The Brexit Decade

Another chair short in the Number 10 musical chairs farce.

A Decade of Self-Harm

Even irony has come to joke at the expense of the United Kingdom. On the eve of the 10^th anniversary of the Brexit vote, the sixth prime minister since that act of unmitigated self-harm resigned.

Whether you like it or not, Brexit made the UK ungovernable, and it is the spectre of Brexit that has deftly conducted the dirge of musical chairs at 10 Downing Street.

Obviously, the personification of this rotten enterprise is Nigel Farage, along with all the cloaks of calumnious obfuscation he has donned aboard the various political vehicles he has ridden to beguile the natives.

Cameron's Fatal Gamble

In trying to outmanoeuvre and upstage Farage, David Cameron promised an in-out referendum without thresholds, believing he could gamble with our future in Europe and win. He lost. Once the result was announced, he resigned.

The chicanery between Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who were the opportunistic ruling party figureheads of the Brexit proposition, meant that Theresa May, a remainer, became prime minister.

Everything she tried to negotiate with Europe was rubbished and undermined by the antics of Boris Johnson and a cohort of implacables. First, Theresa May gambled away her majority, and every Brexit negotiation ended in stalemate. She resigned within three years.

Johnson Gets Brexit Done

Boris Johnson then took the helm and purged the Tory Party of the reasonable, level-headed and moderate One Nation Tories, before calling an election to "Get Brexit Done".

The least qualified person ever to negotiate a deal, having had a background in the Scottish whisky industry, became the point man: Lord David Frost. What he brought back was a mishmash of imponderables, and we signed ourselves out of prosperity just as the coronavirus took hold of the world.

Boris made stringent rules for us, with punitive fines for breaking them, yet he and his staff were partying in Downing Street. That scandal, along with a few others, engulfed his premiership and culminated in the resignation of more than half his cabinet. It soon dawned on him that he had to go. He held office for three years.

Truss and the Lettuce

Enter Liz Truss, who, after kissing hands at Balmoral, may well have hastened the demise of Queen Elizabeth II two days later. Her curtsey was so awkward that you couldn't tell if she was flat-footed, bow-legged, or suffering from some yet unexplained ailment of her lower ambulatory system. Rather than laugh, you pitied her.

Her uncosted mini-budget, aiming to introduce us as the new Singapore on Thames, one of the sunlit uplands of Brexit, much as Canaan was given to the Jews, wreaked havoc on the financial markets.

The fallout was so drastic that she sacked her Chancellor of the Exchequer and brought in a Tory grandee of a sort, Jeremy Hunt. The sand was running out of her hourglass; days became minutes, and even a patch of lettuce outlasted her. She was gone in 50 days.

Sunak Steadies the Ship

Rishi Sunak, the first Asian, the first Hindu, and possibly the richest ever prime minister, walked into 10 Downing Street. He steadied the ship that had been caught in various post-Covid, Brexit and immigration eddies. We were in a spiral, and it was only a matter of time before we lost our heads in a dizzy spell.

He called an election about twenty months into his premiership and handed the reins over to the Labour Party in a landslide, after the party had been out of power for 14 years.

Starmer's Short Tenure

Sir Keir Starmer was now at the helm, honourable and lawyerly. After a number of missteps, bad calls and U-turns, his popularity sank so low that by the local elections of May 2026 the Parliamentary Labour Party had decided he could not lead them into the next general election. A few weeks short of two years as prime minister, he resigned.

It is likely that Andy Burnham will become the next prime minister. Meanwhile, in one way or another, the office has been haunted by the banshee cries of Nigel Farage, first in UKIP, then in the Brexit Party, and now in Reform.

The Myth of Control

One of the things Brexit was supposed to give us back control of was our borders. It now transpires that the problem was never Europe, but policies within our own domain.

Whereas European immigrants were near enough that they could, if they wished, return home every weekend, the immigrants now arrive in larger numbers from further afield. They cannot return home every weekend; they are full settlers with family ties that must be accommodated if their services are to be procured for the nation.

Likewise, Brexit was supposed to ignite a bonfire of rules, mostly from the EU. Yet to trade with any trading bloc, we need alignment and agreement on standards.

We were once involved in crafting those rules, but for the purposes of ease of business, the very rules we thought we could jettison must now be absorbed into our regulatory system for seamless commercial activity. We are rule takers where we were once rule makers, in concert with the community to which we belonged.

No Justice in Sight

Then there is the question of how the UK economy has suffered since Brexit, with the loss of about 6% in GDP. You may not be able to call Brexit a failure, but if it looks like one and walks like one, there can be no other conclusion.

The fight for the soul of the country continues as we struggle to get the facts before the people, who are bombarded and cajoled into working against their self-interest, sold easy solutions to complex problems.

We cannot defeat geography. Europe is our closest trading partner, and a softening of Brexit, with a bold and courageous defence of the associated policies, is needed.

They say a majority would now vote against Brexit. The fact is, the perpetrators of this travesty have never been held accountable, and it is doubtful we'll ever get justice for the harm they caused. What a wasted decade.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

A whine on Brexit

It’s off with the wine

A call from Germany, the wine merchant of a number of South African wine estates with the almost cantankerous and affable man at the other end with apologies. Whilst my paid for wine order arrived on Monday, the wine tasting delivery had been returned to sender because of unexplained Brexit-related issues.

