I know I should be working on the Scottish images but it wa just too tempting this morning so I had to get out and enjoy another beautiful dawn over my local river. Brexit related? Not a bit of it and whatever happens on the 31st of October the sun will rise the next day and the river will continue to flow downhill. Spooky that.
I’ve spent the weekend in and around the Scottish capital Edinburgh to take a break from everything and relax. Overall it succeeded even if it reinforced my hatred of the A1 to Newcastle upon Tyne – afterwards it is a lot more humane if a major trunk road can be humane? So what have I learnt about things? Well the first thing I have learnt that Leicester is closer to Edinburgh than Lerwick, the capital (?) of the Shetland Isles.
As for anything else I am still working on the images and trying to get my thoughts together so perhaps in a day or so I will have some considered opinions. This being said I’ll leave you with the Leaderfoot viaduct as a succinct summary of where we are in that strange referendum menage e trois we seem to be caught in between the UK, Scotland and the EU. Here we have a bridge built in what I call the Anglo Scots borderlands as a wonderful example of 19th century engineering yet almost 1900 years before the Romans were the first to bridge the River Tweed at this point using legionnaires for all the heavy lifting. These legionnaires and their auxiliaries would have been drawn from all over the Empire – some from far off Syria. It does seem that when we live and work together it is amazing what we can achieve.
There reaches a point when the mind can take no more and it screams out NO MORE! (I have reached that point today…just in case you might be worried about my sanity this is just a reaction to Brexit.)
So for me one of the best ways to recuperate is to do a bit of drawing….
Don’t let the bastards grind you down
There is one problem that all the remain politicians and those of us who want to remain within the European Union (EU) cannot overcome: Legitimacy. Much as I hate to agree with Boris Johnson on this point I think he is right – we have to honour the result of the referendum and we have to leave the European Union. I don’t want to but unless there is a second referendum I don’t see that there is any other legitimate course of action.
What I don’t agree is that we have to leave without a deal because I just don’t believe in any real sense that exist. Yes we could leave on the 31st October without some form of a deal but on the 1st of November we will be entering in to talks to try and ameliorate the problems associated with that course of action. This is what will fill our political lives for years to come and so getting a deal now is the best way to ensure that the start of that process is as smooth as possible.
I believe that Britain is far too big a country for the EU to just try and pretend doesn’t exist. On the flip side of that of course is that the EU is a huge beast for Britain to try and ignore and we will both have to find some form of an accommodation whether Nigel Farage or the front page of the Daily Express likes it or not.
What I also believe is that the Republic of Ireland is going to get screwed which ever way this goes. If we leave without a deal there will be warm words and possibly some cash from the EU but I don’t believe this will last for long. The Irish will become very isolated and possibly blamed by some countries for the fact that their economy has been adversely affected because of Irish intransigence over the back stop. This doesn’t mean that the Irish are wrong but when Germany is in recession and without a government whilst the Italian debt crises is starting to hit the Euro hard I really don’t think the EU will give too much consideration to the needs of the Republic of Ireland GDP $333 billion when compared to Germany GDP $3.67 trillion or Italy $1.9 trillion. Suddenly the problems on the road between Blacklion to Belcoo isn’t going to count for much at all with the EU. If this is the case then perhaps being so snotty to the British might not have been the wisest course of action either.
So the latest news in the happy horror show of British politics is that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is going to break the law and not ask for an extension to article 50 should one be required in October. Now whether this is true or not (I have to say this has the fingerprints of spin operations all over it but nowadays who knows?) it shows the depths we are descending into. How did we get here? Who is to blame?
I think the best answer to both of those questions can be answered by looking into the mirror. We all are. We all were too complacent with too many things in the past. Politics had become some rich kids toy thing rather than having any real consequences (this was never the case in reality but to the rich kids running the country they never saw that.) . We never engaged and we laughed and went back to our apps and listicles. I don’t think anyone is laughing now.
How will all this end? I have no idea but the next few weeks are going to test the British state to its core in a way it hasn’t been tested in centuries. I’m not looking forward to the whole experience.
Yesterday I visited the Imperial War Museum at Duxford for two reasons: Firstly it is a very very long time since I visited the place – well over 20 years and secondly it is situated in a very interesting parliamentary constituency of South Cambridgeshire – more on that later.
Walking around the museum it was reliving the stories of my youth, much like my recent visit to the Ladybird book exhibition. Here in front of me was the world I could feel comfortable in, a world of British aircraft greatness and standing steadfast with our American cousins. This is the special relationship become real. This is fantasy and there are two aircraft that puncher this fantasy more than any others: The General Dynamics F111 and the BAC TSR2. Without going into all the ins and outs of this sorry story the TSR2 was a groundbreaking aircraft that britain couldn’t afford to make and the Americans helped kill off. After the TSR2 the British no longer made aircraft on their own and lead directly to cooperation with other European countries. Who said history doesn’t repeat itself?
