Following a pause for breath due to the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox, the gloves are off again. Thankfully there’s only a few days to go now until this entire sorry mess of an EU referendum campaign is over. Neither side has any claim to the moral high ground, neither has any claim to deceny, honesty, or truth. Whoever wins on Thursday, British democracy is the big loser. One side has slung racist smears scaremongering on immigration, the other has threatened economic armageddon. One side’s fantasy figures are matched only by the nightmare numbers of the other side. Where one side has treated the public as fools, the other have treated them like idiots. Both sides have lied, misrepresented reality, and diseembled as they mendaciously mud-wrestled in the gutter. And this they tell us is the politics of the Mother of Parliaments. There’s obviously a swear word missing between Mother and of.
We’ve witnessed the ludicrous sight of Conservative politicians who have been presiding over a vicious and ideologically motivated austerity which has eviscerated the poor, the chronically ill, and the disabled, pretending to be the champions of the poor. It’s the Sherrif of Nottingham telling us he’s really Robin Hood. It’s as sickening to watch Iain Duncan Smith cry crocodile tears about the NHS as it is nauseating to listen to George Osborne preach about how he’s seeking to protect the poor. It’s as hypocritical of the leave campaign to claim that it’s not trying to play on racist fears as it is sanctimonious of the remain campaign to swear blind that it’s not trying to make political capital out of the murder of Jo Cox.
After a few days of swinging to Leave, the polls now appear to be swinging back to Remain, but only someone with access to a Tardis would care to predict the result on Thursday. It could go either way. Whatever happens on the day however, there is one certainty. We’re now in a United Kingdom which doesn’t have a functioning opposition as the Labour party has been all but invisible as it’s far more preoccupied with its internal divisions, and now we don’t have a functioning governing party either as the Tories inflict wounds on one another that are going to take decades to heal, if they ever do.
British politics are now a synonym for dysfunction. We’ve got dysfunctional politics in a dysfunctioning state and the only thing that functions efficiently is the way in which the low paid and the poor get ripped off while the rich continue to aggrandise themselves and their wealth. The British state might be bugger all use for helping you if you’re long term sick or disabled, but at least Philip Green took delivery of a new private jet this weekend.
The mud slingers and the strangers to truth on both sides of the EU referendum campaign are the same hissing venomous serpents crawling in the tangled undergrowth of lies who told us that the Scottish referendum was divisive and unnecessary. As they ramp up the fear and compete to out-lie one another with increasingly ridiculous childish nightmares instead of principles and policies, public faith in the political system is scarred and battered.
Whoever wins on Thursday, one side in this pathetic spectacle of lies and deceit is going to take the result as vindication of its deception and dissembling. The only consolation is that the squalid squabbles within the Conservative party have left it unfit to govern, even though it will struggle on in am embittered aftermath. What we do know is that feelings have been raised to such a pitch that nothing is going to be resolved on Thursday, neither side is going to achieve the victory it requires to send the other side packing. For the foreseeable future the politics of England will revolve around the question of the EU and the fallout from a bitter and angry referendum.
Davie Cameron only called this vote in the first place as a means of settling internal disputes within the Tory party. We might not know who is going to win on Thursday but we already know that he’s failed spectacularly in laying to rest the Tory party’s internal demons. All he’s succeeded in doing with it is to spread the rancour far and wide. This referendum was only ever about saving Davie’s career in the first place. If Leave wins by a narrow majority on Thursday Davie’s career is toast. If Remain wins by a narrow majority then the sniping from the Tory back benches is only going to continue as the Conservative right licks its wounds and pointless political vandalism becomes a substitute for governance.
Meanwhile Labour is preoccupied with its internal warfare between Blairites and Corbynites. It’s been paralysed during this EU referendum, incapable of speaking truth unto power because it’s implicated in the crimes of power itself. The Blairites think that morality is the same as getting elected.
While all this is going on Scotland will get to look on from the sidelines, ignored and forgotten as Labour and the Tories rip themselves apart in a quest for power that neither knows what to do with once it gets it.
I’m sick of this farce that passes for the politics of the supposed big boys and girls of Westminster. Chimpanzees throwing poo are engaged in more subtle and nuanced political strategies than this mob. Democracy lies bleeding and bruised in abusive propaganda. Truth is a stranger to the lips of politicians and a media that is complicit in their lies instead of holding them to account. This entire campaign, on both sides, has been conducted with all the moral fibre and basic human decency of Attila the Hun on a cocktail of viagra and crack, and I only wish to all the gods that neither side could win.
