June 24th: never the end.
By Christ, politics is dispiriting at the moment.
Not that it isn't normally. It's just the absolute quality of the nonsense of late. The entirely confected Labour antisemitism row, that just so happened to coincide with the local elections and has since vanished without trace, just for one. You obviously can't legislate for the newt fancier to suddenly decide to tour TV studios talking about Hitler, but it does show the depths to which a party establishment still unable to face up to how it got itself into this mess will sink. Just look at the anonymous quotes given to Sam Knight for his New Yorker profile of Corbyn. "He is an allotment digger," said one ex-cabinet minister. "Plodding". What does that say about you then, mate?
It's also that no one it seems can learn the very simplest of lessons. I hate to keep coming back to this, it's that it's so fucking obvious. If the Scottish referendum campaign taught us anything, it's that it's suicide to share platforms, even if it's for the greater good. To see Osborne, Balls and Cable all on a stage together, joined by another of those unacceptable faces of capitalism, Michael O'Leary, it's as though the whole Yes/No neverendum didn't happen. No, Balls and Cable might not be MPs now, having both lost their seats to the Tories, making it all the stranger why they would decide it was in anyone's best interests to play the part of the shit to Osborne's latest round of bull, but that doesn't make a scrap of difference. It still looks like the establishment ganging up together, even if the Leave campaign is just as much the establishment as Remain. There isn't any need for conspiracy theories, as Osborne said, because something that looks very much like a conspiracy to your average passer-by is only made all the more apparent by figures that used to be at each others' throats suddenly making eyes at each other. Talk about a trifecta of dunces, only one joined by someone who would sell you his grandmother and then charge you extra for her handbag.
Then we have the Leavers, with Boris himself deciding to dust down old Adolf and bring him into the debate. Now, it might sound beyond stupid to everyone else, comparing the EU to a dictator who used his military in the attempt to create a united Europe, and that's because it is. It doesn't though to some in the Leave campaign, as Matthew d'Anconservative in one of his lucid moments sets out how comparing the EU to the Nazis has long been a thing. Those on the far-right usually prefer to describe it as the EUSSR, as clearly all EU member states are just vassals to Brussels, with Jean-Claude Juncker as Brezhnev. Either way, it's the same thing: the EU has no democratic accountability or credibility. You only need look at how the EU doesn't take for an answer on previous referendums to see that, obviously.
Which is precisely why as d'Ancona relates, should Leave lose this time, those who want out will just agitate at every turn for a referendum under the 2011 European Union Act, the first attempt at placate Tory backbenchers by Cameron. The merest transfer of power to the EU will then trigger another referendum, another fight, another round of each side calling white black, while everyone else either tunes out or becomes so desperate for the end they consider opening their wrists a viable alternative. June the 24th will never be the end. Leave learned from the SNP. Remain hasn't from the mistakes of the No campaign.
Not that it isn't normally. It's just the absolute quality of the nonsense of late. The entirely confected Labour antisemitism row, that just so happened to coincide with the local elections and has since vanished without trace, just for one. You obviously can't legislate for the newt fancier to suddenly decide to tour TV studios talking about Hitler, but it does show the depths to which a party establishment still unable to face up to how it got itself into this mess will sink. Just look at the anonymous quotes given to Sam Knight for his New Yorker profile of Corbyn. "He is an allotment digger," said one ex-cabinet minister. "Plodding". What does that say about you then, mate?
It's also that no one it seems can learn the very simplest of lessons. I hate to keep coming back to this, it's that it's so fucking obvious. If the Scottish referendum campaign taught us anything, it's that it's suicide to share platforms, even if it's for the greater good. To see Osborne, Balls and Cable all on a stage together, joined by another of those unacceptable faces of capitalism, Michael O'Leary, it's as though the whole Yes/No neverendum didn't happen. No, Balls and Cable might not be MPs now, having both lost their seats to the Tories, making it all the stranger why they would decide it was in anyone's best interests to play the part of the shit to Osborne's latest round of bull, but that doesn't make a scrap of difference. It still looks like the establishment ganging up together, even if the Leave campaign is just as much the establishment as Remain. There isn't any need for conspiracy theories, as Osborne said, because something that looks very much like a conspiracy to your average passer-by is only made all the more apparent by figures that used to be at each others' throats suddenly making eyes at each other. Talk about a trifecta of dunces, only one joined by someone who would sell you his grandmother and then charge you extra for her handbag.
Then we have the Leavers, with Boris himself deciding to dust down old Adolf and bring him into the debate. Now, it might sound beyond stupid to everyone else, comparing the EU to a dictator who used his military in the attempt to create a united Europe, and that's because it is. It doesn't though to some in the Leave campaign, as Matthew d'Anconservative in one of his lucid moments sets out how comparing the EU to the Nazis has long been a thing. Those on the far-right usually prefer to describe it as the EUSSR, as clearly all EU member states are just vassals to Brussels, with Jean-Claude Juncker as Brezhnev. Either way, it's the same thing: the EU has no democratic accountability or credibility. You only need look at how the EU doesn't take for an answer on previous referendums to see that, obviously.
Which is precisely why as d'Ancona relates, should Leave lose this time, those who want out will just agitate at every turn for a referendum under the 2011 European Union Act, the first attempt at placate Tory backbenchers by Cameron. The merest transfer of power to the EU will then trigger another referendum, another fight, another round of each side calling white black, while everyone else either tunes out or becomes so desperate for the end they consider opening their wrists a viable alternative. June the 24th will never be the end. Leave learned from the SNP. Remain hasn't from the mistakes of the No campaign.
Labels: Boris Johnson, EU referendum, politics, Scottish independence, stupidity
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