FROM FARCE TO TRAGEDY

Taking Back Control

To watch the collapse of your country’s democratic political infrastructure can be interesting, occasionally entertaining, but ultimately appalling. Brexit has wreaked havoc, in no order, on cabinet government, parliamentary sovereignty, the Conservative party, the Labour party, -though this is primarily Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘achievement,’ – the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland, including the peace process, the temper of political debate, our standing in the world, and last, but by no means least, our relationship with our closest neighbours in the EU.  Quite a list. And this all because of a small group of Conservative Europhobic malcontents.  Having wrecked the Major government in the 1990s they have now succeeded in doing to the country what they once did to him. History turning Marx’s famous dictum on its head, moving from farce to tragedy.

Now on the cusp of their greatest achievement where are they to be found?  Well nowhere near the crime scene, except for Michael Gove, more of whom in a minute. For when you consider any of the leading Brexit players, and all the many minor ones, in which category I include Liam Fox, none of them is interested in governance, in power combined with responsibility, they have lived like Trotskyites of the right, inhabiting the world of righteous opposition. They are psychologically and emotionally incapable of taking responsibility. They are not interested in the minutia of governance, they are people of vision, they deal in grand vista’s, detail is for the little people.

You might object that Boris Johnson has been both Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary, and others such as David Davis and Dominic Raab have taken government posts. So, let me start with Boris, being London Mayor was always just a PR operation, other than schemes like the bike rental, or hosting the Olympics, which he inherited, it is the ludicrous fiasco of the Garden Bridge that best encapsulates Johnson’s period as Mayor. It is no accident that, despite promises to the contrary, he ended up performing the role part-time, for in truth it had always been a job-share, Johnson and his political ambitions. As for his ambition to be Prime Minister, it is rooted in same frivolous Etonian spirit as David Cameron, who famously said he wanted to be Prime Minister because he thought he would be good at it. He wasn’t.

As for those other players in the Brexit Campaign who were promoted into ministerial posts, the record swings between abject failure and farce. David Davis seems to have achieved the nigh on impossible by outdone Johnson in the incompetence and stupidity stakes. If anyone can point to a single achievement of Liam Fox in, the over two-year, period since he has occupied the Trade post please come forward now. I have heard or seen nothing.

Gove and Rupert Murdoch
Centre

Which leaves Gove, the chancer, the man who only managed to avoid being present at the scene of the crime once, the morning the result was announced. Stony-faced he had stood beside Johnson, the man he would stab in the back only days later, and you felt there was a man in a state of shock, cheated of the narrow victory for Remain, he now faced having to take responsibility for the cause he had campaigned for. Since then he has assiduously avoided being a primary face of the Leave movement. Admired by Rupert Murdoch and, though no orator, a competent public performer, particularly on TV and radio. He remains part of the May administration keeping his disloyalty to himself.

And so, the tragic face winds its way toward its disastrous conclusion. And of course, nobody in the Brexit camp from Farage style fanatics to the boneheaded backbenchers will be responsible, it will be the EU, the Remainers, Theresa May, the Irish, the Spanish, the rootless cosmopolitans wot done it.