I had told a friend or two about joining me for the virtual wine tasting event though yet unsure of whether there will be a delivery. Apart from the first email from UPS indicating an order had been put in motion, there have been no subsequent emails.

The sour taste of air

As I have been regaled with some disappointment, sadly, I have to pass this news on. It does not mean the end of the wine tasting; I am still invited. It will be a social event and we can chat to old friends with the promise of meeting up soon.

It appears we have just acquired a bitter taste of Brexit and no one is either getting drunk or falling into the gutter in apoplectic laughter, talking about it. I will open a bottle of wine because it won’t be fun sipping the air whilst others are quaffing vintage tipple. Helaas!

Brexit by the wine glass

Can’t whine about wine

Much as we try to ignore it, the invisible dead hand of Brexit reaches out and touches things that matter though tolerable for the times we are in.

On Friday, the 19^th of February, I got a call from the European wine distributor of some of the wine estates we visit in the Cape Winelands of South Africa. Whenever we’ve had the opportunity, we have gone to Backsberg in Paarl and Allée Bleue in Franschhoek, both places we last visited in January 2020 because of the alcohol ban over the recent Christmas/New Year period made a visit, not particularly worthwhile.

Capreo GmBH in Germany had called me earlier that day to invite me to an online wine tasting that will be hosted on Zoom by them and the vintner at Backsberg, the distributor supplying the wine and hoping that I will put in an order soon after.

Staggered by Brexit

Since I already had a good idea of what like, I made an order for wine from both estates buoyed by the assurance that the delivery will not be disrupted by Brexit, we learnt the better by experience. Whilst postage and packaging was paid by the distributor, the process of getting from Germany to the UK with UPS was fraught with issues we could not explain and no one could give any useful reason for it.

My order was processed on Tuesday, the 23^rd of February, on the 24^th an issue with a missing commercial invoice was resolved and one would think the parcel will be on its way on Thursday the 25^th. That was the first of three days of getting the message, “The package is delayed due to a Brexit-related disruption. We are adjusting delivery plans as quickly as possible.” Each time, the delivery was adjusted an additional day until the parcel passed an Export Scan on 1^st of March.

Decanted at my doorstep

The Brexit-related disruption continued until the 4^th of March when it finally left Germany and arrived in the UK, but a few hours before the estimated delivery for Friday, the 5^th of March, it was postponed again to the morning of the 9^th of March, tomorrow. On Friday, I contacted Capreo about my order to no particular avail apart from being entertained with a friendly talkative banter which seemed to compensate for my apparent displeasure.

This morning, my apartment bell rang, and at the door was a delivery man with my box of wine arriving a day earlier than expected. It might well have been than containers bringing goods from Germany to the UK had to be filled and fully processed before my delivery could land, who knows. It definitely was not the experience when I put in an order last January.

I only hope my wine-tasting tipple is not lost in the Brexit quagmire that I am left sipping the wind in 11 days' time.

Tracking delivery notice

 

Detailed Tracking Information

Thought Picnic: Killing their people with incompetence

Nothing to hold my confidence

I have many views about how I think there is no upside to Brexit if at any time I thought the government of Boris Johnson had a tenth of the acumen, principles, competence, and/or the capacity of the coalition war cabinet of Winston Churchill, I might even consider they’ll pull off a useful EU deal.

Their response to the Coronavirus pandemic already shows they are completely incapable, the excuse that they did not know enough about the virus to act with alacrity, preparedness and purpose does not wash, because governments all around the world had the same access to the information we also had, New Zealand, South Korea, and Germany are good examples, even Scotland rejigged their response to contain it.

Killing their people with bluster

The difference is they took the information and acted on it, testing, detecting, isolating, locking down, monitoring, tracing, and informing truthfully. These are what others did without boasting and with a clear grasp of the realities they faced. The virus had no time for bullshit and there was no vacuous optimism that could take the place of effective action. It showed up Johnson, Trump, and Bolsonaro as windbags and their citizenry is paying for it with deaths that top the global tragedy of this pandemic.

Blog - It perished in a lake of tea

For all this, I was listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 the other night when I heard the last few lines of a poem, haunting and dangerously fearful, I stirred from my slumber to look it up. Brian Bilston encapsulates the tragedy of our times, both on Brexit when he wrote it two years ago and now as we bungle a deal as much as we bungled the response to the Coronavirus. I am sorry, whilst I have no instant hope to give, I hope the only way is up from this rock bottom splatter at the bottom of the cliff. [BBC Magazine: Brian Bilson - 'How I accidentally became a poet through Twitter']

Hold my hand while we jump off this cliff

‘Let’s jump off this cliff – it’ll be fun! A right laugh!’
urged all the people (well, I mean just over half
of those who had bothered to speak up at all).
I peered down at the rocks; it was a long way to fall.

I said, ‘This cliff’s more than three hundred feet high
and my doctor tells me if I jump I will die.’
‘Cliff-jumping’s fine!’ they said. ‘Don’t trust doctors, trust us!
We read all about it on the side of a bus.’

Worried, I met up with my local MP.
I shared my concerns. He was forced to agree:
‘Why the rocks below would smash you to bits!
Where did you get this idea of jumping off cliffs?’

‘It was the will of some of the people,’ I said
and his expression changed to another instead.
‘I think,’ he revised, ‘you’re being melodramatic.
The problem is you. You’re undemocratic.’

