There have been political intrigues of almost Shakespearean proportions taking place over the past fortnight.  Michael Gove, who had regularly assured us that under no circumstances would he ever wish to become Prime Minister, wasted no time in giving his backing to Boris Johnson’s leadership bid in the wake of David Cameron’s resignation.  Instead of BoJo, we were to have BoGo and with the public clamouring “Run Borist!  Run!”, the bookies shortening Boris’s odds on becoming the next Prime Minister to 1/1 and the media purveying Boris’s coronation as being almost inevitable, it seemed that Boris the bumbling, babbling buffoon was due to be the next British leader.  All was not well behind the scenes however as a leaked email from Michael Gove’s wife, Lady MacBeth Sara Vine indicates:

 

“Very important that we focus now on the individual obstacles and thoroughly overcome them before moving to the next.

I really think Michael needs to have a Henry or a Beth with him for this morning’s critical meetings.

One simple message you MUST have SPECIFIC assurances from Boris OTHERWISE you cannot guarantee your support.

The details can be worked out later on, but without that you have no leverage.

Crucially the membership will not have the necessary reassurance to back Boris, neither will Dacre / Murdoch, who instinctively dislike Boris but trust your ability enough to support a Boris / Gove ticket.

Do not concede any ground. Be your stubborn best.

GOOD LUCK”

 

Few things: firstly I love the use of “we” in reference to the obstacles which must be thoroughly overcome.  Surely it’s he who must overcome them as he’s the politician, the one doing the negotiating, not his wife, the Daily Mail columnist.  Secondly, why is she addressing him in the third person!?  How fucking patronising is that?  “Michael needs to have a Henry or Beth (his special advisors) with him for this morning’s critical meetings”.  I’m guessing what’s left unsaid is that Michael needs to remember his packed lunch, wear a coat if it’s chilly and to make sure to wipe his arse properly – that is assuming she trusts that Michael can find it with both hands.  Finally I love the encouragement to stubbornly not concede any ground because a non-compromising attitude is exactly what you need in a negotiation.  Fuck me, she may as well have told him to “screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail”.

Michael Gove is supposedly an intelligent man though I find this hard to believe not least because his rebuttal to the economic arguments of the Remain campaign (which were admittedly fact based scare-mongering) was that “Britain has had enough of experts” but also because he ever believed that Borist Gump could ever EVER be a credible Prime Minister.  People complain about Jezza Corbyn not being leader material but he’s Alexander the Great compared to Calamity Boris.  It would seem that Michael reached this conclusion several days into the BoGo campaign, promptly withdrew his support and announced his own intention to run for leader of the Tory party (This is despite over the years having said that, according to www.politics.co.uk, he has not got the exceptional level of ability to do the job, he doesn’t have what it takes and would be inconceivable as the party leader).  To be honest, I’m surprised it took him that long though he doesn’t look the strongest of men physically and it may have taken him that long to remove the dagger from where he’d wedged it so firmly between David Cameron’s shoulder blades a few months before.  Alas, with BoGo a no-go, BoJo said no-no and announced that lunchtime the same day that he would not be running for the Tory leadership.  Stabbed in the back before he’d even got started and looking quite forlorn, I almost felt sorry for Boris…but then I remembered that the backstabbing git had supported a Brexit vote purely to further his own political career.  What goes around, comes around as they say.

