Happily, unlike the scrofulous hacks forced to churn out their garbage on a daily basis, I have enjoyed the leisure in Rhodes to think through the important questions of 'whither Britain?' and 'whither the European dis-Union?' My conclusion is garbage, too, but at least it is well-thought-out and leisurely garbage. I can summarise it elegantly thus: the EU is fucked, the UK is fucked, in fact, we're all fucked!
Of course, the EU has been fucked since its inception because it was an abortion from its birth. What Marx called, in a different context, its 'internal contradictions' were apparent to all except its purblind, besotted begetters. The malignant deformities with which it was born remain and as the Frankenstein monster has grown so have they. Not even the trauma of a major financial and currency crisis has brought about the very necessary radical surgery and so the patient lies there on the operating table simply awaiting its final seizure and death.
Meanwhile, Britain has begun to do again what it was always so awfully good at doing in the past, that is, executing 'traitors'! Thus, young Master Clegg has had a sentence of political death pronounced upon him and he knows that for him only the scaffold awaits. Like many a 'traitor' before him it was a combination of stupidity and cupidity that has led him to this miserable fate and now, perforce, there is not even the chance of a reprieve in the form of an escape to Europe and the comfortable sinecure and pension that was promised. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind! However, it is important that Clegg is not the only individual upon whom revenge must be exacted. There are more, many more, who 'back in the day' urged us all to join the euro currency and who sneered and laughed at our objections calling us 'little Englanders' who did not understand their 'brave new world'. Keep building the scaffolds!
One of those due a fate perhaps even worse than Clegg's will be Ed 'Milipede' which is entirely appropriate given that his anti-British political activities were only rendered possible by the ruthless political murder of his brother. For Ed, as the political pressure ratchets up like one of those ghastly medieval tortures in which an offender is tied down under a plank upon which increasingly heavy rocks are placed until he is crushed to death, the next twelve months are going to be hideous. My dears, simply too, too, delicious! Next May the 'People' (dread word!) will raise their collective fists with thumbs pointing firmly down and that will signal the extinction of Ed's brief but gormless effort to be taken seriously. Good riddance to a particularly bad and utterly useless piece of political detritus!
Then there is 'Dave'! In a way I think he will face an even worse fate than the other two because I think that entirely due to their uselessness he will be 'last idiot standing'! But of course he will not be a free agent. At this point, as I hesitate on the brink of a forecast, I am conscious of my e-pal, JK, busy noting the reference so that he can quickly hurl it back at me in a year's time when it goes wrong. Even so, I suggest that 'Dave' will win the next election. He will appear to say just enough to entice many of those UKIP-ers back into the Tory tent. However, and this is why his fate is going to be so exquisitely painful, I suggest that his majority will be tiny and that will put him in the grip of the Tory Right, a particularly brutish lot when they think they have they upper hand, more than capable of ramming a steel rod up alongside Dave's backbone - such fun!
And yes, it's nice to be back.
