In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • Our Sorry Brexit Twain

    The night before these two stanzas were written, it was reported that the Cabinet had told Theresa May that in the next few months, she would have to go, so that another Tory leader could be chosen, presumably to deny and face down reality even more doggedly than she had been doing.

    Would this make things even worse ? Or a tiny bit less bad ? Did it matter ?

    It was as if the nation was inexhaustible in its production of monsters in these years. Brexit itself was a monster. We had created it and it was tearing us apart. And, on top of that, we kept appointing these appalling leaders. The worst possible people to act wisely or effectively on our behalf. Were we that desperate to throw ourselves into the pit ?

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  • He Speaks of the Rapidity of Change

    Very soon after the Labour Group cast off, so did a slightly smaller Tory group and the two groups combined to form what may become a new political party. Tories left behind were more sorrowful than critical, at least in front of the microphones. By contrast, notable Labour figures left behind carried on snarling, shrieking and threatening.

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  • The Boy Jez Takes a Hit

    This was written immediately after 7 Labour EU Remainers became 7 Labour Leavers. Lots of instant Twitter shrieks and howls followed, enough to remind us that among so much of sanity that has now disappeared into the past, is any shared understanding that important events warrant time for reflection on what they mean. I thought Tom Watson’s response, then and since, was the most interesting and most nearly corrrect – and gave more cause for hope than most, as well.

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  • Safe Passage

    I think “Safe Passage” came mostly from something which Mr Jon Lansman was recently quoted as saying (by “The Independent”). Lansman is founder of Momentum and is apparently of the “Far Left.” The subject under discussion was the possibility of a new “centrist” or “Blairite” party to form soon, made up of individual MP’s from both Labour and Tory Parties.

    Mr Lansman was not impressed. “Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna and Gavin Shuker are marginal figures with marginal politics,” he said.“This is very different to the SDP breakaway in 1981….The situation is completely different now. Socialism has gone mainstream…”

    I think we are all marginal figures at the moment including all our so-called leaders, the visible ones of whom seem not to be leaders at all, but flotsam from the past thrown up onto the beach by our chaos. And I don’t think “socialism” has gone mainstream. Rather, I think old fundamentalisms appeal to people in times of havoc. Like driftwood, their dictums and certainties can seem to keep us afloat for a while. Radical and fundamental change is certainly needed. But not old driftwood.

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  • The Parrot Looks at Leadership

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  • Boy Jez and the Die-Hards

    Jez seems to believe that The Many should be listened to, only so long as he is one of them. Now, as one of The Few, he weighs his words like all the other members of that club, and The Many have to look behind his words to decipher what he really means and then work out what deceptions he is attempting for his own advantage, or that of his own small tribe…. And it turns out in the light of day that Jez is just like all the others – though rather more limp and inactive than many.

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  • The Maybot Crashes Yet Again

    On Tuesday night, St Valentine’s night, Theresa May and her government were defeated again in the House of Commons. Apparently she herself was not present. Soon after the defeat, Number Ten issued a statement : “While we didn’t secure the support of the Commons this evening, the prime minister continues to believe… The government will continue to pursue this…to ensure we leave on time on 29 March.”

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  • A Brexiter Takes Stock of the Dark Star

    I know that, in writing this, I was remembering a scene from an early “Star Wars” film. An ominous planet approaches. And I remember that image occurring to me, when I came across a book by Iain McGilchrist called “The Master and His Emissary – The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” The distance between our two brain hemispheres is widening and they are at odds in our space, not complementary. And we make a world that reflects our civil war. Or we seek to escape the world we’ve made, by cutting off (so we like to think).

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