It’s that time
of year when we cheerfully (?) tolerate unfunny old jokes written on tiny slips
of paper and concealed in crackers, so here’s my effort:
“What’s red, white and blue, or
possibly grey, but definitely not black or white, and comes in hard and soft
varieties?”
No, I’m afraid
there’s no funny punchline. In fact there’s
nothing very humorous about this at all, it’s deadly serious. I don’t know who came up with the ‘red, white
and blue’ line, or what was going through the Prime Minister’s head as she duly
recited it, but it’s even more inane than the mantra about breakfast meaning
breakfast.
According to
what the papers tell us, May was actually a Remain supporter, although she didn’t
do a lot to promote that view at the time.
It has occurred to me more than once recently that perhaps she really is
having a laugh with all of us – giving the Brexit head-bangers the impossible
task of trying to come up with a plan, sitting on the side-lines making
comments which say nothing, and waiting until it’s safe to come forward and say
something along the lines of “well, I
always thought this was a silly idea; why don’t we have a rethink?”
I’d like to
believe that; it’s preferable to believing that she really thinks that what she
says makes any sort of sense. It would
be a cunning plan of course, albeit in the Baldrickian sense of being not very
cunning at all and doomed to fail, but it would at least be a plan. I’d like to believe it, but I can’t.
Instead, they’re
just blundering forward, telling Johnny Foreigner in no uncertain terms that he
needs us more than we need him, behaving as though they live in the imperial
past, and now wrapping up what looks like an almost total vacuum in a flag and
appealing to people’s sense of British patriotism to believe that this
emptiness is in fact a thing of substance, which has colour and form as well.
The odd thing
is that, as with the emperor’s new suit, those who want to see it can, and
believe it to be a thing of great beauty.
We need to remind them constantly that, in this case, the beauty that
they see really is entirely in the eye, or perhaps brain, of the beholder.
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1 comment:
It is not “British patriotism” that will drive whatever terms are agreed on the departure of the UK and Wales out of the EU, but English patriotism, just look at the maths.
The regime we live under is loaded to ensure that England determine the outcome of any question, their MP`s outnumber the rest of the Commons by far and the same goes in the Lords.
English votes determined the outcome of the referendum, so Scotland, Wales and what is left of Ireland are of no consequence. Commentators, politicians in Wales can huff and puff, but English values and priorities will always prevail.
No Welsh voice will be heard, as even Plaid has long ago signed up to be the loyal opposition and are these days quite harmless, so chill-out and accept that you will get, is what you get.
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