Maybe Thursday’s events will be the trigger for another indyref. Maybe they won’t. But irrespective of the outcome of the EU referendum this entire shoddy exercise in mendacious deceit only confirms the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Westminster and its political parties. The edifice is rotten, the foundations are on sand, it’s only a matter of time before it comes crashing down. Even if there is no trigger for a second indyref on Thursday, the EU referendum campaign has brought us a bit closer to a United Kingdom that Scotland has no place in and wants no part of.
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Wee Ginger Dug 
Now is the day and now is the hour…
well said Paul. You express the disgust and distaste every decent citizen feels
This EU referendum campaign has just sickened me. The way the Tories have dragged all of us into their own petty civil war is really beyond the pale.
Anyone who thinks this referendum is a genuine exercise in informed democracy it living in cloud cuckoo land. Most people have no real understanding about the thing their voting to keep or ditch and neither campaign has provided a single iota of enlightenment.
Whichever way the vote goes on Thursday it is really hard to see how the UK can hold together.
Clouds and silver linings spring to mind…
“Whichever way the vote goes on Thursday it is really hard to see how the UK can hold together”.
I agree Steve. From a UK Unionist point of view, calling this referendum has been a blundering disaster for UK governance.
They are all English issues, problems, mental films of Hitler and WW2, a popular revolt against years of austerity,immigration etc which have mostly nothing to do with the rest of us – but unfortunately we are sucked into the middle of them.
However – and this is a big however – I do not honestly see Westminster allowing the outcome (whatever it is) to lead to the break-up of the UK – without a big to-do.
I honestly think we’ll be in unknown territory with the result – as far as regards what the UK will look like in the future or even whether it will exist at all in its current form
Nail hit squarely on head once more….Do you never miss?
No he’s not one to miss and hit the wall – ever. That’s why we love him.
Jeez Paul!… Thank goodness you’re not writing this in pencil. You’d be on to your 89th by now, with blackened lead spots where you’d have broken each one dotting the ‘i’s’ and crossing the ‘t’s’, Calm yourself my friend, listen to the whale music…. Soon… it will all be over…. 🙂
Bloody well said.
[…] Wee Ginger Dug The swearword missing between ‘Mother’ and ‘of Parliaments’ […]
Well said Paul. I’m scunnered to the pit of my stomach with this unwholesome charade. I’m an undecided, which for me is very unusual.I know that I’ll have to hold my nose and vote in for Scotland’s sake, but the very thought of being on the same side as the pig shagger gars me grue.
God alone knows what we’ll waken up to on Friday, but it scares the hell out of me just thinking about it. Poor old Scotland, whatever happens there’s a shitstorm coming down the line. Buckle up folks, this will get very bumpy.
This is beyond sadness. I really do despair for the future of both the U.K. and Scotland. This whole farce has never been about the E.U. – it’s a Bullingdon Boys’ pissing contest and the saddest aspect of all is that huge swathes of the electorate can’t even see that. It may indeed lead to a deeply fractured U.K. – no tears there – but I’m not so sure that Scottish independence will happen anytime soon.
I just feel so detached from their palace in Yoonderland 500 miles away. It has not been a great week and I don’t see it changing much soon either. At least that’s the weather back to normal – I was worried we might get a summer. Try and stay positive my friends,on this long road .
We are spectators at a redundant English indyref
http://moflomojo.blogspot.com/2016/06/project-fear-squared.html
This is a vote for english independence. Labour have no policy regarding an english or Scottish programme, thats why they are fucked, they haven’t noticed that the lights have changed. The tories have always had an english programme, that’s why they are in power. England want to be independent of the uk ultimately. Good. Scottish independence seekers will have a monumental belly laugh at england departing the uk.
Great post Paul.
What sickens me most is that Middle Engerlandt voters swallow this venom and revel in their one-up-Manship. Engerlandt is a sinking ship and Scotland could be the first sailors to be made to walk the plank. Well said Paul.
Think you’ve pretty much said it all Paul.
This is not our fight and not our time for discussing this issue. This tour de farce has done nothing more than provide an example of how not to conduct a referendum. If any lesson could be taken from it, then the campaign tactics of those who govern the UK in our name should be held up there for everyone in Scotland to see. This is the government and system of politics just over half our electorate chose to settle on in 2014.
