Day 6688: The Second Widdecoming

Wednesday:


With apologies to Mr Yeats:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
“Are full of passionate intensity…
“…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
“Slouches towards the Euro Elections to make a fast buck?”

Oh look. Here is Ms Ann Widdecombe saying: “Britain is an international laughing stock.”

Definitely not a laughing stock

Ms Widdecombe is the homophobic dinosaur who as a Home Office minister chained pregnant women to their maternity beds while they gave birth yet, imponderably, by describing her boss, Michael Howard, as “something of the night” – thus scuppering his (first) bid to lead the Conservatory Party – and through a dose of self-humiliation via the medium of ballroom dance somehow gained a measure of cleaned-up public reputation.

And now she is up for Mr Farrago’s Breakfast Club. Dancing to Nasty Nige’s tune.

Yes, she’s been on a JOURNEY, just like that other darling of the far-right fash, Mr Neil “not the musical” Hamilton, the disgraced former MP for Tatton, guilty of cash for questions, who also tripped off to join a (different) Farrago vehicle.

In the old days, you used to get caught in a scandal and went away to do GOOD WORKS.

But now it seems that appearing “game” on “reality TV” – easy enough for people who HAVE NO SHAME; it’s not like they’re not eating testicles ANYWAY – is a new and so-much-easier way to receive the INDULGENCE of the British voting public.

“Britain is an international laughing stock,” says Ms Widdecombe. Because CLEARLY some implausibly-frocked ballroom bigotry is what the nation needs to restore a proper sense of decorum and self-respect. Dancing discrimination. Cha-cha-cha-ing chauvinism. A rhumba of racism. A foxtrot of fash.

Obviously she’s forgetting that we’re a laughing stock BECAUSE OF BREXIT.

It’s the UTTER FAILURE of Brextreemists like her that have wrecked [I think you mean wreaked, says Daddy. I know what I mean!] this position upon the rest of us.

People like Ms W and her new best mate, the private jet and gold elevator-flying Farrago, promised rainbows and unicorns and then immediately did a runner the moment it looked like they might have to DELIVER on their promises and lies.

This is hardly NEW. Remember that, thanks to the so-called leadership of the Quitting Quitling, Mr Farrago’s last vanity project YouQuit (formerly Kippers) lost, fired, mislaid or disgraced all but 3 of the 24 MEPs elected under their flag in 2014, including the Less-than-glorious Leader himself. Not that you would notice the difference, since aside from grandstanding in the odd debate they rarely bothered to turn up, or represent for the people who elected them, preferring to trouser the money and run.

So no one was actually SURPRISED that within 48 hours of “winning” the deeply compromised 2016 referendum, La Faux-rage was away to spend more time kissing the orange bottom of that other over-inflated ass, the then presidential-candidate Trump.

What MIGHT raise a Mr Roger-Moorish eyebrow is all the cries of “Brexit has been BETRAYED!” Sure it has, Mr F… BY YOU!

Meanwhile, in a WEIRD (possibly Fearful) SYMMETRY the “Remain Alliance” (formerly the ChUKles (formerly the TIGgers)) are ALSO performing a reverse-Big Brother reveal of the FAMOUS FACES they’ve lined up/picked out of a hat to be their candidates by series of Press Launches, mirroring the Farrego-trip even down to Mr Gavin Esler telling us that “Britain is a laughing stock”.

On a SERIOUS note, it’s really not right that the chance of gaining MEP seats (and, not to prejudge the polls, but for some parties those are basically the GIFT of an all-expenses paid trip to Brussels) are being handed out to BESTIES.

It’s not just IRONIC, it is WRONG that the very people who complain that the EU is “undemocratic” are being so… undemocratic!

This is actually the fault of Hard Labour’s Sinister Minister, Mr Jack Straw who, when Europe told Britain that using First Pass the Port for Euro elections wasn’t properly democratic, went out of his way to choose the LEAST democratic way for us to bring in a Proportional (ish) voting system.

Which is why instead of using the British Proportional Representation that we ALREADY used for elections in Northern Ireland, he went for the de HONK method, both because it favours BIG parties like his over small ones (and alliances) and because it’s a CLOSED Party List – one where the public don’t get to choose who is on the list, or who is top of the list and most likely to get the seat.

(I know, who would have expected one of Lord Blairimort’s ministers to try and skew the system in favour of Labour!)

Well, we notice that it’s not just the fly-by-night parties but also the supposed grown-ups in Conservatory and Hard Labour who are handing out the gift of an MEP seat to their chosen favourites.

Hooray then for the Liberal Democrats managing to not only hold a proper ballot of members in the very short time between Mrs May’s U-Turn on there definitely NOT being Euro elections and the start of campaigning for those Euro elections we’re not having, but also on the members picking a hugely diverse range of candidates (even when the Party’s well-meaning if flawed efforts to fabricate-in diversity fell flat)!


