Computer ports

The Immortal Brexit Conspiracy Theory

Computer portsSo now we know. After three years of investigation at huge expense to the taxpayer, the Information Commissioner has found no evidence that Cambridge Analytica and its phantom Russian backers had any significant influence on the Brexit referendum. Now the natural question is how such an obvious conspiracy theory came to be taken seriously by a supposedly well-informed political class in the first place.

In truth, it’s not especially hard to explain the establishment’s irrational behaviour since the Brexit referendum. The endless search for scapegoats and shadowy international players is a helpful distraction from any meaningful introspection.

Whether it’s Russian trolls, social media manipulation or adverts on buses, the search for some explanatory Brexit aberration continues unabated.

While this sudden diversion down Conspiracy Cul-de-sac is a mystery to the average Brexit voter, it makes perfect sense to a large class of people who’ve spent their whole lives exercising political and cultural authority. How else can they explain that authority being rejected in the most spectacular fashion at the very moment it mattered most?

The Cambridge Analytica and Boris Bus controversies are proof positive that our cultural and political establishment have been living in a self-reinforcing bubble for many decades now. As a result of this detachment from our shared reality, a large chunk of the political class remains psychologically unable to grasp that the majority of the electorate sees a very different world to the one they inhabit. After all, if most voters believed the European Union was a net benefit, Britain would simply have voted Remain.

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Puppets

True Colours V

PuppetsOne notable side effect of the Brexit referendum has been to force everyone in public life to show us their true intentions, hence the title of this blog series. If the last four years have achieved nothing else, they have demonstrated beyond any doubt exactly what we’re dealing with both at home and on the Continent.

Publication of the Internal Market Bill this week seems to have shocked many commentators, although it shouldn’t really be a surprise. While the amended Withdrawal Agreement was less egregious following the re-drafting of the hated Irish Backstop, it was still a fudge that couldn’t square the circle of the EU’s internal market and the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement. However, despite its manifest shortcomings, the Withdrawal Agreement served its political purpose and made Brexit a reality.

Anyone who thought the matter of Northern Ireland wouldn’t rear its head again was being extremely naïve.

To put it simply, it was never possible to reconcile the EU’s single market requirements with the Good Friday Agreement. The first demands checks at the border while the second makes them illegal.

Both Remainers and Brexiteers have played fast and loose with this inevitable legal paradox when it’s suited their ends. However, from the perspective of having left the EU, the UK’s decision over which treaty to favour is a very simple one.

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Lib Dem 2019 manifesto

The Leavers of Power

Lib Dem 2019 manifestoSo here it is, merry Brexmas, everybody’s having fun!

The results of this general election will be discussed and written about for decades to come, and with good reason. This is quite literally the end of an era. Future history books will compare and contrast the period that went before with the one that dawned on Friday December 13th 2019.

The abject failure of the Lib Dems’ revoke Brexit offering speaks for itself, and much has already been made of the starkly contrasting results obtained by both the major parties. By now it’s common knowledge that Labour have suffered their worst electoral defeat since 1935, but apparently that’s okay because Jeremy Corbyn claims to have won the argument. Some would say it’s unkind to deride the afflicted, but mockery is the only rational response to self-delusion of such galactic proportions. Something that’s much more interesting than the ongoing corbynista meltdown is the sheer scale of Boris Johnson’s triumph. Pretty much everybody knows that it’s the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher’s last election victory in 1987.

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Broken mask

True Colours IV

Broken maskNow we see you!

Ever since the Brexit referendum of 2016, I’ve been writing at length about how this whole process has been immensely helpful in peeling back the layers of doublespeak and obfuscation that have calcified around our political and media class for decades now.

Despite the fine words about democracy and respecting the referendum result, many of us suspected that when push came to shove, the establishment would never actually allow this country to leave the European Union…under any circumstances.

We were right.

Faced with the unprecedented situation of a government and Prime Minister genuinely committed to implementing the largest democratic mandate in British history, the last veil of deceit has been torn from our hideously deformed body politic. The naked opportunism, dishonesty and contempt for the intelligence of the electorate are even uglier than many of us would’ve liked to contemplate.

Now we find ourselves in the ludicrous position of a Parliamentary class screeching about a supposed prorogation “coup” while arbitrarily awarding itself new powers to legislate. When they’re not doing that, they’re attempting to drag the judiciary into the political process by legislating from the bench when the politics doesn’t go their way. At the same time they refuse to allow an unreliable electorate to break the deadlock. Having whined about a general election for literally years, MPs have twice baulked at letting the great unwashed finally deliver their verdict. I think we all know why.

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Dartboard bullseye

Boris Can’t Miss

Dartboard bullseyeBarring some unforeseen calamity, it seems pretty much certain that Boris Johnson will soon be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He owes much of his popularity with the Tory party and the wider public to his easily understood and uncompromising stance on Brexit. He’s made it clear on numerous occasions that Theresa May’s disastrous withdrawal deal is dead and that the United Kingdom will be leaving the EU on October 31st, with or without any kind of trade deal in place.

The pundit classes have been at pains to point out how the problems of Parliamentary arithmetic persist regardless of who occupies Downing Street. There have already been dark threats from the likes of Dominic Grieve to vote with the opposition and bring down the government if Prime Minister Johnson attempts to take Britain out of the EU on WTO terms. We may yet see if such people have the courage of their convictions because that scenario is entirely possible.

However, in common with Donald Trump across the pond, Johnson is not nearly as dumb as the chattering classes like to think he is, and he’s had more than two years to plan his strategy. His uncompromising stance on the biggest issue in a generation shows that he is not the slightest bit scared of Parliament or the mainstream media class.

In other words, he knows he can’t miss.

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