Perhaps time for some folks to have a think about that choice they made.
Its never too late.
I’ve avoided most of the nastiness with a steely determination. Switched off anything which contained references to EU or referendums…
I’m calm, and probably as well informed as if I’d listened to it all.
In essence, the Bullingdon Boys squabbling over the last sticky bun in the Eton tuck-shop.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could stop EVERY person in the whole Yeuk voting??? Not one vote for either side? Wonder what the hell they’d do then?
I don’t often disagree with you, but I don’t believe that the Tory party will fall apart after a Brexit. Their whole motivation is hanging on to power and pursuing their neoliberal agenda and I don’t think the Remain Tories feel strongly enough about it. They’ll just get with the new program and line up behind Boris, I’m afraid. (actually very afraid).
Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
‘I only wish to all the gods that neither side could win.’
But ‘winner’ there will be , Paul.
The ‘loser’ will be summoned before the 1922 Committee, and we know now which way the Tory backbenchers are headed, and asked:
‘What’s that behind you?
Oh, it’s your political career.’
If Cameron ‘wins’, then it can hardly be ‘nothing to see here.’
There will be a night of the long knives. Boris, IDS, Gove, and Co. will spend the rest of their political careers showing visiting schoolchildren around Parliament, setting out the blotters, pencils, silver pencil sharpeners, boiled sweets, and Evian water for meetings and conferences, and prising blocked staples from Junior Ministers’ staplers.
If Leave win, Faber will launch David C’s first volume of memoirs:
‘Gideon Osborne: My Part in his Downfall.’
LOrdy knows what PM Boris will get up to first. Scotland the Colony?
It is indeed an Eton Mess. New Labour, the 8 (sorry 7) Lib Demmers, the NI and Scottish MPs are bystanders.
Labour is so riven now, on just about everything, that it will take at least 10 years for the New New Labour to emerge, probably with one of Tony Boom Boom’s offspring at the helm, to woo Middle Aspirational England again, whether in the EU or not.
Neither side will ‘win’ Up Here, simply because Scotland has no say on it. It is English Hospitals, schools, and jobs that the chatterati are banging on about, particularly in the South of England, and great conurbations like Greater Manchester, Leeds/Bradford..
We’ll get what the redneck proles Down There decide. It’s increasingly likely that Leave will ‘win’: immigration, and Nazi style propaganda will be wot does it for them, according to the Sun Dead Tree Scroll.
Either way Scotland will continue to suffer at the hands of the Political Wing of an Arch Right Holy London Empire Establishment. The Tories look set to be in power for another decade at least. Jees.
WM and the SE will always ‘win’. Scotland will always ‘lose’ while we ‘remain’ party of this corrupt dying Union.
Not long now.
.
Redneck proles etc.? Raising the tone of the debate?
“Fat Alex” 16/06; “the bovine”the SNP…” crowd” 16/06; “Get your head out of your arse” 13/06. That would be Joe Kinnear raising the tone of the debate,Eh?
Why aren’t you at school today, whoever you are?
‘Redneck’: folk who toil outside in the sun.
‘Proles’: The common people; the class of industrial wages earners who, possessing neither capital nor ownership of the means of production, must earn their living by manual labour.
Traditionally the target of right wing politicians in times of hardship and jobs shortage/slave wages.
Farage’s poster is designed to whip up hostility towards immigrants among the workers whose wages have suffered under the Tories, and whose jobs have been axed or replaced by zero-hours slavery.
Blame Johnny Foreigner, not the ex boss of BHS who syphons hundreds of millions out of the country to Monaco.
Hence ‘The Redneck proles’: now it’s probably time for your afternoon nap, who ever you are.
The EU Referendum has shone a light on the real state of democracy in the UK and that is something that has to be good. It is not why it was initiated but it is what it has actually achieved.
In addition to this, whatever the vote, I do not believe that the UK will leave the EU in the foreseeable future without at least a second referendum.
So far as Scotland is concerned this is one of those extraneous events that has to be dealt with and adapted to. There is no point in wishing it away. The outcome will present opportunities as well as difficulties and these have to be grasped.
The Scottish Government is well used to working in adverse circumstances so it is well placed to take best advantage. If they succeed then it will be further evidence for the Scottish electorate that their own government has the capacity to deal effectively with adversity. This can lead to greater self-belief, the key to Scotland returning to being an independent nation.
