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Not Dark Yet #294: Take back control and other stories

12/1/2019

6 Comments

 
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Sorry about this, but it’s Brexit again. This post could have been about the failures of Universal Credit. It could have been about the decline of Britain’s high streets, with specific reference to the plans of Warwick District Council for the destruction of Leamington Spa. It could have been about the proposed redundancies at Jaguar LandRover, a move which is going to have a major impact on our town as well as the country. It could have been about Andrew Neil’s extraordinary attack on Owen Jones or the last two columns by Nick Cohen – the one in The Observer demonstrating a disturbing familiarity with spanking literature, and the second, in The Spectator, the magazine for which Andrew Neil bears no responsibility, concluding that Corbyn and Trump are identical. Or it could have been about my plans to set up a shipping company and bid for a government contract. I reckon I could do it for less than £13.8 million, especially if I don’t buy any ships.
 
All these subjects have exercised me during the last couple of weeks. But they all come down to Brexit in the end, right? And with a mere two days of debate in the Commons remaining before the ‘meaningful’ vote on Tuesday, the media is full of it – and, to add an unvoiced fricative, full of shit too.
 
So here’s my two penn’orth.

​I am a Remainer and a Labour voter. As such, I am against even a soft Brexit. ‘Remain and reform’ was and remains my preferred policy. While I respect the result of the referendum, which does not mean that I either agree with it or believe it should be implemented, I do not respect the referendum itself, which was a crass proposal in the first instance and won with a combination of lies, illegal funding and dubious digital media.
 
What did impress me during the referendum was the Leave slogan. “Take Back Control” was and is a good line, and watching Cumberbatch in The Uncivil War the other night, one was surprised at the length of time it took for Dominic Cummings to arrive at it. It’s a nonsense of course, but it means all things to all men and thus appealed, if not to all men and women, at least to 52% of them. It appealed to nostalgic Little Englander Tories in Surrey and austerity-hit working class voters in the north, who had been told by successive governments – from Thatcher onwards – that the EU was the problem.
 
The irony of course is that parliament is now taking back control over the executive, and this is, in no small measure, the result of a precedent-breaking decision by Speaker Bercow.
 
He’s growing on me, is John Bercow. Preening popinjay perhaps, but he is showing himself to be a man who respects parliamentary democracy both in principle and in practice. In the face of the growing power of government, there is not a huge amount he can do, but what he can, he does.
 
One of the revelations of the recent shenanigans in the Commons has been the fact that many parliamentary votes are meaningless, having no force in law. They are, at best, “advisory”, nothing more than a demonstration of feeling.
 
Which is of course exactly what the referendum was. True, promises were made during the course of the campaign. But primarily by those who promptly resigned from positions which might give them any power over such a decision. Where are you now, Dave? 
 
So what will happen on Tuesday and on the 29th of March?

My prediction is that we will find ourselves in, to coin a meme, an existential crisis.

The phrase is widely used, and almost always misused. But it means one thing:

We're fucked.

Today from the everysmith vaults: In these strange times, it's time to dig deep into the depths of the vaults. Today's esoterica is the Captain's Bat Chain Puller.
 

6 Comments
Allan
12/1/2019 13:26:28

Max, I know you're a fan of the Archers. Did you enjoy the referendum on the best story-teller, with its prize of a dinner for two at Grey Gables prompting tapping up, ballot stuffing and the alleged use of the skills of Ambridge Analytics? One day I will disagree with you. This is pretty much spot on.

Reply
Max
12/1/2019 18:43:23

Made me smile. Also enjoyed the bonus Canterbury Tales. And (spoiler alert) agree that Eddie is a worthy winner.

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LukeG
12/1/2019 16:52:12

So that's what an existential crisis is! Yes, I don't think there is any way out of this mess. Stuff in the papers today about choice now between Maybot deal and remain, but not sure how the numbers work. Sorry, I mean the 'parliamentary arithmetic'. Surely a general election which will clear out all these tosses and then go back to a Commons which reflects accurately the sense in the country.

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Ed
12/1/2019 16:57:09

Another general election in which May and Corbyn fight it out to see who gets the chance to fuck everything? Or will Labour fight on a remain manifesto?

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Mark
12/1/2019 18:33:49

Not sure about Bercow actually, and the motion itself is not very helpful. All it says is that another motion must be laid before the Commons within 3 days, rather than 21. And as you point out, these things have no legal force. The motion can sit there until the end of time (ie 29 March)!

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Dom
15/1/2019 16:22:06

Tuesday pm. The more I see of this debate, the more I think you’re right. Fucking disaster.

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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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