Anyway, here is the late Ms Victoria Wood. (Warning: may contain SINGING!)

Day 6058: Brexit - Optimism Bias for the Win

Wednesday

As a fluffy elephant, I’ve noticed you monkeys are in the habit of being bang-up sure things are going to turn out well. Even when they’re not.

It’s called OPTIMISM BIAS.

It CAN be useful. Having evolved the ability to imagine the FUTURE, you’d all be plunged into clinical depression without it.

(And I’m not making this up: people with low optimism bias tend to suffer with depression.)

But it also leads to assuming that WARNING SIGNS don’t apply to you:

Government Health Warning – I won’t get cancer.
Speed limits – I’m a safe driver!
Brexit cliff-edge ahead – Project Fear!!!!


So, a year into this Brexit shambles, and with the government making an art form of “masterly inactivity”, leaving things till WAY after the last minute, some Quitlings* are taking “nothing is happening” as a SIGN that really – really! – things are working out OK after all.

(*© @HickeyWriter)

This, as they say, is FINE.

originally from K.C. Green’s Gunshow comic #648

The leading lights (in the moth to flame sense) of the Vote Leave campaign are of necessity becoming adept at PIVOTING their arguments.

“a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way” (farrage) was swiftly transformed into “the will of the people”.

“No one is talking about leaving the Single Market” (hannan) has become “Everyone knew we would leave the Single Market”.

And now “We will be better off” is being rebranded as “We all knew there would be a period of adjustment” with a view to ending up at “Everyone accepted there was a price worth paying” (especially since we expect our kids to be paying it long after we’re gone).

This is particularly evident with this YouGov polling in the Indepretendent

“71 per cent of over-65s would accept a big economic hit – and half are willing for family members to lose their jobs”

That is – notice – RETIRED Quitlings saying they “accept” one of their family who is still working to PAY FOR THEIR BADWORD can lose their job to satisfy their ideological fix.

Nice.

But in spite of being thrown under the bus by Generation Baby Boom(and Bust)er, we still see responses of DENIAL from people who are just too OPTIMISTIC to see the warning signs.

Millie says: “So far there has not been any damage, quite the opposite.”

Ross adds: “Who says the economy will be ruined?? I'm not seeing a problem.”

It’s the sort of thing that might provoke an EPIC RANT… oh look, here’s Daddy Richard:

No damage? Not noticed anything?

Do you notice your electricity price?

British Gas are putting up prices by 12%. You can link that directly to the fall in the £, because energy is priced in $ so our costs have shot up.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40787555

Do you notice your food?

Those “great” trade deals on the table – well, it appears accepting American food hygiene standards means washing chicken in bleach because they don’t have the animal welfare standards that Europe does, and just try to kill all the bugs at the end of the process.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4742712/Why-chickens-washed-chlorine.html

Do you notice your holidays?

People going on holiday seeing four hour delays to enter Europe. That’s just a taster for what happens when we close our borders. That “taking back control” goes both ways.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4748182/EU-border-checks-leave-UK-tourists-queuing-FOUR-hours.html

Do you notice the big picture?

Growth is down to a puny 0.3% - we’ve gone from the strongest economy in Europe to the weakest. So much for Europe “holding Britain back”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40726833

Thousands maybe tens of thousands of jobs going from the city to Paris and Frankfurt. Oh they’re only bankers. But highly paid bankers who contribute a lot in taxes to paying for our services.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/negotiations-not-banks-leaving-london/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-latest-jobs-jp-morgan-us-bank-moving-staff-eu-a7836366.html

The Chancellor has a £25 billion hole in his budget. (says independent IFS report) That’s bigger than £350 million a week… no sign of that for the NHS yet either by the way.
http://news.sky.com/story/hammond-facing-25bn-budget-black-hole-ifs-study-10649553

Do you notice the NHS is in crisis?

40,000 shortfall in numbers of nurses because – surprise – the nurses from Europe took those people saying “go home” seriously.
http://metro.co.uk/2017/06/12/nhs-facing-major-crisis-after-brexit-leaves-hospitals-40000-nurses-short-6704236/

Do you notice that no one knows how to solve the problem of the border with Ireland?

Because it’s impossible. You simply cannot have a hard border with the EU and soft border with the Republic at the same time because the Iris border IS the EU border.
https://www.irishcentral.com/homepage/brexit-border-battle-about-to-change-irish-british-relationship-forever

Expecting the Irish to implement expensive and dubious electronic tracking to make it easy for us to leave, or worse telling the Irish that we will put British customs points in their ports (as though there hasn’t been 300+ years of conflict over exactly that sort of behaviour) is not approaching a solution. It’s making things worse.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40750999

Speaking as someone who was in Manchester when the Arndale was blown up AND in Canary Wharf the day THAT was blown up, I’d really like us not to mess up the peace process.

