Brexit Britain – our Banana Monarchy

Brexit is like a drug administered hourly.

The drip is broadcast through channels directly into our system.

It is keeping us in a state of confused agitation.

We are all hooked.

In this weird state nothing else happens. Brexit just pumps endlessly through our blood supply. Nothing else matters.

Politicians lie to us, lie to each other and lie to themselves.

In this theatre of the absurd Prince Harry appeals to us to reign things in a little.

“UK’s Prince Harry demands end to ‘greed and selfishness’, for nature’s sake said the headline.

A Plantagenet, if you will.

Prince Harry’s net worth is somewhere between $25 and $40 million.

His family together have a net worth of $88 billion.

The sovereign grant to them is £76.1m per year.
But maybe the Royals as icons of frugality is no funnier than Farage as a man of the people, or Boris as Prime Minister?

Boris was there at Manchester spewing out lies and making testicle gags as the nation careers towards economic catastrophe.

Populist language was reduced to a handful of easy to remember slogans and numbers: 40 hospitals, 20,000 bobbies on the beat and LOTS of buses. Nice buses. While Priti Patel ended freedom of movement with a smile and promised a tightening of immigration with a grin, Boris bumbled on with his muddle of techno-babble, Corbyn-bating and commie bashing.

Any actual detail about resolutions to the Irish border was completely absent. This much anticipated set-to was just a stump speech littered with gags. The audience howled with laughter and lapped it up.

Later in the day “Boris’s final offer” (which in fact was his only ever offer) was presented.

It had no real solutions, created two borders and crossed several of the EU’s red lines.

It was and is designed to fail and fail it will.

The only question is how long the Europeans can be bothered to go through the masquerade of pretending to consider it.

The Irish barely lasted a day.

Two Visions of the Future

We used to think that the UK would be contested between two nationalisms: Scottish nationalism and British nationalism. Today it seems like the forces in competition are between two visions: an Anglo-British vision of Great Britain from the 1950s and an Anglo-British vision of Greater England regurgitated from the 1950s. This is Coronation Chicken versus Chlorinated Chicken.

Now it seems escape routes from Boris’s Banana Monarchy have been blocked off, life-rafts scuppered and zip-wire’s cut.

Richard Leonard has said in an interview with Gordon Brewer: “No – even if a clear majority of Scottish people vote for parties explicitly calling for a second independence referendum, and return a majority of pro-indy MSPs to Parliament, we will not consider that sufficient support.”

The Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Wullie Rennie has also pledged to stop indyref2 “dead in its tracks” even if pro independence parties win a majority in Scotland.

[Rennie vows to halt indyref2 ‘dead in its tracks’]

The Scottish Lib Dem leader says his party would oppose a vote even if pro independence parties won a majority.

From Family of Nations to Anti-Democracy

The depleted Unionist forces in Scotland have turned from winning the arguments to stopping a democratic vote taking place at all.

Other groups are seeking to subvert and gerrymander any vote when it goes ahead.

The unionist think-tank Scotland Matters is maneuvering to insert a special condition to corrupt any future vote.

The Scotland Matters petition says a two-thirds vote for change would avoid a disputed result and yield a “clear, demand acceptance by all, and neutralise subsequent efforts to revoke the result of have another referendum” and give a “powerful mandate” for the government implementing the change.

These are signs of desperation as Better Together’s and the Tories’ talismanic leader Ruth Davidson has left the field and Britain has been reduced to an international laughing stock.

Now what?

Brexit Silver Linings

Well groggy as we are from the Brexit drug pumping around our system, a few things are still clear.

In the odd lucid moment it’s clear that there are a few Brexit silver linings.

The Conservative Party is destroying itself.

The party in Scotland faces electoral obliteration and will next week appoint the next nobody to oversee this process.

Ireland will be united within a generation.

Scotland will be independent and be able to make its own decisions about its relationship with Europe.

England will face a long and difficult process of coming to terms with itself.

Brexit cold turkey is likely to prove difficult. Withdrawal from the drug of blaming everything on the rest of the world will be harsh.

The problem for those of us opposed to Brexit and opposed to being ruled by a government we didn’t and can’t elect is also clear.

