Mass Debaters

Apparently there was a debate on TV last night. Whatever it was, the ITV shit show featuring Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was no more a debate than my wheelchair is a moon buggy. It was not remotely serviceable for the task in hand.

The phrase ‘Prime Minister Boris Johnson’ is still absurd some four months on from his arrival into Number 10. It sounds like a line from a dystopian novel. It has probably only managed to stay within manageable levels of shock value due to the presence of the even more preposterous Donald Trump in the White House. After that anything seems plausible. Liam Gallagher to become a social worker? Sure. Prince Andrew to present next year’s Children In Need? Maybe not. But we’re heading in that sort of direction if an absolute fucknugget like Johnson can be PM.

The problems with the whole production were numerous but principally the stumbling block was that only Corbyn clung to the naive belief that he was there for an actual debate. The fact that only the two main parties were invited to be represented should have sounded the alarm bells that this was going to be anything but a grown up discussion about policy. Foolishly, Corbyn had prepared reasoned arguments about his plans to make society fairer, improve public services and in particular the NHS. Meanwhile Johnson merely shifted every question thrown at him back on to the subject of Brexit. A word that didn’t exist four years ago is now the one most commonly uttered by the most powerful man in the country. Whether the hand-picked yet supposedly diverse audience members questioned the pair on health, education, taxation or the decision to dispense with the services of Mauricio Pochettino Johnson merely repeated the same mantra. He was like a ‘talking toy’ only instead of saying ‘to infinity and beyond’ or ‘there’s a snake in my boot’ he repeated ‘Let’s Get Brexit Done!’ when someone pulled the string in his back.

It’s actually quite shrewd of Johnson to avoid debate on policy. It allows him to perpetuate the bumbling man of the people con that he has been pulling since his hilarious appearances on Have I Got News For You, and also spares him from having to explain his cruel austerity policies which are killing people as I write this. Or go into detail about his sinister plans to sell off parts of the NHS to Trump. He also is observant enough to have noticed that as a nation we have become weirdly obsessed with Brexit to the detriment of all other policy discussion. The fact that the 2016 referendum result could not be delivered on without crippling the economy has fired up the defenders of democracy to the absolute max. The problem is that these witless slabs of gammon know as much about democracy as Eddie Hearn knows about humility. The referendum was advisory and always had to go through parliament. That is how democracy works. Threatening to ‘punish’ your local MP for not implementing the supposed ‘will of the people’ is a berserk position. As I said in my last piece, you will get the government you deserve if you do that.

But back to the moon buggy - I mean the debate - which was not helped by host Juliette Etchingham’s inability to guide the discussion. She spent much of the hour trying to stop Johnson waffling on, while whenever a genuine debate did threaten to break out she insisted that it was time to move on to the next topic. Which of course as far as Johnson was concerned was Brexit. Always Brexit. It may have been more palatable if his repeated promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ was even realistic. The other thing that the baying hordes of Leavers don’t seem to understand is that despite Johnson’s claims that he has ‘a fantastic deal’ to leave the EU by the end of January the reality is that he has a withdrawal agreement that is several shades worse than the one secured by robot dancing wheat botherer Theresa May. That one was voted down several times by MPs but now, in their bid to stay in favour with Prime Minister Boris Johnson (eek! that phrase again) 650+ careerist Tory tossers have pledged to back it should the worst happen and the Conservatives win a majority. When they do so we will crash out of the EU with a deal but a shit deal. There will then follow literally years of trade negotiations with whoever we can find who is willing to deal with us and our mop-headed psycho Premier. Yes, including the EU nations.

To sell his idea Johnson actually uttered the Brexiteers’ stock catchphrase ‘take back control’, once more perpetuating the myth to gullible Little Englanders everywhere that we are not currently responsible for our own policy making. From the same school of non-thought comes the insistence that remaining in the EU would mean we would have to join the single currency (created in 1999 yet still not the currency of the UK) and that we would also have to forego our own armed forces to participate in the new EU army plan. Now you might think that being in a European army was a good way of ensuring that you never have a military conflict with another EU nation but that offends the sensibilities of the poppy fascists who actually believe that brave soldiers fought and died in order to force everyone to remember them in the same way using the same emblem and to Hell with anyone who might have suffered at the hands of British military activity. Soldiers aren’t all bad, of course, but they are not all good either. War generally is A Bad Thing but there is nevertheless a significant number of flag-hijackers who think you are unpatriotic if you don’t want to nuke at least six Muslim countries. In any case, a European army featuring British forces is no closer than you are to needing a wallet full of Euros when you visit your local pub to pay for all that beer made by.....Europeans that you are being taught to hate by the likes of Johnson and Wetherspoons Wazzock Tim Martin.

Johnson is a liar. He again made claims that his government are funding 40 new hospitals when the number is closer to 6. He boasted about putting 20,000 police back on the streets but aren’t they the 20,000 police that the Tory austerity regime took OFF the streets? This is the school bully nicking your lunch money and then handing it back to you years later as a ‘gift’. Lies, lies, lies from Johnson wrapped around the biggest one of all that he can Get Brexit Done without ruining the very economy that he alleges is most threatened by Corbyn.

In the aftermath the biggest criticism of Corbyn appeared to be that he didn’t wear a pair of glasses very well. Never mind that he wants to end poverty, revitalise the NHS, invest in better education. It’s all about the way his glasses made him look, an eerie parallel to the way Ed Milliband ate a bacon sandwich did for his hopes in the 2015 election. This is where we are now as a society. Four weeks between now and the General Election doesn’t seem like nearly enough time to turn around our fortunes. Still...at least we will Get Brexit Done.