I have the best friends, I really do. They’re warm and loving and generous. They share and support and we’re a bit of a mutual admiration group which would be horrible were they not admirable people. I am constantly surprised at how much we have in common. We have few arguments about anything substantive and nothing which is worth remembering or remarking upon at all.
I make a point during elections not to ignore contrary opinions. I can’t bring myself to read the Murdoch press, the Mail or the Express but I do read the Telegraph during election campaigns. For some reason, it’s not as objectionable as the rest of the Tory press. It’s the paper I would read had I gone down the Trouser Leg of Time towards Torydom.
The EU Referendum result has shaken my confidence in my fellow citizens. I think there are so many positives to our membership of the EU that outweigh the negatives. The EU is big, cumbersome, too many decisions are taken by commissioners and the Council of Ministers and the Parliament has nowhere enough power. However, EU citizens have the right of free movement within its boundaries to live and work where they please. Pooled sovereignty means that European states have less need to argue over access to resources.
Then there is peace. It’s true that there has been armed conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War – in Cyprus and in the former Yugoslavia at the very least. However, Britain, France and Germany have stopped knocking lumps out of one another and that isn’t nothing. We are still calling each other silly names but we always will because, well just because, to be honest.
These things all seem so obvious to me and obviously good. I can’t imagine a world in which free travel, shared resources, peaceful international relations, tarriff-free trade and all the rest would be perceived as not good enough but 17.4 million Britons decided that was exactly the case.
I think it’s a stupid decision. It’s small-minded, short-sighted, fearful and daft. However, it’s the decision the majority of those voting came to on the day and that’s democracy. I can’t respect it because I think it’s small-minded, short-sighted, et cetera, et cetera but I can accept it because it’s that’s how democracy works. Whether the leave campaign would accept it had it been the other way around is a matter for bitter conjecture but still, I’m not living in that reality. This one is bad enough.
The Government is quietly tearing itself to bits. The Opposition is loudly tearing itself to bits. The Union is on its last legs and there isn’t a credible voice speaking for it. In fact, there wasn’t a credible voice speaking for the EU during the referendum campaign. David Cameron’s opinion on Europe couldn’t carry enough weight within his own party so he had to appeal to the rest of the nation. The rest of the nation took one look and said “Nah, stuff him.” From being the Man Who Fucked A Dead Pig, he has become The Man Who Fucked The Country. All political careers end in failure, few end in quite this scale of disaster.
The rest of the Tory Remain campaign was passionless. Actually, that’s true of the Remain campaign in general. There was nobody putting forward a conviction case for our continued membership with a vigour equal to the arseholes on the other side. The lying arseholes. The screaming, duplicitous, devious, wantonly destructive arseholes.
Boris Johnson is a man who would lob bricks through windows for the joy of hearing glass break. Whatever charm he once held in his sub-Wodehousian public persona has gone. We’re left with the liar who lied not to save another’s feelings but to further his own objectives. £350m a week for the NHS, remember?
I hope Theresa May gives him the kicking he so richly deserves. I then hope that she loses the next general election to someone with more of a sense of society but that’s another battle.
I can’t talk about that cunt Farage without calling the cunt a cunt. Probably best I don’t mention the cunt at all.
Oops.
Still, he lied or benefited from lies and he’s always been an odious little toad of a man, the sort to drop his fag end into his pint pot at the end of the night and leave it for someone else to clean up after him. And don’t get me started on his fucking Nazi propaganda poster.
Nor was there much passion from the Labour benches unless you were Kate Hoey or Frank Field. There wasn’t much passion from Frank Field either but you get more passion from bladderwrack at low tide than you do from Frank Field ever. Nobody put the Left’s case for the EU with the same strength that Michael Fucking Gove put against it.
And the LibDems, my poor old Liberal Democratic Party, were invisible. I saw two LibDem In signs on Queen Edith’s Way in Cambridge last week which was more than I’ve seen of Tim Farron since Christmas.
The Stronger In campaign was a sorry, gutless affair, it truly was. There didn’t seem to be a true believer among them. Ask a Leave campaigner why they wanted to leave and you’d get an immediate, emphatic, response – wrong and misguided, of course, based on lies and half-truths – but full-throated. Nothing similar seemed to come from the Remain campaign.
So, here we are. The weekend after the debacle before and we’re picking up the pieces the best we can. At least that cunt Farage isn’t getting his feet under the negotiating table. Apparently, there isn’t a rush to leave the EU. Boris doesn’t seem too bothered about it now. He just wants to be Prime Minister. The thing is, we need a skilled and dedicated negotiator in charge who will secure the best possible exit terms. Boris is not that man, not even close. Neither is IDS or John Redwood (I fucking saw John Redwood on telly yesterday, that’s how awful things are!) or Michael Gove or that bloke who wants to break up the BBC when he isn’t visiting prostitutes. None of them are.
The Leave campaign has won and doesn’t really know what to do now. Even if it did know what to do, it couldn’t do it because there aren’t enough skilled staff in the civil service to carry out the hard work. We haven’t needed them because the EU did all that stuff like trade negotiations. Basically, we’re fucked. We’re lost up Shit Creek without a paddle, canoe, or adequate protective clothing and the buggers who have left us here can’t get us out without help. The only people capable of helping us are the very people they want to separate us from.
It’s all been so very, very unnecessary. And just to cheer you up, tomorrow is Monday.
