As a potential Prime Minister, BoJo was a truly frightening prospect. A mendacious, unscrupulous and venal chancer, even by the current low standards we seem to accept from our politicians.
A privileged posh boy smirking his way up to the potential break-up of the United Kingdom, the shared destiny of some 63,000,000 human beings reduced to the geo-political equivalent of the Eton Wall Game; larks, a jolly jape in the common room.
Privilege is protection and now he’s finished smashing up the tuck shop, all to steal his mate’s job, the chubby clown can decamp to anywhere else he feels like. We, on the other hand…
Meanwhile, knives have sharpened for Corbyn. A bumbling, unpolished man with a modicum of some integrity. Whose biggest failing in the eyes of the V.E. Day tribute act now comprising half our electorate, is not his weak politics growing ever weaker, but that he actually cares about people. What an out-of-touch, metropolitan, lefty snowflake, eh? Burn him. Burn him now.
Those of us (by which I mean me) who actually thought that this mood might now be channelled into addressing the ‘unaccountable and unelected bureaucrats’ here at home; the patronage, the privilege, the sneering contempt with which the political class view us, are terminally damaged by our own unreality. There is no revolt. It’s over. The war is won. As long as patrician public school-boys and faceless English mandarins rule over us in perpetuity, that’s fine. Just as long as they aren’t Frogs, Krauts, Spics or Wops. Half the country can’t see the wood for the bulldogs and spitfires. And they don’t want to. They’ve got their country back.
Instead, the only thing passing for revolution are tens of thousands of indignant Remainers marching in the Imperial Capital. Demanding that their country is taken back from the Brexiteers. For those of us crippled by ambivalence, there is little chance of recovery. Sympathy for people trying to overturn a democratically-decided referendum is hard to muster. For all the decent folks involved, many of whom are good friends, it’s difficult not to smell a passing whiff of middle-class entitlement; fury that, for once, things didn’t go their way. Instead, those uppity proles smashed the pub up. “But they lied!” wail the Remainers. Christ, where to even start with that? Perhaps best not to bother. Perhaps a curt “no shit?” with all the scorn one could possibly amass is all the response required.
We chose between European bankers and racists and British bankers and racists. Fortress Europe or Little Britain. Put like that, if I’m surprised at all it’s only that the space between the numbers wasn’t the width of the Atlantic. While it certainly was a working class rebellion, it sure aint no working class victory.
My mate Mick Connole, former striking miner and thoughtful observer of current events, was saying for weeks before the vote that there is no way we’d leave the EU. Even if Brexit won. He was joined in that prediction by Comrade Wife. As we watch the Eton Rifles back-peddling furiously, talking about there being ‘no rush’ and urging themselves to ‘take our time’ and to make sure ‘the best possible deal for Britain’ is secured before pulling the Article 50 trigger, you can only gape in amazement. They’re actually going for it. They’re actually going to try robbing 17,000,000 Brexiteers of their win. Mick now looks far less like a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy enthusiast and considerably more like a modern sage of no mean perspicacity. Comrade Wife, too, is on course to shatter her personal best of fifty I Told You Sos in a single day.
So, to summarise… a sitting Tory PM campaigns openly on a policy of brutal austerity. In an unprecedented display of political honesty he actually tells you, up front, that cuts, shortages and pain are on the way.
You either sit on your arse and vote for no one or you vote for him. He wins the election and, again in a hitherto unmatched display of consistency, implements his election pledges.
You then vote to leave the EU which you blame for austerity while pretending you’re also voting against the PM who actually did give you austerity and who you really hate now but not enough then, evidently, to ensure he didn’t get elected in the first place.
Meanwhile, every opinion poll bar none tells you the number 1 concern around the EU is immigration, you tell me that it’s your number 1 concern but if I raise this then you get offended because you’re not racist but and I’m told I’m a sneering member of some metropolitan elite that hates the working class and you just care about ‘democracy’ and ‘austerity.’
At the same time half the left is celebrating because this is a progressive workers’ revolt; they just forgot to send that memo to Marine Le Pen, Britain First, UKIP and National Action. Now, after throwing immigrants under the bus, that same half of the left is busily and sanctimoniously, patronisingly, organising ‘solidarity’ activities for immigrants.
Those of us actually living in working class communities where all twenty-seven of our pits disappeared because of non-immigrant white-British scabs working hand-in-glove with a Tory government, and have had zero-hrs contracts for our kids as the replacement, can no longer look forward to an influx of funds destined for our public services. Because they lied. And you believed them. And we’re now going to end up with Theresa May as Prime Minister.
Well done, us.
Harry Paterson 