by John Ward
Today is a day for counting the numbers – and while numbers aren’t everything, they do count if we really are to become a Nation governed for the needs of the contributory Many. Ideologues of Left, Right, globalism and neoconservatism represent the contemporary narratives obeyed by most….but accepted by a dwindling minority. This is a bad time for the deserving and the decent, and haymaking time for totalitarians. Britain must look for a way, from now on, to be on the right side of history. Achieving Sovereign Brexit is but one small part of that, but it is a vitally important first step.
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It’s been fun writing the Brexit Follies over the last five days. The Quasimodo Quintet I chose to feature – Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Grieve, John Bercow and Jean Claude-Juncker – may have felt like eating a chalk and cheese sandwich, but in fact they all have several personality features in common:
- False rationales for their views
- An inner lust for power
- Hypocrisy about motives for behaviour
- An incredibly badly hidden agenda
- Sociopathic mendacity
- Utter disrespect for the citizenry.
The unity of the Establishments, in fact, is in stark contrast to the citizenry. Our self-styled ‘leaders’ stand firmly behind one banner – Might is Right – and their drive to keep the taxpayer out of the power equation never falters….whatever their individual positions on the Brexit issue might be.
And yet, while they are all admirers of Might, they have no common ground at all when it comes to the greatest fulfilment of the greatest number of their electorates. The reason is blindingly obvious: they simply don’t care about (or even recognise) that as a goal.
The awesome canyon between Remainers and Leavers in the population is merely a function of one issue – Brexit – highlighting that, in the country as a whole too, there is no common ground between Progressive and Conservative views. The real malaise of the United Kingdom is this existence of a completely antithetical Weltanschauung on both sides.
It applies every bit as much to the US, France….and it is a rapidly developing confrontation in several other countries in the West.
I confess to suffering from this syndrome myself, even though my political wool is organically free of dye. I am a pessimistic empiricist by nature, but I also feel instinctively that, given the right culture, the vast majority of humanity just wants to live and let live. However, as an older and more experienced observer in every sense, I find myself at times in a bewilderment of frustration at the interpretations, arguments, assertions, intolerance and sheer fluffy blindness of the Progressive mentality.
The cognitive dissonance they display borders on creepy. They say they’re progressive, but cling to the scientifically rejected social views of the past. They claim to be feminist, yet sympathise with Islam. They claim affection for the EU, despite the veritable Nuremburg Court of evidence damning the corrupt, illiberal and illegal nature of it. They “see” a danger from the Far Right, but cannot grasp that the Hard Left is infinitely larger in terms of both numbers and quasi-Establishment power.
So no, I have nothing in common at all with the belief systems of Harriet Harman, Owen Jones, Baron Adonis, Momentum, Antifa, Hillary Clinton, or indeed the entire US liberal media set obsessed with one flawed President at the expense of any other consideration.
But here is the rub: I have nothing whatever in common with the cultural views of Donald Trump, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, John Bolton and Guy Verhofstadt either.
Am I eccentric? A lot of people think so, but let’s look at the numbers in a UK context – given that it is the latest victim in a long list of nation States that has dared to argue with the Brussels Mafia.
In the 2017 General Election, 13.6 million voted Tory, and 12.9 million voted Labour. One in three didn’t vote at all. One in two did not vote for either “main” Party. As always, some voted Tory to keep Labour out, and vice versa. Had UKIP not foolishly chosen a low profile in this election, the figure not voting for either Big Gun would’ve been even smaller.
It is possible to extrapolate sensibly from that and previous elections to show that – in a full-on ‘Brexit Election’ two and a half years after the Referendum – some two thirds of the British electorate would demonstrate a lack of attachment to or belief in either Labour or the Conservatives.
To add weight to that hypothesis, let’s take the main opinion poll done on May’s withdrawal plan so far. This was the large-sample Survation poll of November last year, showing just 16% of voters who saw it as “the best option”. Little has changed since, but the Prime Minister’s focus remains to persuade the legislature that not only is it the only option on offer, “it respects the views of the electorate”. This is a blatant lie: however, whereas only 1 in 7 adults support her “deal”, probably at least 1 in 3 MPs will vote for it today. It’s an odd form of respect, that one.
In that same survey, nearly twice as many preferred No Deal to her deal. But the one thing uniting 90% of MPs is that they refuse to even consider No Deal….and are actively introducing Bills and amendments to ensure that, come what may, it cannot possibly happen. More heavily disguised respect for the People.
In that context of the No Deal or a lousy deal as a “choice”, it is hardly surprising that, when pushed, 48% of those surveyed said they’d rather just Remain (ie, go back to where we were) than either capitulate or take the “leap in the dark” – which is anything but dark, crashing or a leap – but either way, the point remains valid: what Parliament is going to vote on tonight has nothing whatever to do with what the majority of Brits either want or voted for. Remove the obstacles of this deal or no deal, and fully 79% of us no longer want to stay in the EU.
In short, the great majority of the citizenry’s conclusion is that weak and/or deliberately unambitious negotiation has landed us where we are, and they think we should say to Brussels, “New set of negotiators, like it or lump it”.
Everyone tells us, of course, that this isn’t practical. Which is fine, but had that been the starting point in June 2016 (one suspects most people feel) we would not be in a corner now.
For Theresa May to start talking about the history books is a wicket more sticky than a superglue factory. What the history books will say about the Brexit Years is that they revealed an awkward truth: Britain is nation divided by ideologues and ruled by latter-day Bourbons.
Nothing happening today or in the near future at Westminster and in Whitehall is going to change any of that. The change we need – that is, the rejection of extreme forms of élitism, neoliberalism, socialism, feminism, Islamism, multiculturalism and globalism in favour of one apolitical goal – need not be violent. But it must be radical, bottom-up change – not top-down tinkering of the sort we’re witnessing now.
Britain needs a policy to unite it. That policy should be the greatest fulfilment of the greatest possible number of its citizens without being compromised by neoconservative geopolitics. It’s what Viktor Orban is trying to achieve in Hungary, what the Coalition in Italy is struggling to express, what UK voters tried to express in 2016 – and what’s driving the Gilets Jaunes movement across Europe.
If the future of our species is to be mercantile powerbloc federalist élite fascism, then that future will not exceed another fifty years….for all kinds of obvious military, technological, ecological, energy, fiscal and ideological reasons.
The future is Small, not Big – or it is nothing. The Brexit Follies are merely a symptom of our inability to grasp that.