Did you notice that our power and influence in the world has evaporated?

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/uk-defeated-in-united-nations-vote-on-ownership-of-chagos-islands-a3571901.html
We lost that vote because the EU members who we have just rebuffed all abstained.

Did you notice Cornwall got shafted?

Don’t count on those promises that subsidies would be replaced like-for-like. Leave-voting Cornwall was getting £60 million in EU regional development fund money. They asked the government to guarantee it would be replaced. The government just flat refused to say that they’d be making sure regions didn’t lose out when we leave Europe.

George Osbourne was promising money to Cornwall in his last budget saying “when the South West votes blue, their voice is heard”. Maybe not so much these days.

And if they’ll do that to Cornwall…

Did you notice that the government just FORGOT Gibraltar?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4370054/Spain-handed-right-BLOCK-Gibraltar-Brexit-deal.html


And last, do you notice anyone, anyone at all taking charge?

http://news.sky.com/story/cabinet-rift-over-free-movement-deal-post-brexit-10967163

We’ve wasted a year, had a pointless general election that left the country even more confused and divided. And the Prime Minister’s gone on a walking holiday – or taken a hike – while the Cabinet are all fighting each other.

This is a total disaster. An utter dog’s breakfast of a Brexit.

REALLY what is your excuse for not noticing?

The answer to Daddy’s question is these people are EMOTIONALLY invested in their vote.

FACTS that say this was a BAD CHOICE are personally HURTFUL.

Nearly HALF of Leave voters say that DO NOT WANT to pay a price for leaving.

Offer them something for nothing; give them nothing for something

The only way to square that circle is to avoid the evidence altogether.

So they protect themselves from getting hurt by NOT NOTICING.

It’s an EXPLANATION. But not an EXCUSE.

Democracy – REAL Democracy – requires active and, more importantly, INFORMED participation.

But people don't WANT to be informed. As we've seen, people don't LIKE facts when the facts are painful. So they get NEW facts that agree with their decisions. That's why most people are so widlly MISinformed about Europe and the EU.

You would think journalism as a profession would seek to correct this, wouldn't you

That's why the referendum we were given was a SHAM, bodged together as a fix-all for the Conservatory Party by Mr Balloon, and now taken as an excuse to escalate her personal grudge against the European Court of Justice by Mrs Mayhem.

If we are going to fix this – and MY optimism bias says we CAN fix this – we are going to need to turn our arguments around, show people that the BETTER Way is now clearly to make up with Europe, retake our place IN the community with our FRIENDS.

We need to win the OPTIMISM and then we will WIN.

Day 5961: The Tories: Wrong. Unstable. No Leadership.

Thursday:


Theresa Mayhem says that she needs to win a General Election to be a “strong leader”.

Well, if she’s not strong enough to cope with a Parliament that will only back her 522 to 13, then she’s really pretty WEAK indeed.

She wants you to believe that she thinks the polls are wrong and that Hard Labour have a chance of winning. Which is about as credible as a promise written on the side of a bus.

This election ISN’T about picking who’s the Prime Monster. It’s about picking a PARLIAMENT that is able to HOLD HER TO ACCOUNT.

After five years when the Coalition was starting to put Britain back on the right path, when inequality actually fell, and jobs and wages were coming back, we have had a Tory Government that has been all U-Turns, broken promises and backstabbing.

How is THAT “stability”?

And there was a lot of fuss over a poll saying that now people thought that the referendum got the answer wrong by 44% to 42% - missing the BIG picture that the country remains MASSIVELY SPLIT, right down the middle. And that Mrs Mayhem and the extreme Brexiteers are MAKING IT WORSE.

How is THAT “leadership”?

Do you want to give a BLANK CHEQUE to the Tories?

I mean it’s a good job Mrs Mayhem doesn’t have a record of saying one thing and then doing the other.

Except for her U-Turn on not holding a General Election before 2020
Except for her U-Turn on remaining in Europe
Except for her U-Turn on not raising the National Insurance Tax
Except for her U-Turn on raising the National Insurance Tax
Except for the Tory U-Turn on PIP payments for the disabled
Except for the Tory U-Turn on working tax credits
Except now she wants to break the triple lock on pensions

A STRONG leader needs a STRONG Parliament to make sure that the KEEP THEIR STRONG PROMISES.

Mrs Mayhem has caved in, again and again, to the wishes of her Extreme Right-wing backbenches, and to the whims of a handful of billionaire tax-exiles who control – unaccountably – the right-wing newspapers.

And what about that DEAL with the European Union?

