I could
understand, up to a point, that the shock of suddenly finding herself resident
in 10 Downing Street led the new Prime Minister to come out with a few
meaningless phrases, such as the now infamous “Brexit means Brexit”. There was no obvious reason why she should
have been any more prepared for the wholly unexpected result than anyone else,
and yet she was expected to say something.
Buying time by saying nothing much was an obvious option; but vacuity
can only carry someone so far - the point arrives when something a bit more
substantial is required.
Perhaps the
extent to which that initial three word sentence has been repeated has led her
to believe that being vacuous ‘works’ in some sense, because it has been
followed by equally silly statements such as the one about a “red, white and
blue Brexit”. She may even think that
she’s being gnomic, but sooner or later surely she must be challenged much
harder about what the words she uses actually mean – if they have any meaning
at all.
I can also
understand her trying to call for unity in her New Year message – but that isn’t quite what she
did. Instead, she claimed that we are
all already united, in a fashion which assumes that those of us who think that
a wrong decision has been taken have already accepted defeat and are becoming
enthusiastic proponents of that which we previously opposed. It’s clearly at odds with the facts – but
then, people like her no longer seem to worry about mere facts.
She claimed
that she will be “there to get the right
deal not just for those who voted to leave, but for every single person in this
country”. That works as a sound
bite, and even sounds very noble, but it’s not only meaningless in practice,
it’s an impossible thing to achieve. The
very nature of the change in front of us is that there will be winners and
losers – that is an inevitable consequence of change. If she’d referred to the majority, it might
just have been credible, but ‘every single person’? No chance – it’s as meaningless a phrase as
much of the rest of what she has said so far.
On the other
hand, perhaps she’ll get away with it; meaninglessness seems to be the new
meaning.
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1 comment:
That last sentence is very telling. I remember how Ross Perot, in the 1992 presidential election, was brought to task for his meaningless statements. His programme was "I'm gonna put Washington to work" and how will you do that Mr. Perot? "I'm gonna clean out the barn and mend the fences" How will that be achieved? "By putting Washington to work"
So on ad nauseum. It didn't fly in 1992 but it worked for the Donald in 2016 with his "Make America great again".
What I find most troubling is that it seems to be working for the PM also. It does not bode well for those who think that politics and politicians should be more than fodder for comedy sketches.
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