On the clifftop, we waited. In silence we stood.
Then a voice: ‘Remind me, why is cliff-jumping good?’
But we looked down at our shoes, baffled and stumped.
Then, out of embarrassment, we held hands and jumped.

© Brian Bilston Hold my hand while we jump off this cliff

Thought Picnic: A present absence in an absent presence

Swirls of turbulence abound

One thing I have attempted to keep away from is the torrent of cable television news and the opinions that feed the news cycle engendering anxiety, turbulence, and stress.

Obviously, one cannot completely be oblivious of current affairs, my Twitter feed can be a Roman candle of excitability that you have to filter, one way or the other.

Some interesting things you might retweet, others will elicit comments that could end up a thread and some could induce an utterly infuriating feeling that you best exercise restraint than exercise yourself.

Having a choice

Now, what cannot be ignored is the madness of Brexit that I have decidedly limited my blogging about, though I await the opportunity to cast my vote for the leadership of the Labour Party that I joined in January. It is unfortunate that the wisdom of previous Prime Ministers was ignored in favour of ideological mendaciousness, the result is a hurtling down a political ravine to a precipitous cliff edge. Where nationalism and patriotism have been conflated into an agenda of denial, obfuscation and absence of accountability predicated on a contrived ‘will of the people’.

We need an effective opposition that I fear has failed to exist in the last few years, for as principled as the Leader of the Opposition might be, it takes a lot more to win elections, the Labour Party needs to chart another course back to winning ways, the examples are many and having lost 4 elections in the row, continuity is not the desired future, no matter how Utopian it seems.

Of viral impact

The other issue is the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a certain type of pneumonia of unknown provenance, highly infectious with a moderate mortality rate that appeared to originate in Wuhan, China in December and is spreading around the world with unintended consequences of socio-political and economic import.

Invisible, yet deadly, it might presage a global recession especially where the health emergency is becoming a victim of the propaganda machinery of governments of all colours, revealing to damning effect incompetence and ineptitude except in the uniquely quasi-democratic city-state of Singapore of all places. I had my concerns when I visited the hospital on Monday for an ultrasound scan of kidneys, but I did not allow it to upset me.

That apart of the misinformation and the postulations of people with opinions given greater platforms than people with expertise, we are caught in a dystopian vortex of easy fables over facts, talking rather than listening, a departure from learning and a rewriting of history for the convenience of expediency. [Keeping with the Coronavirus - WHO]

A crippled democracy

Our itching ears seek the comfort from being afflicted with the truth and there is where the dishonest, the unprincipled, the unscrupulous, the politicians, and those without integrity have found an audience that Voltaire did say would believe absurdities and go on to commit atrocities.

I hate to say that the exercise of democracy and universal suffrage in recent times has become seething atrocity because I am left askance at what absurdities have persuaded the people to vote the way they have in some countries and certain elections.

This made me conclude in a tweet yesterday that, “Democracy is a herd for which a wily politician can cause a stampede of votes in their direction where reason demands an orderly procession in any other direction but that.” How our basest instincts and our irrational fears have been exploited to such political advantage to our detriment that people who should never be in public office rise to heights of leadership out of leading us to believe the absurd.

Democracy is a herd for which a wily politician can cause a stampede of votes in their direction where reason demands an orderly procession in any other direction but that.

— Akin Akíntáyọ̀ 🏳️‍🌈 #FBPE (@forakin) March 3, 2020

I sit in my apartment learning innovative technologies, absenting myself from these things, whilst wondering about a future where my heart and mind is at one in purpose and companionship, very far from here. It is possible, for that is where there is renewal and newness of life. For me and for him.

The UK: You haven't arrived just because you now vote Tory

It’s a Parliament not a Presidency

Sometimes, we in The UK want to pretend we have a presidency when in fact we have a parliamentary democracy.

You cannot vote for a party leader except if you are a paid-up member of that party, then, a party leader that can only take office by being a member of parliament.

The Green Party, for instance, has two party leaders but only one is in parliament.

I hear people say they can't vote for Jeremy Corbyn and many of us can't because we are not members of the Labour Party and we are not constituents of Islington North.

Yes, he heads the Labour Party, but if his constituents vote him out of parliament, he is head in name only, he cannot become the Prime Minister because he needs to command the confidence of the parliament.

I am voting for my MP

There was an aberration at the advent of WWII, Winston Churchill was not the leader of the Conservative Party, but with war looming ahead, he commanded cross-party support to form a coalition and leadership was ceded to him.

My constituency MP, Lucy Powell, belongs to the Labour Party, she does a good job, I see no reason to kick her out. I believe Jeremy Corbyn also does a good job for his constituents, that’s why they have kept him as their MP since 1983. Now, there are many things I do not agree with concerning Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that has necessitated my voting for other parties in the local and European elections.

Yes, he is a pacifist to a fault, he has made friends with a broader spectrum of people I would find utterly reprehensible, yet, I return to Winston Churchill when he said, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.” I do not eulogise Winston Churchill nor do I excuse Jeremy Corbyn, Churchill did what he had to do when he saw the danger of Nazism, it meant war, but once the war ended, he was one of the greatest advocates for peace in Europe, despite his many other failings.