How is Mrs Mayhem going to cope when negotiating with the European leaders, who are a bit less likely to roll over than Uncle “strong message here” Jezza and the supine Labour Party?

So far, in fact, it’s Mrs Mayhem who has caved in on every issue she’s tried to force: settling the rights of British Citizens in Europe before trigging article 50 (non); parallel trade negotiations (nein); Gibraltar (viva España). This does not bode well for her “deal making”.

Meanwhile, Bojo “Punishment Beatings” Johnson has been made the Old English labradoodle of President Trump: told to “sit and stay” when he was supposed to be off to Moscow; admitting that it would be “very hard not to join in” if the US wanted to fire off another volley of high-explosives into the Syrian war zone. And for all the hand-holding and the fawning Gove, Britain still got bumped to the back of the queue – sorry “line” – for the Americans to make a trade deal with the EU first.

“Take Back Control” turns out to mean “Do what Donald says (and like it)”.

If Parliament’s “meaningful vote” on the final deal is going to be, well, meaningful, it needs a Parliament that is strong and unafraid to ask questions, to speak up for ALL the different views, Remain and Leave, and the different ideas and then try and bring us back together.

That’s why you need to vote for the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

Liberal Democrats believe in a Parliament that represents ALL opinions – even ones we don’t agree with. Liberal Democrats believe in a democracy that means ALL voices can be heard – not silencing people we don’t agree with, not “Crushing” the Opposition. And one that trusts the people, not taking them for granted.

Weak leaders are afraid of questions.
Weak leaders are afraid of TV debates.
Weak leaders are afraid of Parliament.

Don’t give in to weakness. Don’t give Mrs Mayhem a blank cheque. Vote for a Parliament that is STRONG and hold the Tories to account for their promises.

If you want DEMOCRACY to MEAN SOMETHING: support the LIBERAL DEMOCRATS.

Day 5932: The Firebird and the Dragon

B-Day:

So it has happened. Theresa May has sent the “dear John” to Donald Tusk (good elephant name, just sayin’) to let him know we are all shooting ourselves in all of our flappy feet by triggering Article 50.

Remember, if we all get BEHIND the Prime Monster, then when SHE goes over the cliff… we DON’T have to follow!

The Brex Maniacs tell us to be optimistic. So I’ll tell you what I am optimistic about: we CAN turn this around. We can FIX this. WE CAN WIN.

Let me put it in a story:

Never upon a time… the Island of Briton was without magic or stories. And the people were sad and angry.

So the King and the Queen put up a proclamation and asked: who among the free citizens will go to faraway lands to return with a magical animal to bring stories to the people.

From the people who stepped forward, the King chose a rich country squire, who spoke with clever words how he knew better than anyone what the people needed. But the Queen picked a stable lass who came from the city with a lot of pluck and a cheeky wink.

So each went out on a boat.

The rich man, who was very old and very wise, sailed off to the lands of iron and gold and returned with a Dragon. And the maid who was younger but some would say wiser, set her boat towards the sun and returned with a golden Firebird.

And the King said to the Queen, the Dragon is very large, and very cunning and very very strong: it can protect us from all of our enemies and they will fear and respect us. What good is your songbird, then?

And the Queen said to the King: what use is a land ravaged by your Dragon. My Firebird will sing and give people hope.

And the Dragon was just as large and just as cunning and even stronger than the King had said, but it was also envious, and avaricious, and gluttonous, and full of angry fire. And it ravaged the land from end to end, eating many of the people and stealing all of their money, before crawling into a deep cave and coiling up to sleep on its huge hoard of stolen gold in the dark heart of its dungeon lair.

And the people heard phoenix song and had hope.

The Dragon woke up angry and afraid. It didn’t like this at all. And it flew out of its cave in a fury to find the Firebird and burn it to ashes.

But from the ashes, the Firebird was reborn to sing its song again.

This made the Dragon even more afraid and even more angry and it came and burned the Phoenix to ashes again. And stomped on the ashes for good measure.

But you cannot kill a song like that. And the Firebird was reborn to sing once again.

Time after time the Dragon burned the Firebird. And time after time, the Firebird came back. Hope born again and again, in spite of every defeat.

And seeing all this, the people started to sing the Phoenix song. Just a few at first. But more and more. And this made the Dragon so frightened that it went away and hid.

And the people were able to live in hope and happiness, at least for a while, until enough of them might give in to greed, or fear, or envy and the Dragon might come back.

Because Dragons live forever. But hope never dies.

We are the Firebird, the Bird of Freedom; however much they burn us, we keep coming back. And we can beat the Dragon of fear and anger. With hope.

As a fluffy elephant, inheritor of the WOOLLY MAMMOTHS, I might just have a better claim to be a NATIVE Briton that any of you monkey-people who wandered here over the Doggerland in the last Ice Age or the many peoples, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans, and all the rest who migrated here since.

