OK, OK. We’ve all done the sympathy-for-Theresa thing, vicar’s daughter, what a stayer, such guts, such resilience. Take that as read. The big question now is: what next?
The people in the Conservative Party who are passionately opposed to the Bill appear to have no plan other than to storm out of the EU and then, um, conquer the trading world. That’s Jacob and Boris’s plan. Their wish, unfortunately for everyone, could come true. The storming out bit, anyway.
There are people who say that Theresa’s Bill must be voted down because the UK can then go back and get a much better deal from the EU. Among these you’ll find the DUP. I wouldn’t want to be rude, but there must be a question mark over such people being allowed out of the house on their own. There will be no improved deal. Theresa’s deal may or may not be an awful deal but it’s the only deal. Barnier and Juncker and the rest must have a pain in their teeth telling her that. Mind you, it leaves the people of the UK a lot less well off than they are at present, but there are kinky people who enjoy pain, so presumably they’ll enjoy harsher living conditions than they now have.
There is another possibility, and one which the EU would be happy to accept, along with a growing number of desperate people in the UK: a second referendum. The hope with this route is that the people of the UK will see what they’re facing and call the whole thing off.
If that’s what a second referendum delivered, it would be highly embarrassing. All that campaigning and arguing and expense, for nothing in the end. But would you rather be embarrassed or a beggar?
But don’t forget, a second referendum could just possibly result in another Leave majority.
It’s important to remember that Leavers are not all bad people. Just a bit dim. They’ve bought the notion that Leave will open golden new horizons for the UK, and will stop Johnny Foreigner telling decent English people what to do. (Of course it’s a different matter when decent English people are telling Paddy Muck what he should do, because let’s face it, Paddy Muck isn’t capable of governing himself.) There are probably quite a few Leavers who’ve argued the case for making Britain Great again, and who, over the past two years, have slowly realized that restored Greatness to Britain is simply not on the menu. Such people will have the choice of conceding that they got it wrong, or stiffening their sinews and pushing on towards the cliff’s edge. You don’t think that people would be that stupid?
You could be right. Or wrong. There were at one time unionists who swore they’d rather eat grass than take any money from interfering Yanks. Over time, a lot of them got past that grass-eating phase and now line up to get into the White House on Paddy’s Day like everyone else.
Though here’s the thing. There are Leavers who know in their gut that they’ve constructed a huge gallows on which to hang themselves, but are too proud to do other than mount the gallows and put their head in the noose. Given time, they might see the mistake this was, but hangings don’t take long and you don’t find hung people have much to say after it’s happened.
So yes, these really are exciting days to live in, if you’re interested in politics and change. That’s the good part. The bad part is, as things stand, the rest of us will be flushed down the lavatory with them.
Is there anything we can do? We’ve shown in the referendum that our TGC doesn’t want to leave the EU, but apparently that’s unimportant. I suggest a quiet prayer to St Theresa, or maybe play that old number “St Teresa of the Roses”. Remember it? Malcolm Vaughan recorded it but then the BBC wouldn’t let it be heard, because it’d offend both “Catholic doctrine and Protestant sentiment.” Radio Luxembourg, having no such sensitivities, played it for all they were worth. “St Teresa of the Roses” stayed in the 1956 charts for five months and sold half a million copies.
Of course Luxembourg is in Europe. Another example, then, of Johnny Foreigner playing to different rules. The bounder.
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