Tough when it is demanded

Gosh! There was a time Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness could not be heard on our airwaves because of their links to the IRA, then with much talk, we got the Good Friday Agreement, with that even Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness became best pals in the Northern Ireland government.

I believe Jeremy Corbyn would do what is necessary to keep the UK safe if it means war, but he definitely will not be banging the drums of wars at the first sound of a bang. We probably need more level heads in a world of Putin, Trump and Kim Jung-un.

The issue of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party probably should have been dealt with better, but I do not believe Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite, more has been done and wrought by the schism of Brexit to endanger all minorities in this country, be you European, Muslim, Black, Gay, or even dare I say reasonable. The demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn has been complete whilst the lies of Boris Johnson goes unchecked.

No shame in Boris

This is a person who lied to the Queen to prorogue parliament, who when it came to it did not die in the ditch when Brexit did not happen on the 31^st of October, yet, he gets away with more and more offence and lies without scrutiny or sanction. This inveterate buffoon has nothing to offer this country, but we live in the times when you win regardless of whether you play fair or not.

Tory grandees, former Prime Ministers have risen to say one clear fact, there is no upside to Brexit, it is quite likely if a referendum were held in 1939, people could have been persuaded to go for appeasement and avoid the suffering of war because we have no skin in Europe. It was great leadership that gave us the courage to face war and defeat fascism.

There are no sunlit uplands after Brexit, we are not positioned to achieve anything greater as a minor outpost to the largest trading bloc in the world. We are not transitioning from the British Empire to a Commonwealth of Nations, there are no new lands of opportunity to be conquered. This is where we need leadership and conviction, indeed the people voted for Brexit, it is for their leaders to state the clear facts that it was a bad choice for innumerable reasons. That is what leadership is about.

The Tories are the problem

Boris Johnson took a two-faced approach to Brexit, he wrote two articles, one for and one against as if he was in some Oxford Union debating society, then chose to go for Brexit, just for his own advantage. We have been on this since June 2016, we are on our third Prime Minister and all this came about because of the Conservative Party, the party that gave us austerity and has been in power for 9 years pretending they now have new ideas for our future.

There is no social climbing nous earned from being able to say you now vote for the Tory Party when in reality it is not in your interest or the national interest. These are carpetbaggers and snake-oil salesmen. I would rather put my lot with Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson, but as I said before, I can only vote for my own representative in my own constituency, that is Lucy Powell.

Obviously, I would have preferred a better choice to Corbyn or Johnson, say, Rory Stewart or Yvette Cooper, but we don’t have that luxury. I know Jeremy Corbyn has never been anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, lack in empathy or full of lies, that cannot be said of the apparently well-liked Boris Johnson, he published his views and even under duress been unable to honestly apologise for them.

Beware what you believe

I return to a post I made on Facebook yesterday when a presumed ex-Labour activist appeared to have some friends in thrall helping their confirmation bias. “Like honestly, we can believe whatever we choose to believe, even mine the Internet to find everything to confirm our biases, because there is enough to even convince anyone that if they jump out of the window at the top of a skyscraper, they'll float down and land like a feather.

However, there comes a time where in the cold light of day you have to ask, am I being taken for a ride as I nod like the Churchill dog to everything I am hearing?

Maybe it is time to step away from all this and just consider what is best for you and your community.

No one is going to be persuaded much differently after the stuff this electoral season has produced.”

It is your vote, use it right!

The UK: Exercising a prerogative of protest at the prorogation of principle

This is trouble brewing

Amidst the other uncertainties that have occupied my time and space, it was a sense of powerlessness and numbness that caught me when I read that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had asked the Queen to suspend Parliament. [Channel 4]

This could easily have been a constitutional crisis, but the decision was purely political, a gambler’s last stance at a poker table to get #Brexit over the line where the power of persuasion, the force of argument, the exchange of ideas and robust debate had failed to bring Parliament over to the intentions, agenda and programme of Her Majesty’s Government.

A brigandage in Downing Street

The Prorogation of Parliament is rarely used in a high stakes drama like this, almost never in living memory except for peers of the super-septuagenarian set. It is in this case an act of malevolent Machiavellian statecraft that would have far-reaching consequences for the way the traditions of our parliamentary democracy can be gamed in the interest of ideology over national interest.

The Queen by terms has the prerogative power but is bound to act on the advice of her government and the Privy Council. Whilst she might offer advice, the monarchy has the solemn duty to be above the fray that it cannot interfere even of she as a person and sovereign of our nation has had the great fortitude of inviting 14 Prime Ministers to form a government since she was enthroned in 1952. Sir Winston Churchill was her first.

A disorderly mess

Our distorted, rancorous, and disorderly exit from Europe has left many carcases in its wake, we are on our third Prime Minister and for over three years, not one side of the people’s representation in Parliament has been able to claim a decisive victory in the quest for either exiting or remaining in Europe.

An advisory referendum, poorly implemented, badly fought and corruptly won has hamstrung the country and sucked oxygen out of any viable activity in the UK, yet, the creed stands strong in the hurtling down this precipice in a display of everything redolent of English bloody-mindedness.

Europe is not the problem

I do not believe that Europe has ever been the problem, it is the people we have sent to Europe that has left us with a raw deal. Where other nations sent their best, we found the eccentric, the rabble-rousers and fringe politicians to negotiate on our behalf, the likes of Nigel Farage whose penchant for insult, rudeness and cringe-worthy soundbite would never have with the best ideas in the world be able to win a consensus or an agreement in any committee.