I am English, and like most English I am a bit of a MONGREL. I’ve been a Londoner, an East-Ender; my Daddies are from Stockport; one is half-Scottish half-American; the other is of Yorkshire stock; we are from ALL OVER.

But Europe is my home and my family, a family that has spent my entire life – and my DADDIES’ entire lives (which is AGES!) – working for peace and prosperity, through art and science, through learning and living together as much as through trade. We make each other so much better off in so many more ways than just money. We show the World that there is another way, a better way, than wars and dictators.

The Leave campaign – never fact based – placed its great emotional appeal on two weapons: the grass is always greener and nostalgia for a better past.

Well BOTH OF THOSE ARE ON OUR SIDE NOW.

I want people to remember the great days, the glory days when stopped being the SICK MAN of Europe and started to get better off, when we could AFFORD an NHS that treated people on time, when we could HALVE child poverty, when we could SAVE Bosnia AND protect the Falklands, when we could confidently INTRODUCE Human Rights and Freedom of Information, when we could feel we were good.

I want to them to remember ECONOMIC MIRACLES and COOL BRITANIA and remember that they happened WHEN WE WERE IN THE EU.

But this doesn’t need to be just nostalgia.

Europe will evolve without us, they have to, and hopefully they will become both a stronger economy and a fairer democracy. We have forfeited our right to be part of leading that change. But that does not mean we cannot continue to engage, to listen to what Europe wants, learn from them, help if we are able, if we are asked. Europe will be the green and pleasant land 21 miles away across the Channel.

The Tories have such a NARROW and PETTY vision of Britain, not a Great Britain but a GREY Britain, a cold offshore tax haven, under the choke of the Dragon.

But we can be BETTER THAN THAT. We WILL be better than that.

Tell the story of a Britain that listens to HOPE, not to FEARS, and takes our place again among the family of nations. The story of a people who are look bravely outward to new challenges, not inward to past failures. The story of how we can become again that Great Nation that leads in Europe, no need to cower away.

Tell them we ARE the Firebird. And we can SING.

Day 5882: The Prophecy

Tuesday:


This is a version of my entry to the “Britain in 2030” essay competition run by “Your Liberal Britain”. But because of their 500-word limit you lucky readers get about 50% more stuff!

Congratulations to winner, Lee Howgate, and all the runners up.

Now… I feel a vision coming on…

It is 2030 and Tim Farron’s Liberal Democrat-led government is seeking re-election after a remarkable if turbulent five years.

Sal Brinton, elected as presiding officer of the new Senate of the Commonwealth of British States and Nations, reflects on the three outstanding achievements of the Lib Dem Prime Minister.

First is the rescue of the economy from the disastrous protectionist experiment – the so-called “Trump Slump”. Freedom to trade and travel across 35 countries of the European Union has seen a flourishing of new ideas and new jobs. The young people who had felt their future torn away by “Brexit” rediscovered a new global sprit of Britain. The older generation have remembered that they actually liked going to Europe. True, the end of the pound was a high price to pay for readmission, and the process nearly foundered because of it, but the huge boost given to the economy by joining the Euro at such an advantageous rate has left many wondering at the “Project Fear” scare stories of the discredited Brexiteers.

Second was the healing brought about through the “Big British Conversation”, inspired by the way that new members of the Liberal Democrats in 2015 came up with new ways for the Party to review its goals and policies, which was the starting point for the constitutional reforms. For the first time people across Britain had felt that their ideas were being listened to, that they were in control of the outcome. Not everyone got what they wanted, but almost everyone felt the outcome was fair enough. The conversation has even been such a success that Ambassador Clegg is now being asked to help the Union roll out a similar process to rebuild the institutions of Europe.

Agreeing the framework for government devolution, instead of the haphazard approach that had resulted in a wildly differing powers from Scotland’s Parliament to London’s Mayor, gave people back the feeling they were all of equal importance to the country. Regional identities such as Cornwall, Wessex, Mercia, Yorkshire and Northumbria re-emerged when, after years of nationalist demands for an English identity, it turned out that there wasn’t one.

No one had expected Prince William to decline the throne, but no one was surprised when Kate Middleton-Windsor beat Tony Blair by a landslide to become our first elected Queen. Sean Bean had modestly laughed off moves to make him hereditary King of the North.

The axis of politics had shifted, from the old, backward-looking workers v capital left-right of the Twentieth Century, to the Twenty-First Century “Outward or Inward” of Liberal Internationalists versus Protectionists. The old two-party system had finally admitted it couldn’t cope, leading at long last to fair votes. While the right-wing Tories struggled on in alliance with former-Faragists in the newly-merged United Kingdom Conservative Party, some places saw up to four candidates competing for the label True Labour. Jeremy Corbyn remains leader of one of them. No one is sure which.