We are defending two institutions – Westminster and ‘the EU’ that people have very little faith in.

Westminster we know a lot about and hold in much contempt. For years – since the expenses scandal and the sleaze years – politicians have been held in increasing contempt. The EU is a different matter. It’s a set of institutions we know mostly through the prism of the tabloid press. Its a set of institutions we are almost completely ignorant of. As the person next to you who their MEP is. I doubt they’ll know.

As we emerge (eventually) from this hallucinogenic state, these institutions will have to be reformed or abolished, and the political class that led us through this process will need to be held to account. The next general election and the coming independence referendum will be processes of cleansing and renewal, because much of what we have in place of democracy is rotten and decrepit.

Now that’s enough for now, its time for your medicine.

Comments (17)

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  1. bringiton says:

    The major problem that Westminster has with the Scottish state being resurrected is that England will no longer be able to pretend that is is the UK.
    This strikes at the heart of the self importance felt by England’s ruling elite and their delusions of global domination (again).
    England’s Tories will never agree to be part of any structure where they are not in charge,trade deals with Trumpland excepted,which is
    why the “union” with Scotland has now run it’s course as far as many Scots are concerned.
    We do not take to being completely ignored very kindly.
    Scotland was not extinguished as an entity when it joined with England,despite what the Westminster establishment would have us believe
    and even the dogs on the streets of Budapest know this.

  2. w.b. robertson says:

    so the EC is one of the institutions that will have to be “reformed or abolished”. Agreed! Presumably the new Independent Scotland, cheered on by the voters, will lead the charge among Germany/France and the rest of the 27? And no doubt pigs will learn to fly.

    1. Alan Crerar says:

      You seem to be confusing the EC with the EU. That renders your comment somewhat unintelligible.

  3. William Habib Steele says:

    We don’t need a referendum. Independence has nothing to do with Domestic Law. The whole video is worth listening to but see this video from 23:33 https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=kLhEb0ajc8w.

  4. Derek Henry says:

    Scotland will be independent and be able to make its own decisions about its relationship with Europe ?

    You live in a dream world Mike and clearly don’t understand the stablity and growth pact, 2 pack, 6 pack, excessive debt proceedure and the corrective arm. Because of this you fail to recognise the growth comission was a blue print to join the Euro. Even if we don’t join the Euro and sign up to the 4 prisons we will be trapped.

    it is so dangerous to assume that Scotland will decide how it joins Europe – Insane infact.

    How on earth do you know ? All of you have given the SNP a free pass when it comes to Europe and not held their feet to the fire like media is supposed to do and ask them all the million tough questions when it comes to Europe.

    So in short this piece above is wishy washy nonsense Mike. Finger on the pulse ? Your finger is waving somehere way above your head.

    I talk at SPD meetings in Germany Mike and they are all starting to get it. Scotland is 30 years behind the debates that are actually taking place and because of that nowhere near ready for that meeting with Brussels if we ever get independence. We will not be independent at all by the time those talks are finished.

    Here’s a more professional take on the situation from those in the know. Heiner Flassbeck is a German economist and public intellectual. From 1998 to 1999 he was a State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance (German: Bundesministerium der Finanzen) where he also advised former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine on a reform of the European Monetary System. He became the Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva in January 2003, a position that he held until resigning at the end of 2012 due to his age.

    Charles Dickens wrote: “There will be a day of reckoning sooner or later” …

    http://www.flassbeck-economics.com/the-german-problem/

    1. Graeme Purves says:

      I’d love a 6 pack like Derek’s.

  5. Derek Henry says:

    Even Dr Death himself Draghi Says ECB Should Examine New Ideas Like MMT Mike.

    https://underground.net/draghi-says-ecb-should-examine-new-ideas-like-mmt-bloomberg/

    We did that by asking all the tough questions around Europe we have not given anyone a free pass. Well lets rephrase that. MMT Scotland has given the SNP a free pass because it has become politicised by the Indy movement. All indy media has given the SNP a free pass.

    We have got Draghi and Largarde talking about fiscal policy again. We did that by telling the truth about Europe and have had 4 MMT economists in Italy showing them how they can leave the Euro. They’ve been there for several years now.

