Tuesday 18 June 2019

Flavours of fantasy


In their increasingly desperate attempts to get into the final two in the Tory Donkey Derby, the candidates are saying stranger and stranger things.  Michael Gove wins yesterday’s top placing for an ‘interesting’ take on the way his party’s internal democracy should work.  Trying to find an argument against letting Rory Stewart through to the final round, he said that it would be “a mistake to put forward two candidates into the final round who will polarise our party”.   With five candidates who subscribe to the fantasy that we just have to shout a bit louder at Johnny Foreigner to get him to bow down before us and only one who has a vague grasp on at least one element of reality, he is effectively arguing that the latter should be excluded on the basis that giving Tory members a choice between reality and fantasy would ‘polarise’ them.  Limiting their choices to different flavours of fantasy is, apparently, a much better way of conducting the race, and avoids the membership having to make a real choice between alternatives.  It’s a cunning plan, of sorts, but I think he’s worrying unnecessarily.  All the polls suggest that the chances of an average Tory party member voting for reality when fantasy is on the ballot paper are close to zero.  

2 comments:

CapM said...

First of all I'd like to say that I'm a regular reader of your blog and look forward to reading your perceptive comments. In the past you've drawn attention to how it would be more difficult for Cymru to become independent if the UK leaves the EU. Your argument convinced me. Painful because accepting it removed an - increased likelihood of independence "silver lining" - to my Brexit cloud.

Years later we still don't know what the future UK EU relationship will be but the UK having the status of a third country to the EU is at least a possibility. If a reality, any movement for an independent Cymru would have to address that reality.

As the narrative - that an independent Cymru is impossible if England is outside the EU is already being applied to this potential reality it needs to be countered now. Later will be too late.

"There's very little point in having, shall we say, market access to the single market and finding we can't export to England."
An independent Cymru whatever it's relationship with the EU could export/import/re-export/re-import to an independent England whatever their relationships with the EU were.
Different and varied relationships with the EU are possible and all can change over time. Some relationships would result in more costs being associated with trade others less.

None outside the realms of dystopian fantasy would mean that Cymru could not export to England.

John Dixon said...

CapM,

I think this comment was probably intended to refer to a later post, so I've re-posted it there.