Theresa May faces a non confidence vote today, Ian Birrell writes in The Guardian:
It is hard not to conclude that the Tory hard right are intent on destroying their party and handing the country to Jeremy Corbyn as they move to depose Theresa May at this point in the corrosive Brexit process. Yes, she has made a series of dire mistakes, including triggering article 50 with no idea of how to achieve departure from the European Union and then throwing away her party’s majority. But for all her many failures, now is not the time to oust her amid political deadlock and a national crisis.
Like neo-liberals around the world, they were inspired by the drivel Ayn Rand peddled seventy years ago:
Has there ever been a bunch of more selfish politicians than these extremists, who have already sacrificed the previous three Tory prime ministers on the altar of their obsession with Europe? It was hard not to spew up my cereal listening to Bernard Jenkin, one of their shop stewards, claiming on the radio that “this is not a matter of self-indulgence … not a matter of one faction over another”. Once again, duplicitous chancers seek to deceive the electorate with cheap soundbites as they fight internal battles. Yet we can see with disturbing clarity now that Brexit could not be further from the national interest.
They have left wreckage and cynicism everywhere they have achieved power -- and then they disappeared:
Is it any wonder voters have lost faith with politicians as they observe such arrogant behaviour at Westminster? The Brexiteers, many having fled office after discovering the difficulty of turning shallow slogans into reality, still spout their platitudes, shift stances with slippery ease and fail to answer the complex questions they posed. Yet they blame the prime minister for failing to do their factional bidding. The Tory insurgents are driven by one thing only: taking back control of their own careers, regardless of any cost to a country they see merely as collateral damage. Look at how the repellent Boris Johnson jokes about his weight as he limbers up for another tilt at the leadership, despite his record for incompetence and laziness as foreign secretary.
They really are a fine crop of dunderheads. And now we in Ontario -- not to be outdone -- have our own.
Image: Quotefancy
10 comments:
The self-serving political jockeying in Britain is emblematic of the malaise that currently infects politics everywhere, Owen. Hence the dire straits we are in today.
The malaise crosses borders, Lorne. It has become an epedemic.
.. Brexit ? Pfft.. I care not. Eat cake. Off with their heads. Pull up your socks over there eh ! Rule Brittania !
Well I prefer 'God Save The Queen' by the Sex Pistols .. and 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' The Clash. Meanwhile, in Canada eh, our military vets - excuse me - our Royal Military vets are under assault and insult from the current Royal government - via the same law firm and lead lawyers Stephen Harper & Ray Novak employed to screw them over as if they were Sears employees (after the executives got their bonus money) Strangely, the Royal Ministers Of Defense always get paid on time plus pension.. ?
Meanwhiles.. we are so fortunate that Dough (sic) Ford can have prayer huddles in the basement with unelected Charles McVety to sort out gawds message for school children.. to keep them on the straight and righteous non LGBTG pathway to heaven.. corporal punishment to be dispensed for MPP's resisting being whipped.. !
Deary me ! Strange times.. !
I've been watching the parliamentary debates in Westminster recently. I must have spent two full hours yesterday watching Theresa May and Boris Johnson performing and it has been brilliant, both of them. May has done as good a job defending a hopeless position as perhaps anyone could. I have a new respect for her. Boris, now there's a showman perhaps like none I've seen before. Fast, agile and immensely manipulative. Either of them makes Corbyn seem dull.
In one argument Boris tried to link Labour and his Tory insurgents as on the same side, i.e. opposed to May. His is a pretty tawdry argument but, at the same time, effective. The rebels want nothing less than a no-deal or hard Brexit over what Johnson castes is permanent indentured servitude to the EU.
Has there ever been such a foundational issue so hashed up? Every side has an agenda - the Welsh, two camps from Northern Ireland, the Scots, Tories, Labour, Lib/Dems.
To me it's hard to see how they can break this impasse without a second referendum. May insists the people have spoken which, if she believes it, ought to have resulted in a more straightforward policy than the dog's breakfast she now brings to Parliament. No one, including May, can say with any certainty what her supposed deal with Europe really means.
Here’s another cheap soundbite: the libertarians built this transnational bughouse. Maybe if we can just learn to hate the other guys a little more and to do it on cue, they’ll be able to get the bugs out. We’ve got to do our part, don’t we? After all, they put up the money.
“Wait a minute. That’s unfair. We didn’t do it. It’s the deep state and the cultural Marxists. Just ask Boris or Nigel or Mr. Transparency. Ask any of us.”
As always, the real scabs are the guys who hired them.
Strange times indeed, sal. The March of Folly continues.
We are devolving into tribalism around the globe, Mound. A new referendum might result in restablishing ties with Europe. But, in the present circumstances, it could also make things less stable.
Exactly, John. We might learn something if we followed the money.
The EU is really a neoliberal Ayn-Randian kind of joint. It's based on free-markets, free-trade and open borders: free flow of migrant workers. Very economically efficient for blue-blood Euro-oligarchs who own the means of production. Not so good for the average worker.
The architect of the euro was a Friedmanian looking to impose "far right" economic reforms from above the fray of democracy with disaster capitalism. Europeans tend to be left-leaning and would never vote for them.
But the EU also has that cultural-totalitarian bent you see from many conquering Euro-unitarians in history: Constantine, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler.
Under the EU, one could argue, average Europeans get the worst of both worlds: Ayn-Randian economics and an increasingly overbearing cultural ideology.
Not sure what Britons could lose under a full break. Britain and the EU are still members of the WTO. Is the EU going to impose big tariffs on the UK as punishment for leaving? That would be a disastrous exercise in hypocrisy for those who want to keep the EU from crumbling apart. But it wouldn't be surprising the way Euro-oligarchs like to throw their weight around.
-CC
I agree, CC, that the EU has been infected by the same neo-liberal virus that has seeped into almost every nation. The problem with Brexit, however, is that it's based on the same historical fantasy that fuels the Trumpists. You can't go back to a world that has long since passed away.
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