It is three weeks since the European Elections changed everything and there’s really only one story in town. It’s just not the one you think it is.
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| With 3 MEPS Lib Dems topped the poll in London |
Obviously, the news cycles are dominated by the Conservatory leadership. After all, Game of Thrones is over now, and the audience needs a new hit of blood, guts and sexposition…
But whether the idiot in the clown-car is now a shoe in for the Iron Throne or might still get removed by an unexpected twist, what’s less obvious is that the entire debate is framed by the real confrontation: Liberals versus Fascists.
Liberals. Standing up to the Fascists. Who’d have guessed?!
Brexit has always, always been about choosing whether we are a closed off, inward-looking Little England trying to recapture a past that never was, or an outward, embracing, forward-facing Great Britain working with the family of nations for a freer fairer future.
The failure of Theresa Maybe Not to get a Brexit that was Brexity enough for the Mogglodytes meant we got to take part in the HUGE democratic exercise that is the European Elections.
Which lead to the ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE comeback of Nigel Farrago and his Kippers 2.0. No policies. Just an overweening ego and a betrayal narrative.
(“oh but we all know what Nigel stands for” – well on the evidence, stealing his constituents’ money to spend on propaganda so he can continue to not do his job and fail to defend Britain’s interests. How’s THAT for a betrayal narrative?”)
What was less predictable – in the sense that it was predicted by absolutely no one up to and including Professor Sir Not-Richard Curtis while he was reporting the actual actual figures on local election night and still saying “well this is going to be a good night for the Greens” as the Lib Dems soared passed 700 gains – was that the Liberal Democrats would be the clear opposition.
Liberals. Standing up to the Fascists. Who’d have guessed?!
A simple, clear message. “Stop Brexit”. We changed our story, and changed the national story.
We stood up for our values. Liberal , not “centrist”. No more standing in the middle, apologetically getting hit by cars coming in either direction. Taking a stand – like we did on Iraq, like we did on I.D. cards. Not necessarily the popular choice, or the easy choice. But the right choice.
And that was all it took, for us to win London. To break Nasty Nige’s claims to be the “winner”.
Parties that favour Remain outnumbered the Quitlings on election night, and a big big part of that is the Liberal Democrats. We might not quite have managed to form a Remain Alliance, but together the Liberal voices and Green voices and Scottish and Welsh Voices are more and better than the Brexit Party.
Liberals. Standing up to the Fascists. Who’d have guessed?!
So the polls – I mean never mind the polls, but the actual vote on Euro-election night put us second, beating Hard Labour’s wilting rose and the Conservatory’s burning tree; the actual votes in Peterborough show us quadrupling our vote in Brexit central – but since then polls have shown us well up, including one having us tops.
What can all this mean?
It means two things. First, there is no limit to what we can achieve, and there should be no limit to the ambitions of our next leader, whoever SHE is.
(What? What! Oh go on, vote for Jo!)
But second it means we must embrace that clear Liberal message. When we speak with our fluffy hearts, when we are clear, when we are Liberal we win.
This country needs healing. So much. And we will offer hope for everyone. But we cannot try to offer something that will satisfy everyone. We cannot try to straddle that divide. Look at what happened to Labour. They said they were trying to bring the country together. They were – rightly – seen as trying to say one thing to Remainers and the opposite to Quitlings. If you speak with two faces, soon people start to think of you as two-faced.
The nearest comparison is Northern Ireland. It’s a bit artificial, because there are artificial rules there that mean you have to have Unionist and Nationalist power-sharing. But when the brakes were taken off after the Good Friday agreement, the votes didn’t go to the middle of the road Parties, they went to the ones who said what they meant.
That’s happening in the rest of Britain. Liberal Democrats on the one side. Brexits on the other. No longer right and left. Right and Wrong.
Liberals. Standing up to the Fascists. Who’d have guessed?!
If there was a time when the gulf could have been crossed, it was in the weeks after the Referendum, when a Prime Minister of vision could have brought together people from different sides to find a solution that saw us leave but remain close. It would have cost a bit for both sides, but Remainers would have been soothed, and Quitters would have had their departure.
But instead, the Quitlings went berserk. Seizing their waffer-thin victory, cobbled together by promising a different Brexit to almost every different voter, and claiming that it was a mandate for whatever mad scheme entered their heads: abolish human rights – will of the people, Empire 2.0 – will of the people! Denounce the judges – will of the people., General Election to Crush the Saboteurs – will of the pe… oh fluff, look how that collision with reality worked out.
Last week, there was research showing that the soon-to-be-former Prime Monster’s three years of promising No Deal because it’s better than a Bad Deal right up to the point of sitting down and being show just how very much WORSE it was has not been completely successful in bringing the country back together either.
In fact, if you want to piss off 90% of the people, just pick a Brexit. Any Brexit.
TMPM’s catalogue of cluelessness has hardened opinions all round so much so that each different Brexit tribe is now so utterly convinced of their own deluded version of Brexit (no migration Brexit, sovereignty Brexit, take back our laws Brexit, Singapore on Stilts Brexit, Red White and Blue Brexit, In Out Shake it All About Brexit and every other Magic Unicorn Brexit) and utterly so convinced that any other Brexit would be a BETRAYAL™ that they would all rather we Remain than get the WRONG BREXIT™.
And the 48%, who might well have accepted with a few British grumbles that they lost in 2016, are more pissed than ever that they’ve not only not been listened to, and called traitors up and down the country by that fatuous fag-smoking former banker in the affected Barbour Jacket, that they are now more than willing to say, you know what, we were actually bloody RIGHT in that Referendum and we damn well don’t want to put up with this Brexit nonsense any more.
Everything has changed.
The old parties tried to ride Farrage’s tiger and it’s turned on them and eaten them.
There is only one path to healing.
And that is Stop Brexit. Bollocks to Brexit. We are better than this. And when we say so, we win.
Liberals. Standing up to the Fascists. Damn right. And about time too!
