What do we Brits stand for, these days, now that we have “taken back control” ?
Judging by our government’s grossly inadequate management of Corvid-19 – we stand for incompetence, incoherence and dishonesty.
Judging by Mr Johnson’s recent conduct over the Brexit negotiations – we are represented by the fatuous and delusional bravado of a juvenile hoodlum ; and again by dishonesty, along with a careless and disgraceful contempt for international law.
Judging by Mr Johnson’s recent dealings with the present Mayor of London over TfL – we stand for rampant and dysfunctional control-freakery, and by gangland competitiveness ; and of course, by more dishonesty.
We are discovering what we meant by “take back control” when 52% of the UK population voted, in that dodgy referendum of 2016, to leave the EU. We meant surrender control to sleek and unworthy hoodlums, more or less led by a lying felon, Mr Toad.
About this time three years ago, I read some poetry in St Aldhelm’s chapel, pictured above. This is a small Norman structure on the edge of a Dorset cliff, facing south. Having no connection with the national grid, it is cold and damp and dark, like a cave on a height. The poem just below is one of the several I read there. I have posted it up before here but, having nothing to add, keep wanting to repeat it :
I do keep wanting to apologise to our fellow Europeans for the puerile and incompetent behaviour of the people who now have control of, and might seem to speak and stand for the UK, in these very dangerous times.
They do not speak or stand for me.
Here (again) is an apology to our neighbours across the water, written in a traditional English verse form called rhyme royal.