If you hadn’t heard Scotland is part of the UK.
Almost finished reading Kenny MacAskill’s book “The Lockerbie Bombing”. The search for justice? Not easy amid a network of lies and, as the Gaelic speaking folk of our area used to say “putting the colour of the truth on it”. I don’t know how Kenny managed to steer Scotland through it all. But he did, in spite of the mess created by many of the WM and Holyrood politicians (still in place) along with the devious Jack Straw.
Everyone should read Kenny’s account of their dishonest dealings and involvement in many situations other than the desert. Sickening.
SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE is the only viable way forward.
Whatever the result the so-called united kingdom continues to self-destruct… which is nice.
“Even if there is no trigger for a second indyref on Thursday, the EU referendum campaign has brought us a bit closer to a United Kingdom that Scotland has no place in and wants no part of.”
Amen to that.
I know most people think the EU referendum was as a result of Tory squabbles but wasn’t it really promised to outflank Farage before the 2015 GE election? Dodgy Dave thought he would be in a Fibdem coalition and could then say they wouldn’t let him have his ref, wot a shame, eh? I tried, honest I did….
Of course, since then, Boris has scented blood.
The only good thing about this squalid, stomach-churning referendum is that more and more Scots will have seen the same old lies they deployed against us and will not be affected next time in Indyref2.
Both main English parties are dysfunctional and I don’t see how either can run the country effectively, something which switherers in our own referendum will surely see and eventually come to the correct conclusion.
Unless something catastrophic happens, I think NS will adopt the Ali rope-a-dope strategy: let Westminster continue its attacks on Scotland for four more years before most Soft Noes finally get it. Meanwhile she runs an effective and principled government which is clearly being run for the benefit of all Scots. Not pretty or exciting or glorious but effective in showing the Establishment’s disregard and malice.
Then the uppercut 2010 manifesto commitment.
And then we win.
Watched this talk yesterday, by someone who knows a little about the EU, well, quite a lot in fact.
http://www.yeswecan.scot/index.php/2016-06-16-14-26-31/watch-this-first
Some here will have watched it, but if you haven’t it’s worth the 25 minutes of your time, and pass it on.
Something just does not seem right about this referendum, well, we know what it is. The way it came about and the timescale and timing of it could hardly be less democratic.
WGD, an excellent article, as usual.
Incidentally, it is only the English, in their arrogance, that call the House of Common Thieves and the House of Lards the “Mother of Parliaments”. The conveniently forget that the first known parliament was the Althing in Iceland, which was founded in the year 930.
Another matter that puzzles me is that, from what I understand, non-“British” EU citizens are not allowed to vote in this referendum, which is probably fair enough. However, Englishmen were allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum, which is decidedly unfair. Or is this yet another example of the English deciding the rules for themselves?
Just when you think the debate can’t sink any lower, Spanner’s best pal enters the fray
JK Rowling condemns ‘divisive and bitter’ EU referendum campaign. The lack of self-awareness or any sense of irony makes for hilarious reading.
Previous post with blockquote corrected:
Just when you think the debate can’t sink any lower, Spanner’s best pal enters the fray
JK Rowling condemns ‘divisive and bitter’ EU referendum campaign. The lack of self-awareness or any sense of irony makes for hilarious reading.
. Her followers advised her beforehand not to wade into the Brexit debate but to “move to France”. A shame for the French, but if only she’d taken their wise advice.
She’d be in good company, Alan. Fred the Shred, and David Murray, have wee hooses in France.
When the filthy rich speak, we must listen and obey; apparently. I wonder if she still dines with Lord Darling, that well known Socialist, whom some would consider a real life monster for removing the 10% rate of tax to low paid workers when he was in Office, and lied, and lied again, as he linked arms with his Blue Tory pals, during the Referendum campaign.?
I’m afraid this lady thinks that all demons are a work of second class fiction. Or am I harassing her on the net?
I hope I have not said anything for which I can be sued.
Then again, this particular stone has shed its last ounce of blood.
I’ll be accused of being ‘shrill’ on ‘social media’ (that’s the Voice of the People’ to us) by Fluffy Mundell next.
Well worth viewing.
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2016/06/16/watch-dishonesty-industrial-scale-eu-law-expert-analyses-referendum-debate/
Thanks for this link, Macart.
Says it all really.
Yay yay…brilliant as usual.Your blogs make my life even more worth living.
Thank you W G D, x