He, as a member of the fisheries committee only attended 1 of 42 sittings, and he had to audacity to board a fishing boat throwing dead fish in the Thames to make the point about seizing back control of our waters.

We, as an electorate have ourselves to blame the most, those who came out to vote won over by questionable arguments, those who allowed apathy to rob them of a say in how they are governed has led to a representation of gamblers. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, they all owe their rise to people gambling on their future or hoping their single vote can send a message, which is fine, but many messages can end up choosing the wrong representative and lead us down the road to an uncertain future as Brexit portends.

How Europe gives clout

Being in Europe still matters, the evidence of that is in how the Republic of Ireland with just 4.9 million against the almost 70 million of the UK has clout by reason of being backed by the heft of the EU-27, the UK stands alone looking in from the outside with an outsized view of her influence that was progressively lost after two World Wars.

All the trade deals we now want to negotiate after Brexit, we already have as part of the European Union, we are not going to get better deals than those that the EU has already won with hard bargaining, the numbers, the skill and the statesmanship. The UK in the hands of these peddlers of vacuous optimism who have the temerity to question our patriotism when we challenge their baseless assertions leaves one terrified of the future.

Not this cacophony of jesters

Yet, we are full of fight, the last has not been heard of this matter, for if at any time there was a leader of the calibre of Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee or Margaret Thatcher amongst this lot, there might have been a slight chance that they can pull off a successful Brexit, I doubt a hundred of them together can successfully manage a piss up in a brewery, they would likely piss away our future on the altar of privileges they have come to expect as their entitlement to rule without taking responsibility for any failings.

The Parliament is supposed to be sovereign. At this juncture, where the country faces a momentous decision as to our future, we have a Prime Minister who has no electoral mandate putting the mother of all Parliaments in the cooler to allow his government carry the country divided as it is through to a conclusion many of his cohort including himself have severally said to be anathema.

We already have the best deal

A no-deal Brexit is the worst-case scenario with no upside to it as the pound languishes at about 25% below its value before the Referendum, businesses are closing or moving to Mainland Europe, EU citizens who have made their home in this country are none the wiser of their status post-Brexit and the retired Brits out on the Mediterranean coasts of Europe and further afield in the Canaries have to contend with unnecessary geriatric anxiety.

For those who want to leave and those who wish to remain, we have a greater issue at stake, the reckless abuse of and usurpation of power by the executive in silencing the elected representatives of the people with the revising chamber for the presumed will of the people, which first was advisory, which was superseded by a general election, which should have had the full-throated agitations of the Parliament and having not won the argument, the government should have conceded defeat or sought another mandate.

We will fight this

This is a travesty and I believe there will be civil unrest for the fact that if taking back control was not to give it back to the sovereign Parliament, but for the executive to arrogate those powers to itself, our democracy is at an impasse and we need to revisit the fault lines of the separation of powers and how the Parliament should by rights be able to hold the executive to scrutiny and sanction for every action they take in the name of the people.

Boris Johnson: I do not believe this Moses can part the #Brexit Red Sea

The man – Boris Johnson

By the force of sheer ambition and ingrained public-school entitlement, Boris Johnson is on the cusp of becoming the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He must be congratulated for this achievement, but it is at an inauspicious time.

Boris Johnson has both a record and form, his history is littered with gaffes and buffoonery, the tack of playing the court jester whilst executing the dastardly, he does not have the best references from many of those he worked for, but we are where we are now.

I was distressed but not full of despair when it was announced that he had been elected the leader of the Tory Party, the position was his to lose, for he does offer some sort of star power and to those easily distracted, you could be fooled for how Machiavellian he could be.

We need more than hope

Listening to his victory speech yesterday, I could notice no hint of sincerity in what he said apart from fulfilling the righteousness of seemingly saying the right things. We are as a country and conglomerate of nations facing crossroads of what future is ahead of us, we all, knowing how this country has stagnated since the Brexit vote of June 2016.

We all need a dose of optimism, but it cannot be realised by ignoring the stark realities this all portends. I would be the first to tell you that when I finally accepted I had cancer, just under 10 years ago, I knew I would survive it, but I still had to face the reality ahead of me, I didn’t even know that treatment I would get would work.

It was 5 gruelling months of chemotherapy, 4 types of pain medication, enough to quieten the pain, yet with that little bit of pain that proved I was still alive. Optimism and hope alone was not enough, as my consultant said to me if I did not respond well to the treatment, I had just 5 weeks to live.

What kind of Moses is he?

For all the optimism and hope that Boris Johnson suggests we need to get Brexit realised, there are some tough obstacles ahead about negotiating deals and assuring a future for this country and its people. We cannot just proceed on jingoism, bluster, rhetoric and gallons of intoxicating hope towards the sunlit uplands that are figments of an inebriated and overactive vivid imagination, there are jobs at risk, lives in the balance, futures in turmoil and other unintended consequences.

Leadership in the case of Brexit would be like us being brought like the Israelites of old to The Red Sea, the question is if indeed, the one who has brought thus far is the Moses with the rod to part the Red Sea or a charlatan about to drown the nation having convinced us we can swim like dolphins to the other side.