So why is the south Cambridgeshire seat an interesting one to follow in the some to be called General Election? Afterall 51% of the went to the Conservative party in 2017. A lot has happened since that time, a real understatement I know, Heidi Allan, the sitting MP has left the Conservative party to become an Independent; the local council went quite significantly Liberal Democrats and of course Boris Johnson. In the EU referendum the local council voted by 60% to stay in the EU. In short if there is one seat that the Conservatives could lose as a result of them following their current scorched earth policy then this is one of them. Will they? Who knows but given the upside down world political world we are now living in you just cannot say.
Duxford is a strange place. An island of nostalgia in a sea of technological change washing around the south Cambridgeshire countryside. On that thought here are some doorstops.
It makes as much sense as anything that is happening at the moment.
You know you are really through the looking glass when Ken Clarke is no longer a Conservative & Unionist party MP but here we are in the crazy House of Commons of 2019. A House of Commons where a serial rebel against his own Conservative Party government, the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons, can lounge on the front bench like some latter day tribune of the people, goes unpunished whereas the holder of all the great offices of state bar one in numerous Conservative governments is no a Conservative party MP.
What more needs to be said?
We were told that should we vote to leave the EU it would be the easiest trade deal in the world to negotiate between Britain and the European Union;
We were then told that the only version of leaving the European Union was the Theresa May version of Brexit means Brexit;
We were then told that if only Theresa May had a large enough majority then things would be plain sailing;
We were then told that the £1 billion bribe to the DUP was normal regional support spending;
We were then told that it isn’t the Brexiteers fault that things are going wrong but rather the remainders who won’t support the Brexit process;
We were then told No deal is better than a bad deal;
We were then told it wasn’t;
We were then told that we have many wonderful plans which when pressed couldn’t be published because they didn’t exist;
We were then told it was the fault of the Irish because they insisted on having a legal guarantee that the British wouldn’t be able to break their promises;
We were then told that it was the fault of the European Union for not agreeing to remove the Irish backstop that we had insisted would cover the whole of the United Kingdom not just the island of Ireland;
We were then told it was the fault of Labour MPs who didn’t vote for the withdrawal agreement even though people like Boris Johnson hadn’t voted for it;
We were then told that the reason why Parliament was to be prorogued is because Boris Johnson has all these great ideas that he wants to introduce and it has nothing to do with Brexit;
And finally we are now told that should a Conservative MP not vote for the government today they will no longer be Conservative Party MPs – even though if this was the case just a few months ago then neither would Boris Johnson nor a number other members of his cabinet.
I could go on. No doubt I could put together a similar list for remain. The only difference is it wasn’t those of us who wanted to remain in the EU who came up with the idea of leaving. As things start to unravel there is only group of people who are responsible for this mess.
But we will be told it wasn’t their fault it was….
It has been nearly 4 hours since I saw the best impersonation of a rabbit caught in the headlights in a long time – Boris Johnson’s speech to the nation. I say speech it was more like someone who is suddenly realising that the shit is getting real and he is about to be found out. He had the demeanor of a very frightened school boy having to give a speech to the headmaster…oh I give up but I’m sure you’ll have got the idea by now that I wasn’t impressed.
So the latest Brexiteer wheeze is to take the country to the brink with an election that they think they can win. Of course that is not what Johnson said but it is being leaked that that is what will happen if he loses a vote tomorrow . Now assuming he gets his wish and 66% of all the MPs vote for a general election then we will be facing the biggest peacetime crises in living memory without a functioning government. The prospects aren’t great for Johnson either because you can guarantee the Brexit Party will be making a real big effort to get 1 MP. What that will mean is that the Tory vote will be split. His efforts won’t be helped by the way he has all but destroyed the electoral chances of his Scottish Tory MPs and finally he can expect to lose votes in the South East to the Liberal Democrats where there are an awful lot of remain voters. In short it is going to be very very hard to increase the number of Tory MPs let alone get a majority.
So it is full steam ahead for a Labour victory and Jeremy Corbyn will be in No 10. The only problem with that rosie view is there is no evidence that he an election winner – just the opposite. The Labour party will no doubt point to what happened in 2017 and they might have apoint. However, 2017 still left them nowhere near getting a majority and it is really hard to see where the votes will come from – even with the Tories split.
So there we have it. Come the probable election day of 14th October and we will be right back in the mess we are in now. Only difference is that we won’t have any government at all and that Brexit clock will continue to count down but with no one to give the orders to put into place all the plans that have supposedly been drawn up for a no deal Brexit.
I might have missed the memo but how is that in the national interest? Bollocks to Brexit indeed or should that be…
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