“I’d like a big box of soluble Solpadeine Plus, please” is a tongue twister over which I stumble. By the way, I’m not OD-ing just stock-piling in case of post-Brexit shortages.
Other items I’m stock-piling are Mini Cheddars, Twiglets, Slimline Tonic and, of course, gin. But I don’t believe the UK will crash out (like a teenager at a party) of the EU. MPs have dug themselves in deeply and dogmatically in tactics reminiscent of the First World War. By the way, did you know that “First World War” was coined, depressingly, as early as September 1914 when a German philosopher mused “there is no doubt that the course and character of the feared ‘European War’ … will become the first world war in the full sense of the word”.
Will they (the MPs) suddenly jump out of their trenches, run across No Man’s Land and start playing footer and singing carols. Of course not, they are ideologically hard-wired. What I hope will bring them to their senses is the prospect of de-selection by their constituencies. We emphatically do not need a second referendum. We need the electorate to tell its MPs to come to understand the Realpolitik; stop ranting about a people’s vote, stop rhapsodising about trading under WTO rules and be realistic about where we are and our choices. It will be sad if the UK is diminished by the deliberate actions of its elected politicians. Ding-dong, democracy is dead.
Well, that’s not very Christmassy but I need to get it off my chest. Meanwhile I’m looking forward to a quiet Christmas at home; going to a musical later today; meeting friends for church and lunch tomorrow and a Lawn Meet of the Barons Court Beagles on St Stephen’s Day.
The District Line is my favourite so it’s a pleasure to mark its 150th birthday today.
Merry Christmas, Christopher. Thank you for a marvellous year of reports from your world.
You are being a little gloomy about Brexit, I think. Throughout the 19th, 20th and now so far the 21st centuries there have been issues like these: tariffs, Empire Preference, Free Trade etc and they have cut across other principles often to do with the state’s responsibility for welfare. Parties split over the first sort of issue and more naturally coalesce over the latter.
I would hazard that whether we are half-in the EU as we have been, or half-out as Mrs May intends we should be at least for a while, or all the way out as Hannan and Rees-Mogg would like, Britain and more particularly England, will be interested in the Anglosphere and the wider world and be pretty good at dealing with them. We will always be intimate with the Continent, and both condescending and envious as always.
Whatever happens, we are well on the way to solving a problem which afflicts modern societies: the disaffected white working class resentment of modernity. Only remaining in the EU would seriously upset them. On the other hand, it will do the soft left liberal green elites some good to find that the UK does not need the EU as inoculation against the vicious Anglo-Saxon unwashed they suppose themselves to be surrounded by.
All in all, no likely outcome to Brexit will damage our economy for long and most likely outcomes will turn out all right for both the educated and uneducated classes who are so fearful of each other.
Meanwhile, should we not be rather thrilled that the last year or so have produced in Mrs May of Maidenhead a Chief Guide, a Joan of Arc as conceived by G Bernard Shaw, and a Boadicea? And isn’t there some Mary Poppins Mk1 in there, too?