I imagine that you're pretty bored of blog posts about Brexit.
In truth, I am too, a bit. It's sucked the life out of the room for so long now that it's difficult to conceive of a time when it didn't dominate the conversation, it's even more difficult to imagine that there's anything left to write about it.
Which is fine, because this post isn't really about Brexit as such, but more about the rise of a peculiar strain of thought that it seems to have engendered and enabled, one, which was until quite recently considered a byword for naivete at best, stupidity at worst.
I speak of course, of red lines. They're all over the shop, one can barely move for them. There are so many red lines that the floor of parliament resembles nothing more than one of those multi-sport indoor centres, where the markings aren't just for badminton, netball and five a side, but korfball, handball and possibly the Eton Wall Game. And what no one has yet gathered is that these lines, whilst they play well to the gallery, are of little or no practical use beyond that of a rhetorical device, they are, more accurately damaging, but we have become reduced to a world of rhetoric, where performance is deemed more politically useful than action, it's not a viable state of affairs.
Red lines did for Theresa May, who had so many of them that it was a wonder she was able to get out of the house. They've stymied the remain leaning opposition, after Jo Swinson categorically declared that Corbyn was a red line, with Spreadsheet Phil Hammond chiming in likewise, and so the idea of a government of national unity died in a ditch, to coin a phrase. The Jezmeister himself is fond of a red line or six as well, categorical this-can't-happens which, when the situation demands that they do happen, leave him slow to react, and render Labour ponderous (the absolute blanket refusal to engage with the first rumblings of the anti-Semitism scandal led to far bigger problems further down the line). The orange-red lines of the DUP have left them as the unwitting dupes of the Johnsonian cabal, suddenly sold down the river when it was expedient to do so.
The king of them all, of course, is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson's insistence on leaving the EU on 31/10: "do or die" "rather be dead in a ditch" etc, beyond the patent absurdity of the language, all it's served to do is paint him into a corner. When, against all expectation, he did actually return with a deal of sorts, he had Parliament on a plate, he had the next election sewn up. But because he's grandstanded so much about the end of the month, he tried to bounce parliament into letting it through without scrutiny, which was never going to happen, the end result was Tuesday night's defeat.
Now imagine a world in which he wasn't so wedded to his red lines, it's not hard, a border down the Irish Sea was a red line for him until, suddenly, it wasn't. He's got form. At this late stage of the Brexit endgame, what harm does another couple of weeks for effective scrutiny do? It vastly increases his chances of winning. Okay, a few red faced blokes in the shires bubble with dottle for a bit longer. But going okay, fine, let's do what it's going to take to get this done, as opposed to "we're doing it whatever" is something which would, until recently, have happened. It's what politicians do, what they have done since the rise of liberal democracy. So why, now, are we incapable of it? It is as if playing to their own gallery has become the only thing any politician is capable of doing.
"Healing"
Take, for example, The Good Friday Agreement. Take, for a second example, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process. One of the least edifying aspects of Brexit has been the national navel-gazing, the sure, parochial certainty that this is the only game in town, This is one of the most irritating facets of the entire English psychodrama that Brexit has entailed, the myth that these are "divisions which cannot heal"
Get to fuck, you ridiculous bien-pensant arseholes.
Apartheid was one of the darkest stains on the conscience of the twentieth century, which, given the competition, is quite something. The Troubles were, if not on the same scale, responsible for widespread death, deep societal schisms, distrust, division. These weren't external threats, these were intra-national conflicts, murder, state-sponsored killings, brutal recriminations. They are, I should clarify, not resolved, but resolution is in progress, it's an ongoing work. Worse divisions than this are healing, can heal. Whether or not your constituents in South Arsehole will get over which imaginary wrong they've suffered as a result of forty years of economic stability is pretty small beer compared to being murdered by a Punishment Squad / The Actual Police (delete as applicable).
And how? Because of a lack of red lines, because the Good Friday agreement was posited on the idea of constructive ambiguity. Because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognised that moving forward was the imperative, not this petty party-political manouvering, not Mark Fucking Francois shitting out his usual woeful nonsense about World War Two which, and I cannot stress this enough, was a lot fucking longer ago than apartheid and the troubles.
Yes, I know, I've started swearing, this lot do it to me, I'm afraid. The absolute horror at the heart of all this is that we're watching people who couldn't negotiate a fair spin of a school tombola talking as though they're international statespeople. There are other, better ways, they've been demonstrated, in very, very recent memory. Just....grow up, all of you, please.
