Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Tragicomedy

It's political party conference season; a time for dysfunctional obsessives to meet in a posh hall somewhere and squabble.

First, it was the Liberal Democrats. I think. I can't really remember.

Next up, Labour revived some old traditions, like poisonous infighting over procedural and organisational changes designed to strengthen the position of one faction over another. The rest of the time it produced some welcome, if unexciting, mildly social democratic policies, a determination to avoid taking a remotely coherent position on Brexit (why should it? It's only the most important and pressing question of the last fifty years), and presided over a festival of jew hatred while denying its existence.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, could prepare me for the Conservative Party in full derangement. Where to begin? How about Theresa May fighting for her Chequers plan for Brexit (rejected as unacceptable and unworkable by the EU) while simultaneously attacking the Northern Ireland backstop (agreed with the EU and part of an agreement she signed last December)? Yep, that was an interesting one. As was her triumphant announcement that she was stripping British citizens of the right to live and work in the rest of the EU so that we could have a shortage of health care workers, teachers, and agricultural labourers. Then there was Hunt gratuitously insulting the EU, on whose goodwill we depend, and the next day denying he had said any such thing, claiming he had been misquoted despite the fact that he hadn't been and that anybody could watch the videos of his speech on YouTube. You could add in Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg without needing any further comment. The ignorant xenophobic nationalism of many the old guard reactionaries, allied with alt-right recruits and UKIP returnees, was even more unpleasant than usual.

But then came the moment of real horror; the denouement of the whole grisly masquerade. At a time of national and political crisis, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland took to the conference platform to deliver the most important set-piece speech of her career. She entered, gyrating like an arthritic bendy toy, to Abba's "Dancing Queen."

This dear reader is British Politics.


1 comment:

lostmysocks said...

I really want to laugh and cry