I will be with EU, whatever in Brexistential Breakdowns
- July 7, 2016, 6:02 p.m.
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- Public
Brexit-related events, stories and incidents of rampant xenophobia have taken a backseat in the news over the past two days, and that’s because the long-awaited inquiry into the UK’s involvement in the Iraq War has finally been published. The Chilcot Report has been seven years in the making, it’s taken longer than the actual war it was investigating, and has looked at absolutely everything from the months leading up to the war all the way to the aftermath of the conflict. It’s over 2.5 million words long, three times the length of the complete works of Shakespeare (though still not as long as this Super Smash Brothers fanfic that depressingly holds the record of “longest piece of English-language fiction ever written”), and will probably take most analysts weeks to fully examine as a result. The report is available for free here as PDFs, which is probably preferable to the physical copy that costs £767 and looks like this:
Hell, even the summary is 150 pages long, this is a seriously in-depth look at one of the most significant events of the 21st century, and the role our country played in it. It’s also reckoned by many to be the reason why Labour have been lining up to stick their knives in Jeremy Corbyn’s back for the last few weeks; Corbyn has for years been critical of the Iraq War, and you’ll never guess how a significant majority of the PLP MPs opposed to him voted with regards to Iraq and the subsequent inquiry.
Though it’s not really associated with anything Brexit-related, it does offer us another fine example of how the media infects and influences politics: once more unto the pages of the Sun, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead. Like every other paper today
the Sun also ran a photo of Blair on their front page
which was a markedly different tone than their front pages at the time. Granted, all of the Murdoch papers towed this line at the time, but the Sun was particularly brutal in the way it dealt with critics of the war, running a front page story comparing (then) Lib-Dem leader Charles Kennedy to a “poisonous snake”, and even going so far as to print a “dartboard” featuring cut out faces of prominent people who’d spoken out against the invasion, such as Cabinet Ministers Clare Short, George Galloway, Robin Cook, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and even Vladimir Putin. That article has now been deleted by the Sun, who will now doubtless be claiming that they, just like everybody else, were “misled” by Blair and were tricked into supporting the war. Let it never be forgotten that they, the most-read paper in the country, labelled those who dared stand against military conflict as “traitors”, and were just as ardent supporters of sending “Our Boys” into unnecessary danger for the sake of “freedom” as Blair and Bush were.
For now, though, the Chilcot Report will continue to be digested and discussed, and the issues it raises will continue to feature heavily in the news for weeks to come. Already several key points are prominent in the discussion, such as Blair’s promise to “be with you, whatever” to Bush (confirming what we all knew about their relationship), the revelations about the sources for WMD claims (spoilers: it’s the movie “The Rock”, starring Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery), and the bitter irony that Chilcot ended his public statement with a plea for the government to never again embark on a risky leap of faith based on dodgy evidence and poor planning…
BONG!
Leadership battles now, and whilst Labour finds its membership has grown by 100,000 members since the referendum, the Telegraph are reporting that the PLP rebels have given up fighting a battle they can’t win. I’m taking it with a pinch of salt because A: it’s the Telegraph, B: until someone named officially announces it, I’m not trusting an anonymous “Labour source”, because “an anonymous source” is journo-speak for “we made this shit up”, and C: hope is a lie.
Would be nice though, if the worst, most inept coup of all time could end like this. It was inept enough that it was known about months in advance, but seriously guys, not one of you dared step up, and instead all you’ve done is weaken public trust in the Labour party on all levels. It’s just pathetic.
On the other side of the chambers, the Conservative party are close to settling on which aspiring dictator leadership candidate will be grinding the lower classes into dust leading the country as our next Prime Minister. Only backbench Conservative MPs (IE those elected, but not in cabinet positions) can vote for leadership candidates; depending on the number of candidates the process can be repeated over several rounds, each eliminating the candidate with the lowest number of votes until only two remain. Once the final two are known, the vote then goes to the rest of the party membership, as opposed to the Labour party elections which allows multiple candidates to run at once for just one round of voting. Five candidates stood at the first round, which eliminated Liam Fox and prompted fourth-place Stephen Crabb to withdraw, having obviously seen which way the wind was blowing. Today, Michael Gove has been eliminated, which leaves Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom as the two potential PMs, who now have some work to do with persuading the rest of the party membership to vote for them, with the results being announced on September 9th. It’ll likely be May, she’s had a huge lead over everyone else at every point, and is far more known amongst the general membership than Leadsom, so look forward to wannabe-Thatcher 2.0 striding into Number 10 in just over two months.
