May-hem in Brexistential Breakdowns

Three weeks ago, David Cameron was in a very different place. For starters, he was confident that his side would win the referendum - after all, the British Public couldn’t be so stupid as to shoot themselves in the foot by voting to leave the EU, could they? And with that win, he’d be able to finally bring his bickering party together, a bit of stability, peace and party unity, and make ruling the country with a slim majority considerably easier. And rule he would do, for another two or three years at least, though he’d always said he’d step down before the end of this term anyway. Still, though, you can do a lot with three years if you’re the Prime Minister, and all in all things were looking good. All he had to do was have his side score at least 50.1% in the EU referendum, which the polls had been showing they would over the past few days, and hell, even Farage was convinced Remain would clinch it, so Cameron was pretty positive and confident he’d be in charge for a few more years yet.

Today Yesterday, less than three weeks after the result, the moving vans were already leaving 10 Downing Street with the family’s furniture (though not Larry the cat, who’s - I shit you not - actually Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office and a great example of the sort of eccentricities thousands of years of history brings your country), and tomorrow today Cameron hands over his resignation to the Queen, because the past few days have been insane, even by our new post-referendum standards.
(E: have slept between starting this entry and finishing it)

When we last left the UK’s live-action performance of the sublime The Thick Of It, the Tory party had settled on its two contenders, defender of traditional marriage Andrea Leadsom, and Theresa “ban everything, even if it doesn’t exist” May, literally the “fire” and “more fire” we have to choose between when jumping from our frying pan. On Saturday, The Times published an interview with Leadsom where she claimed that having children meant she’d be a better leader than May (who doesn’t have children) because she had “a very real stake” in the future of the country. Leadsom, naturally, complained that she’d been misrepresented by the media, and demanded that The Times release the full transcript of the interview. Amid a flood of criticism from fellow Tory MPs, the Times obliged, throwing in the audio as well, and things didn’t get better for Andrea Leadsom as the transcripts showed that she had actually said those things.

On Monday she quit, making Theresa May our next Prime Minister. This came as an utter shock to everyone, especially Cameron, who thought he still had two months to go and hadn’t started packing anything yet, so many people found themselves asking why. Officially, Leadsom was taking the noble view that Theresa May had far more support across the party than she did, and at a time when the country desperately needed stability and leadership it could probably do without another protracted leadership battle. But, let’s be honest here, having seen the backlash to her reaction to the Times article, along with the epiphany that she’s now opening herself up to a whole new level of press intrusion into her life, had to have been the bigger personal motivators for her.

But of course, leadership battles and questionable representation by the press aren’t the exclusive property of the Conservative party, and things have also happened in the Labour camp. On Friday Jeremy Corbyn still had the threat of Angela Eagle launching another leadership bid again, which she finally announced on Sunday that she would be doing, because the third time‘s a charm, after all. Her launch wasn’t exactly well-timed, given that it happened as Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the Tory leadership race, prompting most of the journalists at Eagle’s event to leg it to cover that story instead. It also coincided with the surfacing of this clip of her in Parliament a month prior; standing in for Corbyn at PMQs, she accuses the Tories of using the EU referendum to grab for power, claiming that “Instead of focusing on the national interest, they are focusing on their narrow self interest.”

Which is somewhat ironic, no?

Things haven’t been going well for Angela Eagle; for starters, she’s got this habit of writing off criticism of her voting record as nothing more than a “meme going round Twitter” (which is either “nasty” or “Corbynista“, depending on her mood I guess), even though the image she’s undoubtedly seen is based on her actual voting record in Parliament. She’s also facing her own “vote of no confidence” from the members of her Constituency Labour Party, the group of Labour Party Members that live in an MP’s constituency, which can - ultimately - result in a decision to deselect her as the MP for Wallasey, meaning she wouldn’t be standing for Labour at the next General Election. There’s also the reaction to her announcement on Facebook, which really didn’t get the response she’d hoped for, and you should all seriously click here and have a glance at the comments, they are truly a thing of beauty to see…

More seriously, her office in Wallasey had a brick thrown through a window, an act which was quickly condemned by Corbyn and is really not the sort of thing that helps either side, so let’s not do this again, okay guys? Really, no joking here, this stuff isn’t cool.