“The UK is at its most combustible. And now it’s led by a man who plays with matches.” Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian today. [Guardian]

We will continue to oppose Brexit

I earnestly believe Brexit is not the right path for the UK at this time. Nations use the heft of bloc, trading, political, military and economic to exact deals and this has been the case for decades already. A good example is us calling on Europe to help police the Gulf shipping when the US apparently refused to help us out. Ireland has the heft of the EU-27 behind it and so commands much more clout in the EU negotiations than the UK can alone.

I will put my support behind parties that support revoking Article 50, we would not be a silent minority in terms of where our nation is going. We belong here and we patriotic, and if patriotism needs to be redefined, it is the love of the fatherland, it does not automatically include the love of the government, their agenda or policies, we all need to be persuaded and convinced and if we are not, we are no less citizens and have no less a say in how we are governed.

In the end, I can only wish Boris Johnson a successful premiership, he will be opposed for as long as we can muster the support to do so if we believe he is taking us for a ride. There is a time to know when a course leads to perdition and someone should take that decision to turn back from ruin.

Opinion: How much longer can we endure Theresa May and her #Brexit ineptitude?

She never could do it

News that Theresa May the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had decided to delay the meaningful vote on her much-vaunted deal from Europe for #Brexit was hardly a surprise.

It is depressing and a depressing state of affairs that a nation that in the last century was one of the leading lights of world leadership, diplomacy and political nous is in a state of ineffectiveness, utterly inept, incapacitated by infirmity, deformed in prospect.

I have never had the confidence that Theresa May could pull off #Brexit with any credibility or ability, she mastered and spearheaded a negotiating tactic that projected hubris and bluster, sending bombastic blowhards to Europe with delusions of grandeur convinced in the exceptionalism of the UK. Her powers of persuasion were deployed as dogged obstinacy, tinned eared in her hope that brinkmanship would yield a result.

A living insanity

For 29 months since she assumed office, she has followed the same course, mouthed the same mantras, repeated the same talking points and achieved nothing. Paraphrasing Albert Einstein, "The definition of this #Brexit insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."

It is insanity that bedevils this #BrexitShambles, she can win no support within her party and she has found no way to unite the country behind anything she has to offer apart from uniting us in disgust and revulsion of her deal.

Theresa May had ample opportunity and scope, she could have on becoming premier gone for a grand coalition to work on this #Brexit issue. Rather, she triggered Article 50 completely clueless of what she could achieve, then gambled away her majority on an ill-judged election before losing two Brexit Secretaries of State, a Foreign Minister and scores more from her cabinet.

Neither up nor down

Dysfunction and derision have become the hallmarks of this government hellbent of driven the country headlong into perdition on the force of ideology above reason. The Pound Sterling in the wake of foolhardiness not seen since the Grand Old Duke of York became a nursery rhyme of the utmost ridicule.

The problem is not in Europe, the EU-27 countries have already agreed the deal she wants to renegotiate with them, they all know it is the fact that she cannot persuade, convince, cajole, cudgel or bribe enough in the House of Commons to buy into her plan. She is an abject failure and if any Tory is ready to put the country above self-interest, it is time to pension off this apology wrecking the country and chart a new course in leadership and in Europe.

Stop this #Brexit nonsense now

The #BrexitShambles has sucked all productivity, progress and oxygen out of our national effectiveness and the ability for us to take our place in the comity of nations where we belong. There is no Kumbaya of rich pickings after #Brexit.

We belong in Europe, the best deal we could have we already have in Europe and we need to send better representatives than those of the ilk of Nigel Farage to Europe who would attend meetings, constructively engage our partners and win compromises, concessions and consensus that gives of the best of what Europe can offer.

It is time to end the leadership tragedy of Mrs Theresa May and consign her to the scrapheap of history. She has done enough damage already.

#EURoaming: Roam, Roam, Roam Your Phone

Roam, roam, roam your phone,
Gently overseas,
Silently, noisily, merrily, happily,
Call Europe with ease.

What the EU gets us

Roaming charges are being dropped within the EU from Thursday, the 15^th of June 2017. You can carry your contractual tariffs and allowances abroad without incurring extra charges, these also cover your Pay-As-You-Go bundles.

However, once outside the core allowances, the prices can suddenly go up. I remember returning home from a Spanish holiday in September 2007 to a phone bill of €1,420, though it did not really bother me, I thought being with the same company in different countries and being charged exorbitant rates was just outrageous.

There are lots of benefits of being in the EU and I doubt when a closer look is made of #Brexit we would see any advantages for the UK apart from that obsession with freedom of movement. I dare say, that codified phrase that looks innocuous enough is more an appeal to our latent xenophobia.

As a consequence, we suffer

In the end, the politicians will suffer little consequence for #Brexit, they will swan off into retirement with eye-watering pension pots, just like Nigel Farage would, but the ordinary person will be affected. The pound is at its lowest for decades just as gambler-politicians alter and change our lives at a whim like the throw of the dice for their own egotistical and political ends.

Whilst it lasts, let us roam and enjoy, the need for a dual-SIM phone might be obviated in the EU, I will find out when I travel next month.

From what I can see in the Which article, it appears Three offers the best deal for UK customers travelling out, you cannot acquire a cheap contract in another country to exploit roaming in your home country. I am sure mobile phone companies would come up with ingenious ideas to make up for the loss of profits from roaming charges.

