Monday 15 May 2017

Can we trust the Vicar's Daughter?

This election looks to be over before it's even started. The pundittieri and the press tell us it will be a Tory landslide. The TV screens  are full of vox poppers chanting"I've always been Labour but I'm not going to vote for Corbyn" and electoral calculus tell us that a swathe of Labour seats will be lost. Its beginning to look like a coronation rather than a contest.

But what comes next once May is triumphantly crowned? The LibDems accept the referendum but really want to ignore it and stay in. Labour's policy is a compromise with reality: withdraw on the same terms as we're in.Tony Blair Paddy Ashdown, and Cleggie, Britain's Mini Macrons want us to overule the electorate and lead the EU. To somewhere it doesn't want to go,

All a futile waste of time. Whatever our opposition parties say about what kind of Brexit they want, they're not going to get it.The outcome depends on a devious dirty dealing EU which will in the end do whatever Mrs Merkel wants. They'll  use the same tricky tactics they used to crush Greece, get Yanis Varoufakis out and reverse the decision of their electorate. It will be a dirty game in which they call the shots, encourage the domestic opposition, refuse to negotiate, and demand the impossible. There's nothing any opposition party in Britain can do or say about any of that. Nor can they influence the outcome. So why waste time arguing about that now?

Which leaves us with Theresa May. She's campaigning for a strong and stable leadership from a strong and stable electorate which will give a strong and stable mandate to negotiate a strong and stable settlement. That's what I want, though I'd much rather get it from a Labour government in better tune with the British people and I can't accept the other Tory policies the Conservatives are offering with it.

But what happens if she can't get her strong and stable settlement?  Strength gives parties power to betray as well as fight The EU is clearly thinking that faced with a brick wall the silly Brits will give up and return to their cells As the Greeks were forced to do. So what will Theresa do then?

Can we trust the vicar's daughter?. The elective dictatorship allows a party in power to do what it wants .The Tories would be bitterly divided, by a sell out, though they usually reconciles themselves with the facts. Some would even support a climb down. The LibDems,SNP and probably Labour would back that. The electorate would be angry and bemused. They tend not to like humiliation. But what can the peasants do? Having been betrayed before they're getting inured to it.

Sad choice. Much of the blame that we have to make it is Labour's fault. If the party hadn't drifted out of touch with the people it would have taken a more sensible position from the start rather than setting itself up as Polly Toynbee's army on the front line of the liberal elite. It didn't. It's been in chaos ever since. 

I'll vote Labour of course but the third of Labour supporters who voted Leave and the people we left behind in its old in its old heartlands should never have been forced into a position of trust Theresa or bust.Surely it's time for Labour to speak for the people not the EU.

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