Brexit in a Nutcase: the story so far.

Let's just get this right - and do correct me if I'm missing something, particularly you Quitters out there.

So Britain spends over half a decade suffering from reduced public services, stripped-down local government, a crisis-ridden NHS, an education system that treads water, a shortage of housing to buy and to rent, and a reduction in income and living standards for all but the already-wealthy. (They continue to do nicely.) In many areas of the UK the European Union has had to step in with funding to fill the gaps and prop them up. The worst hit are the people who are already the poorest and most insecure. Understandably they are upset about it. They feel neglected by their government, which they think never listens to them and doesn't care. They are right.

Then, so that he and his party can win an election, the Prime Minister who has overseen the rise of all this anger promises to hold a referendum about whether or not the UK remains in the European Union. In a dishonest campaign targeting fear, insecurity and xenophobia, and with no idea how to deliver "Brexit" if they win, a group of mostly unscrupulous populist politicians encourage and exploit the ignorance of those angry people. They encourage them to target foreigners in general and the EU in particular. As a heartfelt but incoherent protest against the system, huge numbers of them vote to leave the EU. Many of them don't usually bother to vote but, because they're so angry and have been egged on by people who claim to be like them but aren't, even a little bit, for once they do. Even though they lose all the rational arguments, the Leave campaign surprises no one more than itself by winning the referendum.

A new, unelected Government replaces that of the old Prime Minister, who retires to the Cotswolds and years of comfortable obloquy. It is led by Remainers. Like the Leavers, the Remainers haven't a clue about how to deal with the uncertainties, complexities and dangers ahead. But even so, the Government commits to the biggest peacetime change in this country for generations if not centuries. It tries to do it without consulting Parliament, which is the UK's sovereign body. Leavers support this although they explicitly fought to leave the EU to strengthen Parliamentary power. The Government tries to justify itself by claiming to be fulfilling "the will of the British People" although just 37% of eligible adults voted to leave and the referendum's outcome is advisory not mandatory. They are stopped by the High Court. It rules that Parliament is sovereign so the Government must consult it. After standing by while the judiciary's independence is traduced and even threatened, it appeals to the Supreme Court, where an outcome is expected in January 2017. In the meantime, Leavers plan to besiege the Court with 100,000 marchers to force it to deny the very Parliamentary rights they fought a referendum to restore.

Meanwhile, Leave voters are getting even angrier. Having been told that everything will be simple and all their problems soon over, they can't understand why the Government doesn't just leave the EU and done with it. They weren't told (actually, they were, but they didn't listen) and certainly didn't imagine just how long, hard, unpredictable and painful the process will be. Also, they'll now look stupid if they admit to being fooled by a bunch of people who won their vote but then ran away or got nice positions either in the very Government that's now "delaying" Brexit or up the back passage of the President-Elect of the USA. So they don't admit it. They can't.

Of course, even though it doesn't know what to do next, the Government is still responsible for the nation's finances: it has to make big decisions right now based on what little of the future it can predict. These decisions, once made and triggered, can't just be stopped.

Yesterday it published its financial plans and guess what? All the years of "austerity" that made all those people angry enough that they were tricked into voting to quit the EU are going be nothing compared to what will hit them over the next few years! Against all the Government has ever said, after all the pain of the better part of a decade, incomes and living standards will fall, inflation will rise and the National Debt will soar to the highest level since the end of The Hundred Years' War (allowing for inflation). And there will be no EU structural and other funds to help out any more. Above all, the angry people who voted to leave the EU will be even poorer - and even angrier.

Now had there been no EU referendum - or had all those angry people stopped to wonder whether they were being fooled - any government announcing such plans after having put the nation through the mangle for so long would be running for the hills pursued by ... the very same angry people who voted Leave!

But no: the Government will press on because it lacks the imagination and guts to do what's right for the country; and the Quitters will get ever angrier, but instead of asking why they voted to shaft themselves - and the rest of us, and the nation they hold so dear, and the Union whose tattered banner they weepingly fly at every mawkish opportunity - they will blame the people they've saddled with the consequences of their actions.

Cheer up!