Eagle finally getting off her arse and doing something caused a little bit of a problem for Corbyn, and not in the “a new challenger approaches” way: to run for the Labour Leadership a candidate has to secure the support of at least 51 MPs, and since the mass-desertion of 172 MPs less than two weeks ago it’s pretty much impossible for Corbyn to secure enough support to run against her. However, as the incumbent leader he claims the right to automatically appear on the ballot, and since the rules were written with the assumption that a Leader who’d lost a vote of no confidence would step down - as opposed to standing his ground and refusing to quit - there was nothing that stated he couldn’t. A bit of a fiasco followed, prompting the Labour National Executive Committee to have a seven hour long meeting and a secret ballot which ruled that, yes, he could in fact automatically run against any challengers without seeking support. The NEC then made a few concessions to Corbyn’s critics by tightening the rules about who could vote: whilst last time the vote was open to anyone willing to fork over three quid, this time you’ll need to re-register and pay twenty-five quid for the privilege, unless you’re willing to wait six months before you can vote in anything. This basically silences the voices of everybody who joined the party after January 12th unless they’re willing to cough up the cash, which is a huge number of people, but it’s worth remembering that Corbyn won his landslide last September so that’s still four months worth of new members on top of those who gave him - out of four candidates - the huge majority he claimed last time, along with those who will pay extra to have their voices heard.

I can’t believe I just wrote that about a party that was founded on the backs of the working class: the idea that you would price potential voters (and not just in the party, but in a general election as well: those people all still get to cast a ballot every five years as well) out of having a say in the party that’s supposed to represent them is the starkest fucking example I can think of of the utterly toxic influence Blair’s shift to centrism has had on Labour. Fuck Miliband losing two elections, this should be seen as the loudest fucking warning that the ghost of Blair needs exorcising from Labour.

Also drifting through the halls of the PLP like a grim spectre is Owen Smith, a man who’s probably got a better chance of leeching votes from Corbyn given his voting record: though like Eagle he abstained from voting against the Welfare Reform Bill, unlike her he voted against air strikes in Syria, and is also one of the few who’s in favour of allowing terminally ill people to seek assistance in ending their lives (which I’m disappointed to find Corbyn is against). For now, he still has to convince 51 MPs to support him in the elections, which may be tricky as it was assumed that Angela Eagle would be the “unity candidate” around which the PLP voters would gather, and a second candidate now risks dividing those votes, resulting in an easier win for Corbyn. He’s probably the closest thing to a middle-ground candidate between the two poles of Corbyn and Eagle, though frankly I can’t see this one ending in any way other than Jeremy utterly crushing the other candidates, after which I think some of the PLP will suck it up and work with their democratically-elected Leader like they fucking well should have been doing since last September whilst most of them will probably bitch and leave the party, prompting all sorts of by-elections and generally making a mess on their way out. Labour Party membership has more than doubled in the ten months since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, their support has been consistent despite the PLP’s desperate rumours that some of them are losing faith in him, and if only half of those that joined in the past six months pay again that’ll only swell the numbers of those that voted in September (against Burnham, Cooper and Kendall). He also still has the backing of the unions, who were ready to go down fighting like all good unions should, so this one might already be a foregone conclusion.

I’m not comfortable enough to claim that, though; if nothing else, the past (still less than) three weeks have taught me that absolutely nothing is certain now, unexpected turns of events have now become the expected norm, and we’ve still got a long way to go until September 24th, when the results are announced. It can’t come soon enough, because this whole debacle has been to the detriment of both the country and the party, especially at a time when the Conservatives are unifying and joining together behind their leader, our new Prime Minister.

You know, the one literally nobody in the country voted for who’s now in power because just over half the population wanted to “take back control” of “the sovereignty of Parliament” from “the unelected officials in Brussels”.

The UK, ladies and gentlemen…

BONG!

