GETTING THINGS DONE

As a deserving pensioner and venerable greybeard, I believe I am on top of my game, dispensing robust opinions on a range of matters, matured by a long experience of the ways of the world. This is another grand illusion: the truth is more earth-bound and banal. I am far from being an exemplar to others. I am idle, sedentary and obese; I receive my cultural and intellectual stimuli stuck firmly in my armchair; my doctors treat me for high blood pressure, diabetes, incontinence, heart irregularities and gout – otherwise I’m fine! I am also slowly going gaga, forgetting names, places and events, and not just the nasty ones, forsooth!

The way things are going!

I can be very critical of others when they fail to do what I think they ought to do, but I have to admit I too am guilty of indolence, incompetence, procrastination and that spirit of manãna, which we pin on the Spaniards. I veer away from making that long-delayed financial return, avoiding awkward phone-calls, or proffering that necessary apology, eating that slice of humble pie or proposing that compromise to kick-start an agreement. As we grow older, alas, we tend to become more stiff-necked, stubborn and bloody-minded – making my notions of society more confrontational and less comfortably inclusive. Any liberal ideals have withered, as I see it, due to their abuse by the chattering classes and they are now relegated to guilty memories. I wish it were otherwise, but there we are.

How much harder it is for a nation to agree a defined course of action and get things done, when the issue is as complex, divisive and now emotionally charged as Brexit. Parliament is dead-locked, parties are divided and the government is paralysed. Persuasive leadership or alternative plans are entirely absent, a sad commentary on this feeble generation of politicians.

The luckless electorate looks on with horror at this Westminster spectacle. The voters were promised Brexit on 29 March by all the major parties – it has not happened. We fume and take our anger out on the local elections – the Tories lose 1,300 seats as supporters go on strike (even faltering in iconic Tunbridge Wells and my staunch Folkestone) while Labour makes no progress, losing 70 seats (even in heartlands like Sunderland and Bolsover). Yet these results will not matter to the Brexit shenanigans. More spectacular will be the landslide success of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in the Euro-elections on 23 May, with the Conservatives facing annihilation. I will vote for Farage whose witty and eloquent advocacy of the Brexit cause has been admirable. I will feel better for the protest, but again Brexit will be no nearer.

We are asked to invest our hopes in a compromise between May’s Tories and Corbyn’s Labour. This is a highly unappetizing prospect. May has already secured a dud deal, three times rejected by the Commons and a compromise will only make it worse. Labour, confused and contradictory throughout the Brexit debate, favours negotiating access to the Single Market and becoming a member of a new Customs Union linked to the EU. To my ears, this amounts to Brexit in Name Only, and anyhow is unlikely to be accepted by the EU, who will insist on freedom of movement for the UK/EU too and veto UK foreign trade deals.

Expect nothing from these two has-beens

Frankly I would not do business with Corbyn, whose absurd policies and background in far-Left agitation put him beyond the pale. His retinue is even worse. Theresa May is a busted flush with no authority and the sooner she is sacked as Tory leader the better. She has shown herself to be not up to the job and to be arrogant and uncommunicative into the bargain. New leadership is now essential.

Our feather-bedded politicians boast of their skill in securing a deal by their mastery of fudge, ambiguity and the clever management of opinion. Well, the public is waiting to see their display of the black arts – it had better be good or else the fabric of our society may start to disintegrate and change, reform or revolution (call it what you may) will carry all before it in a mammoth and rather nasty tsunami.

SMD

5.05.19

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2019