Courtesy of Which magazine

We, the people said, 'Silly girl.'

Catching up on it all

No doubt, reams of commentary and analysis would be written about the just concluded UK General Election of 2017, but I will like to write a postscript to the event.

When Theresa May the incumbent Prime Minister suddenly called an election on the 18^th of April 2017, the ruthless streak of the lady was to completely annihilate the opposition and put the Labour Party completely out of the reckoning.

The polls suggested the Tory Party would win a landslide and Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party would lead it to its worst electoral defeat in history. There were analysts who until the day before the election who completely underestimated Jeremy Corbyn and believed their prognostications to the point of annoyingly projecting it on any platform that would accommodate those views.

Giving Jeremy a closer look

Until the election was called, we were coasting to a somewhat ruinous separation from Europe called a Hard Brexit, Theresa May believed she had read the minds of us Britons and came to the conclusion that it was the freedom of movement that bothered us the most and so her headstrong Brexit strategy was gathering moss in that direction.

Invariably, we also had our doubts about what Jeremy Corbyn could achieve and probably would have voted for someone else until Theresa May’s arrogance, audacity and effrontery presented us with a stark choice of giving her free rein to take us over the cliff edge or we begin to subscribe to the reasonableness that became the hallmark and demeanour of Jeremy Corbyn.

The media bias against Jeremy Corbyn and his team was unrelenting and palpable as they brought up every ghost of the past to scare and terrify us into Theresa May’s ‘Strong and Stable’ corner.

Yet, the hashtag #EndMayInJune bore an amazing resonance as we began to look at Theresa May’s record as Home Secretary and then Prime Minister, we began to see leader that probably stood for nothing, all goals, aims, ambitions and promises given the oxygen of rhetoric, sloganeering, soundbite and endless repetition was just a lot of hot air and nothing else.

A broken record it was

We were not convinced that giving Theresa May a stronger hand in the #Brexit negotiations would give us the kind of Brexit that would be good for us. The referendum is a done deal, however, it is my view that if the politicians decided should ask us about whether we wanted to stay in Europe, it is right for them to return to us and review the manner of our leaving.

Basically, if we want to get off the EU bus, it is best the bus gets to a bus stop where we can safely alight rather than us jumping out of the window whilst the bus is in motion. There was a streak of British bloody-minded daring-do that was beginning to inform our manner of leaving the EU that was patently unacceptable.

Then again, even if Brexit was an important electoral issue, there were seriously pertinent local issues that were left by the wayside, those were the issues that Jeremy Corbyn brought to the fore as Theresa May sequestered herself away from needed scrutiny to challenge her record in government.

We had to stop this gamble

She was either clueless or given to sophistry that the gamble she took calling an election was beginning to write itself out as political folly. I had to vote and so I committed myself to a 500-kilometre roundtrip from Edinburgh to Manchester to vote on Thursday morning.

I believe, there were many like me who decided they had had enough of politicians in the mould of Donald Trump who took everything for granted and had no scruples gambling away our future on the whim of egotistical and reckless abandon for personal ends portrayed as a national interest.

Invariably, even after two terrorist attacks within weeks of each other and the local elections that appeared to buoy the Tory Party, the gamble did not pay off, and rather than increase her majority in the Parliament we are met today with a hung parliament with the Tories needing the support of the anachronistic, provincial and primordial Democratic Unionist Party of the Northern Ireland to form a minority government.

What a silly girl

One is left to almost blurt out, ‘Silly Girl’, but a lesson has been harshly taught and history is being penned with the enthusiastic aplomb of an epic-making thriller. Theresa May will go down in history as the incumbent leader who called an unnecessary election to bury the opposition into irrelevance giving her the freedom to traipse about like an empress, only to be reduced in clout, authority and effective mandate.

Unfortunately, the stiff-necked woman has learnt no lessons, the core of the team that heralded the shambles we are in have been retained to continue in shambolic plunder of our commonwealth. The Tory Party is, however, a restive hornet’s nest, it would sooner implode over something before the next scheduled election of 2022. I do not expect Theresa May to last this new Parliament as the leader of the Tory Party.

We, the people

What we have learnt is that people do feel strongly about the way we are governed, they are concerned about the NHS, social care and our communities, but would not be terrified into making choices like the ones that brought us Brexit again. We want a managed exit from the EU that involved consultation, consensus and agreement.

We are done with UKIP and its immigrant poison, the people persuaded of the UKIP agenda did not automatically file into the Tory column as Theresa May expected, they dispersed into columns that appealed to our greater sense of being as the Labour Party that was supposed to become history claimed more seats off other parties than they lost, a net gain of 21.

A strengthened opposition is what we need for the kind of Brexit Theresa May was cooking up for us and we have one led by Jeremy Corbyn who by terms is in the ascendancy. For that alone, I’m in clover.

God Save The Queen!

Related notes

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Fuck #Brexit, there are people suffering

This is Britain today

As I descended the Playfair Steps towards the Scottish National Gallery after work, I first heard him before I saw him. He was asking for change, his voice weak, not particularly dishevelled, by the tear in his jacket and his trousers meant he was in rags.

I could not look away and I did not have loose change, I had decent money and an open hand, that was what I did as I secreted a note into his hand. He noticed and called after me to thank me and shake my hand.

