HYSTERIA ON THE HIGHEST

 

We have long known that we often live on the edge and in this particular year we know that we have rather easily fallen over the edge. The UK had had some form of collective breakdown and has gone completely potty, her normal eccentricities morphing into serial insanity.

Boris wows the Tories

Starting at the top, Boris Johnson treated us to a barnstorming and jokey oration at the Tory conference, all about “levelling up” and how raising the cost of labour by shunning migrants and hiking up prices will somehow make the population rich and happy. There was plenty flannel about British ingenuity and about the beneficent influence of free markets. The ghosts of Adam Smith and Maynard Keynes might whisper a remark or two about inflation and deficit financing but all that was ignored as Boris rallied the troops, leaving Rishi Sunak and “Jon Bon Govi” to find coherence in it all and pick up the pieces. The conclusion is inevitable that Boris makes policy on the wing, opportunistically, and that our own government has a weak grasp on events and does not possess a plan to see us through the winter, let alone until the next election. Yet he rules the national roost with his potent frivolity.

Boris has many political enemies but their grip on reality is equally tenuous. Sir Keir Starmer is a seriously-minded fellow but he is boring and he presses no buttons to enthuse the electorate. He is irredeemably Woke, a successful but limited lawyer, old-fashioned in his vision for the country and quite devoid of the popular touch. He is a Clem Attlee throwback. His Deputy, Angela Rayner, the Stockport shock-trooper, gets so worked up by her partisan oratory that she is a froth-in-the-mouth public danger. Her latest tirade, berating the Conservatives, included these immortal, if illiterate, words:

"We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile of banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian, posh... piece of scum."

 

             Angela Rayner, noisy spokeswoman of the Left

When in 1948 Aneurin Bevan described the Tories as “lower than vermin” he was kicked down the steps of White’s Club in St James’ for his pains. He had crossed a boundary. La Rayner appals most people. She shows no restraint, only visceral hate, and she uses the language of the Nazi Brownshirts or a show-trial prosecutor in Moscow. She and many others on the Left incite violence – something UK politics tries hard to suppress. In Parliament there are plenty other malcontents such as the Remainers like vocal Lord Adonis and all the LibDems, self-righteous to a man and likely to be decimated at the next election or the residual Corbynites, whose extreme views are anathema to the voters. What keeps these crackpots going?

Outside Parliament the madness spreads. We are bored to tears by sour-puss Nicola Sturgeon and her Scottish independence fantasies but the Union will hold firm. Anarchic Insulate Britain mobs glue themselves to motorway slip-roads and infuriate travellers. Idiotic plans are laid for compulsory filming of anti-covid lateral flow tests by any UK entrant – meat and drink for every obstructive bureaucrat. Our Royal Family (the UK’s Disneyworld) persists in extravagance, and needs a thorough pruning, just as the House of Lords is a scandal and disgrace. Our police forces deserve a shake-up (not just for the Wayne Couzens murder) and the scope for reform of the out-of-control NHS must be immense. There is thus a huge UK resurrection agenda.

In the outside world, things are no better. A hostile EU makes mischief in Ireland, giving credibility to nationalist terrorists. Macron threatens to cut electricity to the Channel Islands, blockade our fisheries and curtail Eurostar. A leaderless Germany bows to Russian gas blackmail. Spain claims control of Gibraltar and watches expat Brits flee the new red-tape of the Costas, never to return. The UK economy is threatened as supply chains seize up without adequate numbers of HGV drivers.

Gloom and Doom stalk the land, as it has for about 18 months. We must rely on our reserves of resilience and optimism and stiffen our upper lips!

SMD

7.10.21

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2021