    If Europe starts to change and the monetary infrastructure changes to what is actually needed which is a million to one shot. We have done that by threatening to leave and by doing talks in Germany and all across Europe. Showing them how the government accounts and central banks actually work in reality.

    Not by remaining and supporting the status Quo. That does not bring about change the real change that is needed that just enforces neoliberal globalism.

    Remainers have been trying for nearly 50 years to reform the EU and all they got was smoking banned in pubs. We have manged to highlight the changes that are needed in less than 20 at the structural level and the only way these changes will take place is if country after country threatens to leave the neoliberal globalist sess pit.

  6. john burrows says:

    The English electorate has lost its mind.

    The majority believe that even more cruelly incompetent Tory rule, is the solution to nearly a decade of cruelly incompetent Tory rule.

    George Orwell must be laughing his ass off.

  7. Alistair MacKichan says:

    Harry can’t help what he was born into. If he wants to get on the side of the good guys, that is not a motive to denigrate. Royalty is what he was born into, and he should not be blamed or judged for that. If what he says about greed and selfishness is his observation, then it proves that his humanity is greater than his urbanity. Good for Harry. So, leave the cheap dig at the monarchy out of this. As summary convictions, the rest is fairly good, if short on substance. The basic thesis about the EU and Brexit is spot on. Brexit swamps our sensibilities, when actually it is fairly irrelevant. What matters is quality of life, relationship with the planet, quality of leadership and positive national directions. In or out of Europe, it’s tackling greed, selfishness, and a tawdry political class that matters. So, Harry did all right.

  8. Iain MacPhail says:

    I know a good few No voters in Edinburgh who voted No in 2014 to give the UK one last chance.

    They now see the product of Better Together was Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of Scotland.

    They have been badly let down.

    This is a message that the Yes Movement needs to make, and make repeatedly (imo)

  9. The Clincher says:

    I wonder what’s wrong with demanding a two-thirds majority? If you are so confident in the indy case then that should be achievable. ‘Patient explanation’, as Lenin said.

    1. Ive argued that we should aspire to having a big heaving majority – but to set this in stone feels like gerrymandering and will remind people of previous efforts to stop home rule (such as 1979).

      If you are so confident in the union case why are so many politicians trying to stop a vote happening at all?

      1. The Clincher says:

        I’m not ‘so confident in the unionist case’, but as with the Brexit a small majority will lead to calls from the other side to re-run and so on. Nightmare if indy wins by 1%. Or union wins by the same.

        1. john burrows says:

          So now we need two votes for the proposal, to every one against? Advocates of independence are now to be considered lesser citizens?

          Why is it that the supporters of Union cannot honestly argue the benefits of such. Rigging the vote on their own terms seems to be their default setting.

          If this proposal was to be accepted, you realize that any second running of an EU referendum would also require a two thirds majority to overturn the original result.

          I’m sure that those who oppose Brexit and are campaigning for a second vote, will give your proposal all the attention it deserves.

  10. MBC says:

    Would Harry ever be free to live as a private citizen, supposing he decided to renounce the whole monarchy thing? I suspect not. Press interest in him would not decline, and he would remain a target for terrorists and a security risk. His royal status is not his choice and he cannot really escape from it. It would follow him even if he was somehow able to resile from it legally and constitutionally. It is a fact of his birth.

  11. jane says:

    Just how are those wanting independence going to circumvent the powerful force of the “British” establishment. They are duplicitous, dangerous and contemptuous towards ordinary people and will stop at nothing to keep control of the UK. Any attempt at independence will be fought dirty by the elite who don’t give a damn about Scots, they only care for the land they live on . I even worry about giving my email details

  12. marc w says:

    Why doesn’t the SNP vote with conservaties for a hard no-deal brexit, a new election, and all the other stuff that the conservative minority government wants, all on one condition: That the scottish parliament gets to hold another scottish independence referendum ? I understand that Boris might not take them up on that offer, but the SNP should make that offer known to the public, so that at the next election Boris can’t claim that he was prevented from completing Brexit, but was willing to sacrifice that goal himself …

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