(As for Mr Farage, he was unable to take up the peerage offered him in the resignation honours of the last Tory Prime Minister as the House of Lords was abolished while he was still away on a six-month junket in America.)

Third, and in many ways most important, are the foundations laid for a future of opportunity.

Today, the Secretary of State for Sustainable Development Sarah Olney is at the ceremony to break ground on the first of four new fusion reactors, while Environment Secretary Liz Leffman cuts the ribbon on the latest tidal lagoon power plant and is able to announce that the Zero Carbon Britain target has been achieved. Health Secretary Norman Lamb will welcome the completion of the National Health and Care Service, and Home Secretary Caroline Lucas is widely praised for the latest figures that show implementing Liberal Democrat reforms to the drugs law has both cut crime and the number of people sent to prison.

On the World stage, Foreign Secretary Alistair Carmichael is at the United Nations getting them to agree to establishing no-fly zones and safe havens that will protect civilians threatened with war. He was right to resist calls to join further American military adventures, and instead we have pioneered the use of drone aircraft for delivering humanitarian aid not bombs. Meanwhile our forces in the Joint European Defence Initiative, led by Lord Ashdown, have now participated in four UN Peacekeeping Actions and rescued more than a million refugees from the Mediterranean.

Britain is getting back to work. British-made Jaguar-Tesla self-driving electric autocars are driving themselves to France, Germany, Italy and Poland. West Country Hemp is already established as a world leading brand. ARM holdings has bought out the remains of Apple, and are planning to launch a “retro” ZX iPhone. British and international cast and crew are filming Star Wars Episode XII at Elstree. People are working fewer hours but producing more, and Chancellor Ed Balls (International Labour) will announce the increase of the Citizens’ Income, sharing the growth in GDP.

We will build our success on openness to bold new ideas, to sharing our wealth, and on being part of the ever-wider family. This is now a Liberal Britain.

Alas, it’s only just over a month later, and this already seems shockingly naïve. The notion that we might somehow swerve and avoid the worst of Brexit and Trump Presidency has been shown to be hollow in the light of Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech setting out her 12-point plan for a hard-as-nails cliff-edge Brexit and a first fortnight from the new Administration in Washington that has seen a blizzard of executive orders and Constitution-baiting and plumbed new depths of deceit, from illusory crowd sizes to invisible walls to imaginary massacres.

Theresa May makes her plans if not clearer at least fractionally less opaque – and they are plans for a cold and cheerless tax haven Britain, lowest common denominator Britain without social care and a rundown NHS, where the Fat Cats can protect their assets and the just about managing just about can’t.

Now firmly in the claws of the Brextreemists, they drag her further and further to the exploitation right, seeming almost gleefully to desire the failure of our exit negotiations so they can go buccaneeringly alone, quite wilfully ignorant to the fact that we can’t just “adopt WTO tariffs” without the agreement of the WTO’s 169 members, one of whom is the EU.

And our non-opposition Opposition of Jeremy Corbyn is three-line-whipping his Labour rabble to support the Tories as Theresa takes her suicide-leap into the arms of the odious Trump.

And as Boris “punishment beatings” Johnson tells us that it trivialises the holocaust to compare Theresa’s fawning love-in with the man who has placed an actual White Supremacist in charge of America’s security with the rise to power of the 30’s iteration of Fascism, satire lies weeping and bleeding.

So what use is a fluffy little homespun future, when all about us the darkness gathers and the very worst of human spirit is in ascendance? All the use in the world, if it gives you hope.

Find hope where you can.

History sometime rhymes in odd ways. After the Scottish Independence Referendum, the Nationalists were galvanised and swept to stunning victories in Holyrood and Westminster elections. I think a lot of people assumed the EU Referendum would be the same. Except the SNP lost that Referendum, whereas the Farragist Nationalists won on Brexit. And as in Scotland, oddly rhyming, it is the losing side that is now winning.

Support is coming back to the Liberal Democrats. Sometimes in very surprising places. We understand the big swings to the Gold Party in Remain areas like Witney and sensationally Richmond Park, but there are some even bigger swings in those Labour/Leave heartlands of Sunderland and Rotherham. This cannot just be a surge of Remainiac votes; there’s got to be some change of mind behind this.

Perhaps what united and energised the people in Scotland wasn’t crude “nationalism”; it was a sense of a bright future ripped away.

Perhaps what’s behind this change of mind, is a sense that this is not the change people voted for.

Find hope where you can.

Stay strong, my fluffy lovelies, stay safe. Resist the urge to fight hate with hate. Though the darkness closes around us, there is still a hope of light. We will build that Liberal Britain. One day.