Floating back over to the Conservative camp, and shortly before dropping out of further public scrutiny the Tory leadership race Andrea Leadsom’s blog - of all things - suddenly found itself witnessing a spike in traffic. Turns out Leadsom’s been keeping a blog since 2006 (though there’s a single “test” entry in February 2005) and it’s really, really weird: spread amongst the 535 posts are her musings on such things as the importance of family, the risks facing children raised by single parents, the marvellously good time she has when out on a hunt (no innuendo, I’m referring to a literal hunt, top hats and horses, all that toff stuff), and this utterly bewildering post containing “A Tory Mum’s recipe for a perfect British society”, which is even more baffling than whatever your mind has just conjured up, and also contradicts her entry on what’s actually best for Britain somewhat.

Now, for the record, I’ve nothing against anyone in public office wanting to keep a personal blog where they discuss their beliefs and opinions and talk about their private lives, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that’s the sort of thing you should keep separate from your official MP-doing-MP’s-things blog; it’s not that difficult to start up another blog on an external site and use a fucking screen name, is it?

BONG!

Not veering a million miles too far from the Tory party, and former Special Adviser to Tony Blair John McTernan had an absolute meltdown on BBC News following the announcement from the NEC about Corbyn being on the ballot. Claiming “the unions have destroyed the Labour Party”, and that “Jeremy Corbyn is from the Ultra-Left”, McTernan even uses the fact that “he’s a pacifist” as criticism of the democratically-elected Leader of the Labour Party. The words I have to describe the six-minute long hysterical fit from a grown man on national television can come nowhere near close enough to doing it anything resembling justice, you just have to watch this:

It is simply fucking amazing.

BONG!

Chuka Umunna takes time out of twisting the knife lodged in Jeremy Corbyn’s back to actually do something fucking useful for once, and sets up “Vote Leave Watch“, to hold those who campaigned to leave the EU to account for all their broken promises. How exactly they’ll be doing that I’m not entirely sure, but it’s good enough that not everybody’s forgotten that the path that led us to this precipice was paved with lies, and that someone should be held accountable for it. Whether someone will be held accountable for it, I’m unsure, but at least it’s not being forgotten as soon as I’d thought it would be.

BONG!

Nigel Farage enjoys the life he’s now taking back by fucking off to America to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. I really don’t know what to say about this, I’m torn between begging you all to keep him (fuck it, we’ll even take Piers Morgan back if we have to), and warning you all to ignore the everloving fuck out of him and anything that might crawl out of the festering maw plastered across his flabby, innately-punchable face. I honestly, truly and genuinely want to believe that you guys will be able to see through the snake-oil charm he lays on like a slime produced by his body to keep his skin slick, but I know I can’t trust you enough because we all know who he’s going to hear speak.

Jesus fuck, America, for the love of whatever god your constitution grants you the freedom to believe in, DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS MAN, he is a malignant turd that refuses to be shifted from the buttocks of humanity, and it is our greatest national shame that he was allowed anywhere near an ounce of power and influence, let alone that he managed to do what he’s done with it.

I beg and plead, knowing full well that a bunch of you are about to vote for your own version of him…

BONG!

Continuing the tradition of companies getting into shit on Twitter, “yes we still sell books in this day and age” chain Waterstones Cardiff branch posted a tweet poking fun at Andrea Leadsom’s motherhood claims that slightly upset a few of its customers. Announcing they were “currently dividing the store into Mothers and Non-Mothers, so readers can tell which books were written by those who care about the future”, their tweet prompted the most British of responses from outraged followers, who cut up their Waterstones membership cards and did the whole “never shopping there again” thing. Sadly, the tweet was removed, but it’s definitely a contender for burn of the week.

BONG!

In other “y’know what? The week just hasn’t been weird enough yet” news, after David Cameron gave a short speech outside Number 10 announcing he’d be handing power to Theresa May in 48 hours, he headed back inside whilst humming a tune to himself that ended up being caught by his still-live mic. Just four notes was enough to inspire a deluge of interpretations, ranging from the simple

to the complex

to the fucking sublime

There’s beauty in insanity…

BONG!

…which is probably for the best, because things have happened whilst I’ve been typing this up and it’s been even more insane than yesterday. Theresa May has moved in and has been announcing her cabinet, and you’ll never guess who she’s made Foreign Secretary…

MI6 and GCHQ, our main security and intelligence services, directly answer to this man now. I wish I was joking about that.

God damn, my next entry’s going to be nuts.