In truth, I am too, a bit. It's sucked the life out of the room for so long now that it's difficult to conceive of a time when it didn't dominate the conversation, it's even more difficult to imagine that there's anything left to write about it.
Which is fine, because this post isn't really about Brexit as such, but more about the rise of a peculiar strain of thought that it seems to have engendered and enabled, one, which was until quite recently considered a byword for naivete at best, stupidity at worst.
I speak of course, of red lines. They're all over the shop, one can barely move for them. There are so many red lines that the floor of parliament resembles nothing more than one of those multi-sport indoor centres, where the markings aren't just for badminton, netball and five a side, but korfball, handball and possibly the Eton Wall Game. And what no one has yet gathered is that these lines, whilst they play well to the gallery, are of little or no practical use beyond that of a rhetorical device, they are, more accurately damaging, but we have become reduced to a world of rhetoric, where performance is deemed more politically useful than action, it's not a viable state of affairs.
Red lines did for Theresa May, who had so many of them that it was a wonder she was able to get out of the house. They've stymied the remain leaning opposition, after Jo Swinson categorically declared that Corbyn was a red line, with Spreadsheet Phil Hammond chiming in likewise, and so the idea of a government of national unity died in a ditch, to coin a phrase. The Jezmeister himself is fond of a red line or six as well, categorical this-can't-happens which, when the situation demands that they do happen, leave him slow to react, and render Labour ponderous (the absolute blanket refusal to engage with the first rumblings of the anti-Semitism scandal led to far bigger problems further down the line). The orange-red lines of the DUP have left them as the unwitting dupes of the Johnsonian cabal, suddenly sold down the river when it was expedient to do so.
The king of them all, of course, is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson's insistence on leaving the EU on 31/10: "do or die" "rather be dead in a ditch" etc, beyond the patent absurdity of the language, all it's served to do is paint him into a corner. When, against all expectation, he did actually return with a deal of sorts, he had Parliament on a plate, he had the next election sewn up. But because he's grandstanded so much about the end of the month, he tried to bounce parliament into letting it through without scrutiny, which was never going to happen, the end result was Tuesday night's defeat.
Now imagine a world in which he wasn't so wedded to his red lines, it's not hard, a border down the Irish Sea was a red line for him until, suddenly, it wasn't. He's got form. At this late stage of the Brexit endgame, what harm does another couple of weeks for effective scrutiny do? It vastly increases his chances of winning. Okay, a few red faced blokes in the shires bubble with dottle for a bit longer. But going okay, fine, let's do what it's going to take to get this done, as opposed to "we're doing it whatever" is something which would, until recently, have happened. It's what politicians do, what they have done since the rise of liberal democracy. So why, now, are we incapable of it? It is as if playing to their own gallery has become the only thing any politician is capable of doing.
"Healing"
Take, for example, The Good Friday Agreement. Take, for a second example, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process. One of the least edifying aspects of Brexit has been the national navel-gazing, the sure, parochial certainty that this is the only game in town, This is one of the most irritating facets of the entire English psychodrama that Brexit has entailed, the myth that these are "divisions which cannot heal"
Get to fuck, you ridiculous bien-pensant arseholes.
Apartheid was one of the darkest stains on the conscience of the twentieth century, which, given the competition, is quite something. The Troubles were, if not on the same scale, responsible for widespread death, deep societal schisms, distrust, division. These weren't external threats, these were intra-national conflicts, murder, state-sponsored killings, brutal recriminations. They are, I should clarify, not resolved, but resolution is in progress, it's an ongoing work. Worse divisions than this are healing, can heal. Whether or not your constituents in South Arsehole will get over which imaginary wrong they've suffered as a result of forty years of economic stability is pretty small beer compared to being murdered by a Punishment Squad / The Actual Police (delete as applicable).
And how? Because of a lack of red lines, because the Good Friday agreement was posited on the idea of constructive ambiguity. Because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognised that moving forward was the imperative, not this petty party-political manouvering, not Mark Fucking Francois shitting out his usual woeful nonsense about World War Two which, and I cannot stress this enough, was a lot fucking longer ago than apartheid and the troubles.
Yes, I know, I've started swearing, this lot do it to me, I'm afraid. The absolute horror at the heart of all this is that we're watching people who couldn't negotiate a fair spin of a school tombola talking as though they're international statespeople. There are other, better ways, they've been demonstrated, in very, very recent memory. Just....grow up, all of you, please.
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