And you can expect that comparison to made with increasing frequency over the next few weeks - you’re all wonderfully switched-on and intelligent adults, you’ve probably noticed that the two front-runners are both women, and many people will now be highlighting that fact as something to be celebrated. Regardless of their gender, their beliefs are abhorrent and harmful to our society (let the voting records of both May and Leadsom speak for themselves), and criticism of their policies shouldn’t be deflected due to their lack of a Y-chromosome. Remember always the words of Glenda Jackson after Margaret Thatcher’s death:
“My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) referred to the fact that although she had differed from Lady Thatcher in her policies, she felt duty bound to come here to pay tribute to the first woman Prime Minister this country had produced. I am of a generation that was raised by women, as the men had all gone to war to defend our freedoms. They did not just run a Government; they ran a country. The women whom I knew, who raised me and millions of people like me, who ran our factories and our businesses, and who put out the fires when the bombs dropped, would not have recognised their definition of womanliness as incorporating an iconic model of Margaret Thatcher. To pay tribute to the first Prime Minister denoted by female gender, okay; but a woman? Not on my terms.”
BONG!
More bitter irony news now, as the families of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust now want to return to Germany after the Brexit result. There has been a massive surge in applications for citizenship in other European countries (most notably Ireland) following the Leave victory, but Germany has special laws relating to those that fled the Nazi regime and their descendants, making it a viable alternative for many families in this country’s Jewish community.
This just fucking depresses me. Hate crimes are still happening. Since the day of the result, police in London have seen a 75% increase in hate crime-related arrests, whilst the number of hate crimes reported in the city has gone up by more than 50%, with similar increases being reported in the counties of Avon and Somerset, Bristol, and Leicestershire. Some of the more disturbing incidents include Nazi stickers being plastered around Cardiff, another BBC presenter having a racial slur hurled at her, a man stabbed in the back so hard that the knife snapped in Manchester, and this downright fucking horrific incident in Plymouth.
I seriously can’t bring myself to describe that last incident. Hovering over it to read the URL won’t do it justice, please just read it.
BONG!
BONG!
Still buried in another example of how the media misrepresents truth is a little beacon of hope for anyone desperate for anything positive right now everyone: in an article entitled “Poll reveals young remain voters reduced to tears by Brexit result“, champions of the working class the Guardian discuss findings from polls conducted for the London School of Economics, and choose to focus on the fact that many young Remain voters were (some might argue understandably) upset at seeing their futures crumbling in front of their eyes, instead of the far more shocking revelation that turnout amongst younger voters was actually much higher than previously thought:
““After correcting for over-reporting [people always say they vote more than they do], we found that the likely turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds was 70% – just 2.5% below the national average – and 67% for 25- to 29-year-olds.”
Now it’s worth bearing in mind that, unlike in a General Election, exit polls were not conducted on the day of voting, so all we have to rely on are opinion polls, which makes it harder to break down voting trends amongst demographics with any degree of accuracy. Indeed, the problem with the representation of young voters since the referendum has been a reported low turnout, based only on opinion polls conducted before the referendum itself. If further polls continue to confirm the findings of the LSE’s then this might help put to rest the idea that young people aren’t politically engaged and aren’t likely to vote in elections, but don’t hold your breath for older generations to change their minds about it.
BONG!
Two contenders for “Burn Of The Year” come from Charlotte Church, who responded to Nigel Farage’s statement that he “wants [his] life back” with one of the finest examples of blunt honesty I’ve ever seen.
Church then went on to receive an onslaught of abuse from people on Twitter, but continued to give as good as she got, with her reply to human smug dispenser (and disgraced former Mirror editor) Piers Morgan being especially beautiful.
I need to make “Burn of the Week” a thing.
BONG!
Another thing I need to, err, make a thing, is “Twitter feed of the week”, because the referendum’s given us some crackers, and quite possibly the best is wint MP, a parody of the infamous wint crossed with a heavy dose of British politics.
A vein of gold so rich that prospectors have already set up a nearby town and started mining his Twitter feed.
BONG!
With the march of time taking us further from the referendum itself, news will gradually shift away from the event and its ramifications, especially as we’re looking at another two years or so before we’ve unceremoniously torn ourselves from our EU life support machine and rolled off the bed to writhe around on the floor in our own filth instead. But the ramifications are still being felt in other areas of society, especially with regards to things like employment and the economy, areas I’ve so far avoided discussing because they’re complex and really fucking difficult to make funny, so barring any more shock developments I might start to look at those in a little more detail. The economy’s taking a battering both internationally and domestically, whilst more and more companies are looking to move jobs overseas, and things like that are the ramifications that will really fuck the population over in the coming years. I’ve been enjoying keeping this going as everything went crazy in the immediate aftermath of the vote, but with the Brexit maelstrom now entering the eye of the storm a calmer period there may be some breathing room for a little more in-depth discussion about such topics.
Hopefully with some terrible puns and a few funny pictures and tweets towards the end of the entries, because if nothing else, it’s nice to end on a humorous and positive note…
I need tea. ⋅ July 10, 2016