Day 5769: Marmite Wars are Merely the Beginning

Monday:


Today Captain Clegg launched his third pamphlet on the challenges facing the UK due to Brexit. This one is about food and drink.

Nick Clegg at the National Liberal Club

If you’re still watching POLDARK on the BBC you will know it’s a tale of noble-but-impoverished workers of mine and land, ground down by the machinations of sinister bankers who manipulate the laws and the local dimwit Tory MP for their own ends, and so must turn to smuggling to get goods past the exorbitant import tariffs.

What you might NOT realise is that this is a BOLD sci-fi drama set in the DISTOPIAN post-Brexit FUTURE! With occasional topless scything.

And the reaction was basically terrifying. (To Brexit, not the topless scything!)

That’s not the position of Captain Clegg – who was at pains to point out that we should definitely be trying to save people from their fears by at least agreeing a Norway-style EEA agreement that maintains our trading links.

No, the fear was present in the questions arising, questions from small farms, from small retailers – corner shops and newsagents – who are all already staring down the barrel of disaster as the collapse in the pound sees their prices soar; the sort of everyday working folk whose concerns for their businesses and livelihoods and families are dismissed from the ivory towers of Conservatories like Jacob Rees-Mogg who’s never had to do a day’s work in his life and puts down the questions of ordinary people as “just more Project Fear”.

And another very good question came from the Commonwealth countries who can see their gateway deals to the EU via the UK collapsing and WTO trade tariffs of 40% on chocolate or 50-60% on beef and lamb being imposed by the careless diktat of Liam “Fantastic Dr” Fox, disgraced former Defence Minister and not-yet-disgraced (‘96 days and counting’) International Trade Minister.

Across the continent, the papers are not full – as Cap’s Nick put it – of the cunning of Mr Fox, the honesty of David Davis or the diplomacy of Boris Johnson. No, our friends and allies are instead AGHAST at the language and occasional downright xenophobia coming out of this chaotic Tory government, particularly things like the conference speech of the “Go Home” Secretary, Ms Green Amber Rudd. Less of a dog whistle; more of a traffic light stuck on stop!


Prime Monster Theresa May (or May Not) holds out against delivering ANY answers beyond Brexit means Brexit means a slap on the wrist for ministers who dare to speak the unspeakable, but insists that she has the power to Invoke Article 50 without taking a vote in Parliament. Talk about “taking back control!” Will those Tories – David Davis, John Deadwood, Peter Bone, Rees-Moggy? – who made such a BIG THING of Parliamentary Sovereignty call her to account? Or will they sell their principles in a heartbeat?

MPs were EXPRESSLY told that the Referendum would be only ADVISORY – or else they might have voted for more stringent checks, such as a two-thirds majority, or other thresholds – and those Brexiteers who are trying to say that in passing the referendum BILL Parliament has already voted on Brexit are clearly trying to take away the democratic and sovereign rights of Parliament.

Noted thinker A. C Grayling is writing to every MP to ask them why they are allowing this, and that they should demand a debate AND VOTE on the issue.

It is, after all, their DUTY to “take back control”.

It is clear that unchecked, Mrs Maybe’s unelected administration will see us BOUNCED into the most CHAOTIC TORY BREXIT!

Unilever and Tesco may have come to an accommodation that sees the Marmite back on our shelves, but that’s far from the end of it.

We currently SELL more than £18 billion of food abroad, one of our biggest export industries, and two thirds of that goes to the EU. Tariff and other barriers, like regulations or defining chocolate to be only high cocoa solids, that would exclude British chocolate altogether, will more than eliminate any benefits of the cheaper pound. And THEN we have to compete with the highly subsidised EU food production because THEY’LL still have the much-derided Common Agricultural Policy that WAS pouring billions into OUR farms.

But also we EAT more than we can GROW, so we have to BUY IN more than 25% of the food we need, and more than 70% of that is from Europe.

Companies importing food are going to face a choice of three options: put up prices – difficult in a cutthroat market with discounters already at their heels; cut into their own profits – which are already very tight, especially for small firms that import ingredients to make into prepared foods; or stop stocking certain lines altogether – the Marmite option.

For the moment, big importers will have their prices protected – either by long-term agreements with their suppliers or by insurance (called “hedging”) that will cover the higher cost of buying stuff with a pound that is worth up to 18% less.

But small companies who can’t afford big insurance are being hit with those choices already.

And even the bigger companies, their contracts will run out and, as Tesco discovered, new agreements will need to be made; those insurance policies are to smooth out short-term the ups and downs of the currency markets, not to protect long-term from a major devaluation. And then the higher prices will have to be paid.

In the next year to two years we will see a (first) big spike in food inflation, and that will hit the least well off the hardest.