Are there any reasons to hope on this dreadful day for the world?
Perhaps Trump, his cronies and his constituency - the worst and most irrefutable example of ascendant moral scum since the days of Stalin and Hitler - will turn in on themselves; but at what cost and demanding what efforts from those ready to stand up for decency and ride others' blind anger to oppose them?
Perhaps the sheer nastiness and nihilistic, ignorant, culture-free cretinism of Trump and his people will energise Europe - even those who have up to now looked to the Brexit lobby and hateful xenophobic nationalism with admiration not revulsion. Perhaps the threat Trump poses to the world will force us Europeans to come together and fill the dangerous vacuum that we may otherwise become. Trump has said that we shouldn't shelter under the USA's umbrella - so let's not.
Perhaps, from a British perspective, it will become clearer than it would under a Clinton presidency that both Trump and the Quitter lobby suckle from the same toxic tit; that to wallow - as Farage has and will - in Trump's filth will slowly turn both our Government and decent Brexiteers back from the disaster unfolding on this side of the Atlantic. So let's stand back and watch Farage summon a hundred thousand people to "bow the judiciary to the will of the British people" on 5th December, and then let people draw their conclusions!
Perhaps both the Americans and we will finally ask what the hell has happened to our "Anglo-Saxon" societies, to our families, our kids and our educational systems that turns out people who let such a vile bastard trump thought and decency with little more than a snap of his fingers.
Above all, Trump's victory must energise all of us, whatever our politics. Join lobbies, write letters, pledge money, challenge bigotry, make opposition a public act; support morally and practically those in all four UK nations - and in the US, and on the continent - who take a stand: over here the Gina Millers, the Will Huttons, the Ken Clarkes - and MPs of any party brave and true enough to our constitution to say "enough".

A Bridge Too Far

Pardon the title, but these days I feel undraped without a war metaphor to accentuate my shame.
On Radio 4's 'Today' programme I just listened to a borderline-murderous "discussion" between two senior and regular political commentators, Michael White (a Remainer) and Julia Hartley-Brewer (a Leaver).
This was on a day when a Conservative MP resigned, accusing Theresa May of "tyranny" (like "treachery", it's a big word, that).
Today's newspaper headlines suppurate and ooze with accusations of ... ah, treachery ... on account of the High Court's unremarkable ruling that the Government should consult Parliament - which is, after all, the seat of the nation's sovereignty and was until recently lauded as such by the Leave campaign - rather than invoke a pre-democratic Crown prerogative before triggering Article 50.
Meanwhile, a Quitter councillor - who I believe will have more supporters out there than we imagine - has proposed to make it "treason" to call for the UK to rejoin the EU after Brexit.
I've made many failed attempts to have - or even start - constructive debates with Brexit supporters. It's been a depressing experience for many reasons. I've found all but one of them incapable of explaining their views let alone justifying them - or even spelling them in their native language for that matter (with the notable exception of regular obscenities). Which is kind of worrying.
I admit that I'm prone to a bit of overstatement myself from time to time and that I sometimes try to be too smart-arsed for my own good. But I do at least try to have that debate. The question now is: is it worth it?
I know that until someone comes up with a good argument against what I think, I'm not going to change my views. (That's not, as some Quitters have said, arrogance: in fact I'm so desperate to be right that I'll be delighted to be proved wrong. They don't quite get that, you see.) And I'm equally sure by now that the "little people" (and my goodness, I never realised until recently just how little they really are - SEE, THERE I GO AGAIN) aren't going to change their views, regardless of whether or not I or anyone else comes up with a good argument against them. That, I flatter myself, is the distinction between the good and the bad - and why I'm happy being on the side of the angels.
There are now in this country two sets of people who can no longer debate in a spirit of mutual respect or even share a rough idea of what this country is or should be. Forget for a moment who's right or wrong. This is uncharted territory, a chasm which the two sides will soon lack not just the will but the ability to bridge. Our long-disunited kingdom has at last been burst open - and along more than one seam. What now?
Scary times - and they won't go away soon.The same is happening in the USA and may yet destabilise the European continent before we "Anglo-Saxon nations" have finished having our fun.
God help us: the slowboat-turning wheels of the world may be coming round again after all ...