That is the reality of life of some of my fellow Brits, they have nothing, not an inkling of where the next meal is coming from, not a place to sleep, not a prospect for a future beyond the now, if something radical does not happen from individuals like you and I, from civil society groups and fundamentally from the government and we are choosing one in a week.

Complex waffle at simple problems

On April the 30^th after Theresa May decided to gamble with our lives by calling an unnecessary and unneeded general election, Andrew Marr posited that nurses were using food banks and this is what she said, “There are 'many complex reasons' why nurses were using food banks, but 'not having enough money to eat' was not one of them.” [Independent]

No Theresa, the reason why people use food banks does not involve any complex reason, it is a simple reason, they do not have the money to buy food. Full Stop!

This whole preoccupation with #Brexit, ‘Strong and Stable’ and whatever rhetorical mantra that has become a cacophonous jumble of the governing party in the mouth of Theresa May, does not once address these fundamental issues.

Why are people sleeping rough everywhere I go in the UK and why are nurses using food banks and what are you going to do about it?

She can’t do it, simples

These events are fundamentally the bread and butter issues that keep people on the lowest rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they have basic needs now, the psychological needs and the self-fulfilment needs are hardly on their minds. #Brexit is not front and centre of their minds.

With a 7-year term as first Home Secretary and now Prime Minister, Theresa May has had the scope, opportunity and privilege to implement many of the new promises she is trotting out as electoral pledges and failed dismally as achieving any, be it on immigration or social policy. What she could not do then, she has not done now and will not do hereafter, let us not be carried away and cajoled by this political talk.

Theresa May is completely out of touch with the pulse and the heart of what ails the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, she is just on an opportunistic jaunt projected on a #Brexit negotiating stance in the hope that we are scared enough to trust her.

#Fuck Brexit

Now, negotiating #Brexit is important, but at the expense of national real life issues that affect everyday lives is where the Tories campaign gets it wrong and much as the prospect of Jeremy Corben as Prime Minister is a hard concept to countenance, I dare say, he knows where people are hurting, needing and ailing – in social welfare, in services, in making the country work for everyone, even if it would hurt some of us to help the people who appear to have been left behind or forgotten altogether.

Whilst, I commend Amber Rudd for standing in for the Prime Minister at the debates just two days after she lost her father, I sympathise, but politics is about the living, I have no sympathy vote to give, I have a vote that makes a difference in my life and the lives of others that I see as I walk the streets of the UK.

I say it as it needs to be said – Fuck #Brexit, there is more to life than that at stake.

#Brexit: A royal fuck-up by caddish toffs

In utter disgust

Nothing spells disgust as the troop of inveterate spineless public school educated Englishmen who have shirked and absconded from responsibility when they have been met with the challenge and the call to duty.

It is appalling beyond words and utterly contemptible that we by the hand and machinations of a few little men consumed from schoolyard rivalry projected on the nation in a barefaced dare redolent of Renaissance duel, that has gambled away fortune and future for uncertainty and flux.

Deserters most vile

We are here today with Nigel Farage who spent 17 years earning a handsome purse in Europe as a scoundrel and a scallywag, uncouth, uncultured, intemperate, a rascal, and a truant extraordinaire who for all he did not do for us in the European Parliament has never been called to order, easing himself into retirement from the leadership of Ukip.

Before him, we had Boris Johnson, the bumbling scatterbrain of a nincompoop, the ebullient and charismatic leader of the #Brexit campaign, refusing to step up and put in order the turmoil he has wrought by his escapade which for all intents was to become Prime Minister at the expense of his lifelong rival, David Cameron.

The day after the #Brexit vote, just as the markets slid and the pound plummeted with no clear guidance of what the future holds, David Cameron threw in the towel and before us we had a rudderless, listing and a precarious situation at the most trying of times for Great Britain in almost a century.

These men and I use men lightly would have been typical of deserters, cowards with neither cojones nor liver who in the heat of battle turned their backs on the frontline and hightailed to the bosom of their mothers quaking and trembling like leaves that it would behove the generals to have then shot at dawn and never remembered for anything but their cowardice.

A disgrace beyond countenance

These men are a disgrace to everything that makes the English proud and gave us the history that dogs our present existence as we strive to punch above our weight in the world. However, in just 11 short days we are diminished in status, in influence, in capacity and in leverage.

We had no #Brexit plan, it is in fact almost laughable that we do not have any experts to negotiate the best deals for our post-#Brexit status, we might have to hire immigrant expertise to fight our corner. So much for #Brexit, it was a wasteful exercise that exacerbated division, accentuated anxiety, heightened uncertainty and complicated issues, many of which are unanticipated and frankly idiotic as they materialise.

A royal fuck-up

How did we end up with such a royal fuck-up orchestrated by some of the people who are supposed to be the most privileged, best educated and self-assured? Never has such a great nation been bequeathed to a generation so lacking in honour and gratitude for being chosen that they have brought it so low that what we have left is empty boasts, bluster, bombast and baloney.

Europe is not going to bend over backwards for us and the sooner we realise we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with #Brexit, the easier it would be to get treatment for the wounds.

Shame on all of them. If a man cannot stand when called to stand up and be seen, we might well have their dogs for company, the loyalty of the animal might just begin to pay for their perfidy and treachery.

Other reading

Blog - #Brexit: He traded his kingdom for horse shit

Blog - #Brexit: The Brexiteer is Brexecuted