Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Slippage

Little by little the language is shifting. The crisis is becoming no deal, always unlikely, rather than exit. Johnson is winning. No deal panic will undermine opposition to a deal. A deal, rather than remaining, will become a success. I find it alarming. Tom Peck is superb here, comparing the whole mess to Shackelton's failed Antarctic expedition.
Should any kind of deal be forthcoming, Remainers will cling to it as a semi-salvation. There will be no fuel shortages, no food shortages, no medicine shortages. The pound will plummet slower than it otherwise would have done. A week in Spain for the family will remain, just about, a realistic possibility. 
We will, like Shackleton’s men, have made it to South Georgia Island. There will be a celebration of sorts. But it will still have been an expedition of profound pointlessness. We will, all of us, be worse off.
This is madness. The task is to remain. If the polls are right, this is what the majority of the country wants. Leaving with a deal is a slow-moving disaster, even if no-deal would be an immediate catastrophe.

2 comments:

AHRonald said...

Hard to place the superb seamanship and astounding courage of Shackleton and the crew of the tiny 'James Caird', who saved their comrades stranded on Elephant Island, alongside the self-serving, sociopathic, spiv-like narcissism of so many of the cheapjack time-servers in politics today. For almost twenty years as a master at Dulwich I walked past Shackleton's boat, always with a lifting of the spirits and a sense of great humility. Can't say the same about the suits at Westminster.

The Plump said...

A very fair point. But I think it was being used here as a metaphor. It's an example of what Fintan O'Toole has described as our cult of "Heroic Failure." It was a magnificent effort to rescue a failed mission. And I think that this is the metaphor that we should use. The enormous skill and courage needed for the rescue should be the example that inspires the opposition to get us out of the shit that the spivs have dumped us in.

(Nice to hear from you again btw)