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| Aaron keeps his eye on the ball! |
One of the draw-backs of referenda, as has often been pointed out, is that they are generally decided by factors other than what they are actually about. Manipulation apart, they all too easily become an opportunity to slash a pie in the establishment’s face, as seems to have been a big factor in the Brexit vote. Well good luck to that! But they are also extremely divisive, especially those of the simple majority kind. Is this a good way to run a country? No, but now we had better try to imagine what may become of it!
They have already got rid of two of the three leaders of the Brexit campaign, who quickly proved to be men of straw, with no substantial plan or vision going forward. The third, Mr Gove, has some intellectual weight and may well eventually get to the top. A quick perusal of his pamphlet* on the Irish Peace Process tells us all we need to know about him. In fairness, it is articulate and lucid. He sets the tone in the Introduction, which concludes ‘Those who warned of the consequences of appeasement in the Thirties were derided as glamour boys, renegades and war-mongers. But if it were not for their opposition then who would there have been to rescue the nation from folly?’
Repeatedly characterising the Peace Process as appeasement, he unfortunately appears not to realise that his whole argument rests on a false premise - ‘The first flawed assumption of the “peace process” is the belief that the 1922 partition of Ireland was an historic injustice.’ No reference of course to the history prior to 1922!
Too civilised to engage in the crude rhetoric of Mr Trump, he nonetheless sings from the same chilling hymn-sheet. ‘Effective intelligence work by the RUC Special Branch and the deployment of lethal force, most notably by the SAS at Loughgall in May 1987, had given the British security forces a decisive advantage over the IRA….’ ‘Resolute security action, the use of existing antiterrorist legislation and the careful application of intelligence could reduce the IRA to operating as it did in the fifties and sixties.’ He decries ‘the slow demilitarisation of the Province’ and laments the ‘humiliation of our Army, Police and Parliament’.
He completely fails to understand that the six counties are not even the whole of Ulster, and that the border constitutes a gerrymander. He blithely states that ‘My analysis is based on the belief that a liberal democracy owes certain duties to its citizens. It has a duty to uphold the right of a majority to live in the jurisdiction they choose – the basic principle of self-determination.’ He of course fails to ask the question at the root of the problem, a majority of what? However, at least one knows pretty much what ground he stands on. It is basically a matter of ‘let’s get back to good old certainties, if not the British Empire, then something pretty like it!’
However right now we have the two ladies up for the leadership of the Conservative Party. They are more touchy-feely, more in tune with the times. Mrs May is the favourite. She will do her best to make a good British fudge-cake of the situation, and to elegantly paper over the cracks in the Party. I doubt if the Germans and French will have much of it, for there is too much at stake and more to be worrying about that ever-lasting argy-bargy with the Brits. She will end up blaming German intransigence for the fact that they will not concede the impossible, while the British economy is going from bad to worse, and the strain between the two halves of England gets worse also.
Perhaps Mrs Leadsom will come up trumps? She seems to represent another strand in the story. One might ask why should someone with a background in high finance be a fan of Brexit? One does not have to look far for clues. She, immediately through her husband and her sister’s Guernsey based husband, is up to her tonsils in off-shore funds.** It seems to me we know little about what has been going on, with the publication of the Panama Papers and so on, but clearly, some people have been seriously annoyed, especially in the Brexit camp, and they blame ‘that socialist EU’. I have referred before to their vote against measures to combat off-shore tax evasion in the European Parliament. The British upper class have evidently become heavily reliant on it! Top fund lawyers earn multiples of the Prime Minister’s salary. There are also plenty of other reasons why some in the corporate world would be delighted to get rid of all those pesky European regulations about workers' rights and the environment, but hopefully the EU will hang tough when it comes to the negociations. Unless the plutocracy in Britain is even more powerful than we suspect, she will come unstuck somewhere along the way. Mr Gove to the rescue of Great Britain?
A few more big atrocities in France, along with economic woes and complete disillusionment with mainstream politics, and Marine Le Pen could become Mme la Presidente. 'Victoire de la liberté ! Comme je le demande depuis des années, il faut maintenant le même référendum en France et dans les pays de l'UE!', she says - she will try to lead France also out of the EU. It is quite possible that, given a few more atrocities in the USA, Mr Trump will have made it to the White House. Says he,‘They took their country back, just like we will take America back.’ This lot do have momentum, it has to be recognised!
Whether Mr Gove would be so keen to ‘to uphold the right of a majority to live in the jurisdiction they choose’ in the case of Scotland is a good question. It is quite possible that he would drive the Scots to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. No doubt he would be particularly anxious to hang on to the nuclear submarine base at Gare Loch, while renewing Trident. Possibly he might cite ‘vital national interest’ and insist on hanging onto the Clyde area and the south-west, a nice little partner area for Belfast.
Meanwhile our Irish Republic will be most horribly torn apart. While our links with England are too strong to be ignored, by any cultural stretch of the imagination, we will have an obligation to support the Scots, quite apart from our allegiance to the EU, by now a rump that Germany is struggling to hold together. Mr Gove no doubt will be supported by Mr Trump, and they will both be getting on fine with Presidente Le Pen, and come to think of it, with old President Putin too.
O Lord, just when we needed a good strong Opposition! Look, sorry, Mr Corbyn, mate, ‘you were right, dead right as you sailed along, but you’re just as dead as if you were wrong!’ Now the stakes are very high indeed, and we need to get a Labour/Libdem Government elected as soon as possible, on a firm platform to stay in the EU. Someone must be found, quickly, who can soothe the British electorate, and make them see they have been conned. I do not think there is any other way to secure peace and prosperity for our children and grandchildren.
Here I am, never imagining that I would be so deeply affected by British politics, let alone that this blog would find itself getting so involved; but I find it impossible to maintain my former attitude of detached amusement. Perhaps the voice of an old seadog on an island off Ireland may at least boast of some objectivity. I may not have the vote, but at least I shall have my say! But how are we going to stop that lot? It's a good job I have the flowers of Sherkin to help me keep sane -
Thanks to Tony Whelan, who took these photos here on Sherkin yesterday.
* https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/111220142628-thepriceofpeace2000MichaelGove.pdf
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