Brexit Elephants

What do you do when the government of the day is utterly appalling on nearly every level and Her Majesty’s Opposition presents with little more than a highly flammable comfort blanket? What can you do when there is a herd of Brexit elephants – dinosaurs – in the room? Where on earth do you start?

Wisdom = Knowledge + Understanding. Our Dear Leaders have only the vacuous equivocations of ad hoc formulae:

”Most left-wing figures in politics, journalism, academia and trade unionism are very critical of Brexit. But it’s a significant minority view and one that dominates in the Labour leadership.” – Ian Dunt explains ‘The left-wing case for Brexit’

”Putting politics above prosperity is never a smart choice.” Yes, he did actually say that. David Davis’ speech to the Suddeutsche Zeitung Economic Summit, last night and his subsequent interview with BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg

”May and Corbyn, for different reasons, remain committed to EU withdrawal” – Neat summary, by George Eaton, of the current state of play: “In the months following the June 2016 referendum, Brexit was regarded as near-inevitable…”

Where, when and how will this all end? Who knows.. but it isn’t over, yet.

‘much worse than that’

World: Are you really this stupid or have you completely lost control?

UK Government: 🍰

**

“Brexit Britain doesn’t even have a solid relationship with the rest of the archipelago it inhabits… If it were a personal ad, it would read: ‘Petulant bolter seeks stable, lifelong relationship.’” – Fintan O’Toole (Guardian/Observer)

”If only we were still in the days when governments did things which were merely stupid. This is much worse than that.” – Ian Dunt

“No One Knows What Britain Is Anymore” – Steven Erlanger (NYT)

“To old friends, Great Britain, as they used to call it, is in the clasp of an inexplicable fever. Renowned for solidity and pragmatism, the Brits have fallen to rage and resentment. Carefully judged self-interest has surrendered to dangerous dogmatism.” – Philip Stephens (FT)

[I highly recommend politics.co.uk and Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? by Ian Dunt, who is widely considered an authority on the matter]

Well done, Homespun

Well done, Homespun
You won
In tongues:
Forked-puns
Unhealthy sums
Ten times the burden on our young
Top-table crumbs
Fair-weather chums
New depths to plumb
The right to be somebody else’s never-setting Sun
No actual benefit – zip, nada, none
No fun
No fun
No fun beneath
Your unopposable thumb.

Heartifice

A Brexit-deep state of mind:
Heartifice, by design.
Truth be told, a waste of time
When fiddled faith says
”This is fine.”

Brexit: it boils the blood

You know what makes me the most angry about Brexit, right now? That 17,410,742 people who spouted ill-informed crap throughout the referendum campaign and, afterwards, claimed that they knew what they were voting for, are still spouting ill-informed crap and claiming that they knew what they voted for, even though they failed utterly to base their opinions on any fact and despite the mounting evidence that no one knew or fully understood what leaving meant. And especially when the Brexit pushers admit, daily, to still not knowing the answers to the most basic questions. Christ! Most of them are not even asking them. They are just doubling down on hopium, hyperbole, denial and censorship. It’s all they have.

What makes me so furious is that, even if they genuinely thought they knew exactly what they were voting for then, they bloody well don’t know what that is now. And, if they did not realise what they were voting for, they bloody well should do, by now – chaos, isolation, ridicule and diminution.

People who refuse the responsibility of keeping up with developments that are a direct consequence of a decision to commit a collective act of national self-harm, that they deliberately and knowingly made but have continually refused to ask pertinent and intelligent questions about or accept readily available truths and very strong evidence: they have no fucking right, whatsoever, to their vacuous “will of the people” “respect democracy” “enemy of the people” “you lost, get over it” “stop talking the country down” bullshit.

Yes, I know that most of those 17 point blah blah million voters lead busy lives. So do most of the voting population. I know they only have time to grab a bit of broadcast news, watch a debate or two, skim a newspaper, check what Facebook thinks. But this only makes their arrogant certainty look more dumb and more irresponsible: what the hell makes them believe that they are properly informed and what the flaming holy heck makes them assume that all expertise, common sense, honest resistance and challenge is not informed but based purely on some bizarre unpatriotic bias? How the fuck would they even know? Jumped-up cretins. Brexit: it boils the blood.

 

[Sorry: perhaps I should have warned about the fury before ranting but a sudden need for catharsis beat me to it.]

People can make-believe of anything

People can make-believe of anything: an idea; a time/place; a person; the worth of Brexit. It might be founded on sheer strength of feeling or on the perception that a logical position is providing a complete picture. Checks on reasoning are subsumed into the comfort of confirmation bias. It becomes a feedback-loop of superiority and victimhood, working as a shield against all opposition.

The greater the investment in a position, the greater the requirement for its justification and, the more one justifies an investment, the more one becomes consumed by the need to. This is an ideological dependency developing a religious-like zeal for its own protection. Seeing is believing where believing is seeing: these are now the same thing. Chicken and egg. It doesn’t lead to truths, except by virtue of coincidental overlap – luck – or by lessons learned through the observation of its example – judgement.

And because the cold, hard truths of Brexit are self-evident, either you admit your error, to yourself, at the very least, or you double down and brazen it out, in the hope that denial will buy time and yet save your face. Thus, through fear or cynicism, you set yourself to the mission of converting and recruiting others because, well, safety and righteous correctness in evangelical numbers, right?

Pack Light

Go to come back.
Again and again,
through the Gates.
Pack light:
the weight of Conscience
is limitless.

Brexit Park and Ride

Mockumentary
Just got real
In parallel feels
The faithful sides
Take park and ride
Raise monuments
To the far out right
And the left behind

In the unthink tank
All the windows stream
Insidious steam
Can’t see where they’re going
Only where they’ve been

Where jump the shark
Is a tie that binds
The hungry heart
With a flaccid mind
Where infotainment
Is a civic blind
And a cold hard truth
Is a hot rewind

The Brexit bus
Is a dream mis-sold
To fools who believe
There’s a road of gold
And, as foretold,
Has nothing to do with
Taking back control
As the bus careers
Through its own manholes

Dear Brexits

Dear Brexits,

I am not talking our country down. You voted to leave. That decision is actively bringing our country down. I am merely observing, reporting and commenting on the myriad dismal consequences of your “will”.

No Brexit is better than a bad Brexit and there is no Brexit that is good.

If this was not sufficiently evident, to you, before the referendum, whether because you were tricked or just did not bother to inform yourself, it bloody well should be plenty evident, by now. It is not my fault that you either cannot see or will not admit this.

I love our country and you have endangered her. It is a poor patriotism that would seek to demand my silence.

Regards

Records show

Cowardice is a ladder
for the lionised,
records show.

Told you so has legs
and hearts and spines
of proper lions, though.

We gather our senses;
commit them to memory,
in collectible volumes.