MacBeth Gove would get his own comeuppance when he got knocked out in the second round of voting by his own MPs as to who their two preferred candidates are for the leadership contest which will ultimately be decided by party members.  A delicious dollop of irony on top of this was that the Daily Mail, the paper for which Sara Vine writes and edited by Paul Dacre mentioned in her email, came out in support of Theresa May.  This is damning not just because Sara Vine obviously presumed to have some sway over Dacre’s editorial choice, but also because the Daily Mail was rabidly pro Brexit throughout the campaign and Theresa May had stated that she was supporting a vote to Remain.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the chamber, Labour were sharpening their own knives.  Not at the prospect of getting stuck into a divided Tory party to try and fight for a better future for all in the UK but to shank Jezza Corbyn as rebel MPs motioned a vote of no-confidence to be held by the parliamentary Labour party.  Jezza duly won this 172 – 40 and…..what’s that….uh uh….he lost it by 172 – 40!?  Why the hell is he still there then?  Well according to Jezza himself in an interview on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, it is because of the overwhelming mandate given to him by Labour Party members in the party leadership contest last year.  How overwhelming?  Well, he received over 250,000 votes alone in the first round of voting, a whopping 59.5% of votes cast with his nearest competitor, Andy Burnham, coming a distant second with 80,462 and 19% respectively so pretty damn overwhelming.  Given this level of support, I find it hilarious that his MPs feel that he is unsuitable to be leader but given the result of the Referendum (where lots of Labour voters voting Brexit due to the Blair / Brown years of supposed prosperity not translating to their particular circumstances and their concerns about immigration being ignored), the will of the people doesn’t really seem to mean much to his challengers.  At least Jezza was honest and told people immigration from the EU would remain uncapped for the foreseeable future with a Remain vote.

Nonetheless with shadow cabinet ministers resigning the same day they’ve been accepted the post in some cases, it seems that Labour is on the verge of splitting apart.  In this hour of need, what great unifying candidate has been put forward to combat Jezza the Divider.  What great orator shall pulverise him in debates and win over the electorate?  What fearsome defender of worker’s rights and traditional Labour values shall staunch the momentum of…well…Momentum.  Stand up, great leader and be known!!!  Angela Eagle….ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??  I watched her being interviewed by Andrew Neil this morning and she was insipid.  The only thing I’d be inspired to do in the event of her winning would be to cancel my Labour membership.

*Sigh* In life, one must always be careful not to step in the leadershit.  Oh well, I’ll leave you with a joke from the @corbynjokes twitter feed:

How many shadow ministers does it take to change a lightbulb?

I don’t know. The lightbulb tends to outlast them.

 

 

I’ve been meaning to write this update for some time now but the carry-on this week has been nothing short of spectacular.  Every day brings some new twist in the strange and sordid tale of Borist Gump, Nigel Fromage and Michael “Macbeth” Gove but before I get to that, let’s rewind eleven days to the evening of Thursday 23^rd June, 2016.  It’s the evening of the European Election, the polls are closed and I’m stuck in Stansted Airport waiting to board a plane that is already two hours late while earwigging some D4 high-flyer from Dublin waffle on about how he’s had several meetings cancelled this week by clients due to Brexit jitters and all the poor fella is trying to do is set up “offshore accounts for property developers”.  I’m sure the pretty young lady he’s droning to is sympathetic to his plight, I’m sure she’s dazzled by his business acumen (I could be wrong, it could be the light shining off his slicked back hair) and I’m also sure that if he does not shut the f*** up, I will have a psychotic break down and beat his smug face to a paste.

As I stand there wondering if I could plead temporary insanity and extenuating circumstances in the resulting murder trial, his nasal twang butts into my reverie; the gobshite went to my alma mater, Trinity College in Dublin.  “F**ker’s probably a BESS-head” ⁽¹⁾, I think to myself and feel an upwelling of disdain as I imagine him sashaying into the Arts Block for his first lecture of the week at 1500 on a Monday, pausing a while on the myriad comfy sofas outside the theatre so he can finish his mocha latte before swaggering in fashionably late with a knowing nod to the Burberry clad, fake tanned oompa-loompas that are the female of the species.  In contrast, the scientists and engineers like me will have been in since 0900 with a full lecture schedule for the day and no fucking comfy sofas whatsoever.  We’ve got stone steps instead – dual purpose which means more efficient use of space and décor that encourages one not to hang around outside the theatres doing frivolous things like sipping over-priced coffee.  That absolute wanker, that waste of semen, that…

“No, actually I did engineering as my undergrad at Trinity.  I focking (sic) loved it”

AH JAYSUS!!  Ronan the Barbeerian trained as an engineer?  Oh the shame, the ignominy, the HUGE MANATEE!  What on earth turned him to the dark side?  He could have done something useful with his life but no, he went into financial services.  I’ll bet he trained as a computer engineer and got lured t…

“Ah yeah, civil engineering was great craic.”

FUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKK!!!

Suffice to say, by the time I eventually made it to my mum’s flat in Dublin (very) early on Friday morning, I was not in the best of form and my mood was darkened further by the preliminary results being reported by the BBC.  With 15 of 382 constituencies reporting, the Leave side’s lead was in the tens of thousands but that was to be expected; the results were from a lot of council’s in the north of England where the Remain campaign had singularly failed to answer people’s concerns about uncontrolled immigration but there were still the major metropolitan centres in London, Manchester, etc. to report along with the Welsh, the Northern Irish and the Scots.  I stayed up as long as I could but eventually the toll of a long day and David Dimbleby’s solemn commentary proved too much.  I went to bed around 0200 not especially hopeful of a resounding Remain victory but hopeful of a slender one at least.

I woke up later that morning around 0930 to find that:

• Great Britain had voted to leave the EU. Well, that’s not strictly true; the Scottish had voted overwhelmingly to remain as had London and most of Northern Ireland but everywhere else, Wales included, wanted out.
• The pound had plummeted to its lowest price since I was born 31 years ago
• David Cameron had resigned in an emotional speech outside No. 10 that morning

Holy shit…didn’t see that coming.  Apparently neither had the Leave campaign – indeed at the start of the night they were expecting to lose as with the polls so close, everyone, the bookies, the investors, the speculators…everyone…had expected the status quo to win.  Surely the plebs wouldn’t vote for Brexit, they know which side their bread is buttered on, fear of the unknown will be trumped by the comfort of familiarity and we’ll wake up on Friday morning to find that the British public wishes to remain within the EU or so went the narrative.

The twist was though that the English and to a lesser extent, the Welsh had finally had enough of austerity, a lack of jobs, longer NHS waiting times, fewer places at schools and all the other public issues which the Leave campaign had unfairly blamed on uncontrolled immigration from the EU, flipped the bird at the Westminster elite, ignored the warnings of financial armageddon and decided to “take their country back”.  I will admit that I was livid at the decision – not because I think that those who voted Leave are idiots or fools.  Indeed, I can understand their motivations and the fervent desire to disobey the powers that be when they purport to know what’s best.  I’m livid because the people that have likely been most disadvantaged by an influx of migrant labour, the working class, chose the likes of Johnson, Gove and Farage to provide their salvation.  Will Self summed it up quite well in post result debate with Dreda Say Mitchell on Channel 4 news as he quipped sarcastically “Oh! What’s that up there in the sky?  Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  No it’s Boris Johnson come to deliver you social democracy and a more equal society”.

I’m in a quandary; on the one hand, I am dismayed at the, in my opinion, ill-judged decision to leave the EU which, though far from perfect, I believe to be an example of international cooperation that should be celebrated, not shunned.  It’s not that long ago that the peoples of Europe were bombing each other into oblivion.  The racist overtones which accompanied the Leave campaign have also manifested in frankly disgusting acts such as Polish (and other nationalities) being told to “go home” as a result of the vote or having notes pushed through their letter boxes referring to them as “vermin”.  It is unfortunate that while the majority of Brexiteers are not racist and had legitimate (and unaddressed) concerns about uncontrolled migration, all the racists are likely Brexiteers and the result has brought them crawling out of the woodwork.

On the other hand, I love the fact that the people told the political elite they could shove it and voted as they saw fit.  Despite the dire predictions of the Treasury, the patronising warnings from politicians both domestic and foreign, the overwhelming and fervent wish of the rest of Europe, Joe Public stuck to his guns and voted as he / she saw fit.  While I believe the result is ultimately a victory for the far right and for isolationism over cooperation, at the same time I can’t help but smile at the chaos it’s unleashed.  I’ll deal with the resulting political fall out in my next post but we’re certainly in for a bumpy ride.

Hold onto your butts!

 

 

⁽¹⁾ BESS stands for Business, Economic and Social Studies and was the largest course in Trinity in terms of students.  While I am painting a (mostly unfair) caricature for humorous purposes, I’m not sure whether it’s popularity was down to course content or social shenanigans.