much of what I and countless others have been saying since June 23rd
2016 has happened/is happening.
The UK is failing
on climate change targets and pollution – (see three posts ago).
Companies have
abandoned Britain in droves since the UK voted for self-destruct three years
ago. Early company exits were polite about it but the stampede – mixed with the
crashing sound of foreclosures on the high-street and the thud of failing
businesses is now deafening.
The dregs of Indian-owned UK steel manufacturing has petered out
and is the latest (and last of) the big industries to go tits up. Ironically –
as I mentioned many times on this blog – when Welsh Leave voters were
interviewed after the 2016 referendum many cited their wish to save what
remained of the steel industry despite the fact that while the EU had tried
to protect Europe from Chinese
overproduction, David (where is he now?) Cameron’s administration vetoed that
move.
And here we
are – just three years after many in the UK answered the call to ‘reclaim our
borders’ and return the UK to some 1930s Utopia where everyone knew their place
and posh people - like Farage and Johnson - told the plebs what to do/think – looking like the kind of country
that would have to beg its way into the EU – not struggle to leave…
Yes, young folk are chucking milkshakes at Farage
but that other great liar of the referendum – Boris Johnson is a serious
contender in the competition to head up the Tory party and the country after the
grey men in grey suits showed Theresa May the door. It’s just a shame Labour do
not have the same clout when it comes to slinging Corbyn out. With possibly the
two most incompetent leaders the main parties have ever jointly seen, the UK
has been left doing the doggy paddle in a sewer for three years. We’ve got
nowhere and all that has happened is that a whole lot of effluent has been
churned up from the bottom (no pun intended).
So, unusually – it’s not the I-told-you-so brigade
feeling smug. The I-told-you-so-brigade will be feeling – as I am – sick to
their stomachs. The ones who were always happy, gleeful and delighted to dance
us over the cliff are more cock-a-hoop than ever. Chaos is meat and drink to them.
In a letter published in The Independent a few weeks
ago I suggested that the party that got rid of their appalling leader first
would stand the best chance in a future general election. And – as I predicted
– the Tories got their first. At the end of the day – whoever they choose will
have the ‘not Theresa May’ shine for a few months.
The not-really-a-leader of our non-existent
Oppositions is still in place and claiming that Labour's failure is simply proof we need a general election to sort everything out! Its as if someone nailed his shoes to the floor.
No one but no one in the fragile sugar tower of power in the UK seems to have
noticed that – as we “reclaim our borders” more and more countries and
institutions are treating the UK like a low-level fringe country whose
inhabitants still need to be taught how to use cutlery and a napkin and not
shit and wash in the same stretch of water…
The irony is blinding.
Maybe the UN will
soon be sending aid parcels to Britain.
*
You know I
occasionally scrabble down the back of the sofa for the pennies of
positive news and in the EU elections the significant increase in the votes for
green parties is what I found. So, next week, if I can get the thing working –
I will have special offers on the e-book versions of both Casey & the Surfmen and Zero
One Zero Two for World Environment Day.