We need to work RIGHT NOW to protect against an even bigger hit from collapsing out of the Single Market.

As Master Yoda so very nearly said of Bojo’s foreign policy: Victory? There was no victory. Begun, this clown war has.

Steve Bell in the Grauniad

Day 5714: Brexit Means Batshit or Brexit means Bullshit

Tuesday:


“Brexit means Brexit,” says Prime Minister Theresa May. But what does Brexit means Brexit really mean? You might as well say Wiff Waff means Wiff Waff, for all the facts it tells us.

The dilemma… or trilemma or quadlemma… that faces Mrs May is: how does she satisfy all the different Leaver’s different reasons? And of course she can’t. They’re utterly irreconcilable.

The real choice facing the Prime Minister is whether she faces down that section of the voters who will scream betrayal most loudly or she accepts trashing the economy to satisfy people who voted for magic unicorns.


Look, either you can determine all your own rules. And no one will do business with you. Or you can compromise and have trade.

So either you are batshit crazy. Or you were bullshitting when you said we would “take back control”.

Here’s why:

People who voted Leave will give you one of a dozen different reasons for why they voted – almost all variations on the cry of “*I’m* not a racist!”.

(This refusal to admit that immigration was the big driving force of the Leave Campaign that is the sort of reprehensible moral cowardice that sees Labour’s Gisela Stewart happy to parrot the lies of Farage and Gove and then wring her hands at the entirely predictable (and indeed predicted) outcome.)

“We have valid reasons,” they say.

…Actually they mean “we have morally acceptable arguments” (not like the racists).

For an argument to be valid is has to be true:

• “Europe stops us barring foreigners from entering the country” is true, but morally reprehensible.
• “Europe is holding us back from free trade” is invalid because it’s nonsense.
• “Europe prevents us from cutting workers’ holidays and doubling their working hours” is true but repugnant, and not the sort of thing that wins public support for your buccaneering free marketers.
• “We should be making our own laws” is invalid because the law needs to be the same for everyone if it’s going to work.

“We should make our own laws”, is one of those big assertions that Leave say won them the campaign. It gained a lot of traction in the referendum. And it’s total nonsense.

The law must apply equally to both sides in any agreement. Like, say, a trade treaty. If one side is going to say they can change the law (possibly on a whim) what is in it for the other side?

Suppose your next door neighbour says that they should make up the laws that govern their house. And they decide they don’t agree with those pesky laws about noise after midnight. Or fly tipping. Or that property is theft?

That’s just the same as when we get, say, UKIP’s Suzanne Evans (on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour) saying we don’t need follow the rules in Article 50 at all; we should just change the law in our own Parliament to leave. Reneging on the Lisbon Treaty would mean that no country on Earth would trust us with those “free trade agreements” that the likes of Ms Evans say it will be so easy to make.

There’s a section of the Leave vote who might be completely happy with that, with no trade with Europe at all. For them, the only satisfactory outcome will be to slam the door to the EU on our way out.

It’s probably not a large section, but you can bet it’s going to be a very, very noisy one.

And they are never going to be satisfied. Because that sort of isolationism is not going to be acceptable to anyone who wants to be able to buy bananas or avocados or for that matter petrol.

For absolutely anyone else, anyone who wants to be able to buy things from abroad and sell our stuff there too, then you are going to have to compromise. Starting by agreeing on the law – the rules – for your treaty.

What you cannot get is the completely disconnected from reality version where we want lots of trade with everyone… but they all agree to follow our rules, the sort of magic thinking represented in the Cabinet by “Fantastic” Dr Fox, the man already picking a fight with the empty room that is Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office.


Two months have passed since THAT vote. The Prime Minister has been able to take a holiday. Labour continue to stage their what can hardly be called leadership election. And thankfully, neither the World nor the British economy have ended in the meantime. In fact we have had positive economic figures for July: retail sales are up and unemployment is down.

But it’s early days. We haven’t actually done anything irreversible yet. It’s still difficult to see how we will not get a spike in inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound – particularly once fuel bills start to go up in winter. And it’s an awkward question but where is the investment in jobs and trade going to come from, now that companies are looking more to the continental mainland for their European bases?

So far, Theresa May is Wile E. Coyote, running on empty air. We need to know whether what she’s got in her handbag is a parachute… or an anvil. Ideally before she looks down and notices the economic gravity.

We don’t want a recession. So what are the government doing to prevent a bump in the road turning into a shock to the system? Things have changed (or the vote was meaningless Miranda Hart look) so the government needs to say what changes it will make in response. Complacency and inertia won’t look so good with hindsight if things do go pear-shaped.

Putting off telling us what “Brexit” will mean stops the government telling us what actions they will take. “Brexit means Brexit” is actually damaging.