We Will Get The Government We Deserve

Like me you may have missed every single 6.00 news bulletin for the last few weeks because you don’t want to miss House Of Games. Nevertheless you will no doubt be aware that there is a General Election looming. With TV personality turned pound-shop Donald Trump Boris Johnson having failed in his bid to drag the UK out of the EU without a deal by Halloween night, the other parties have agreed to take him on as he bids to recoup some of the 437 MPs that he has sacked for disagreeing with him since taking over from dancing dunce Theresa May just a few months ago. December 12 is the big date, which will apparently be the first winter General Election since Laura Kuenssberg was impartial.

As much as it is an opportunity for the bumbling, mop-haired cretin Johnson to bolster his ranks in the House Of Commons it is also a chance for us to finally get rid of this dismal government. The problem is that with Jeremy Corbyn in charge it is highly unlikely that the Labour Party will win. Even their own voters are turning against them amid allegations of antisemitism, non-committal dithering on Brexit and fears that his policies are a little bit too left wing and radical. The country can’t afford it, they scream, while ignoring the fact that tax evasion and the ludicrous bonuses paid to the already sickeningly wealthy are what is actually crippling the country. All of this is added to by the standard media-driven bile that Corbyn is ‘unelectable’. He is unelectable if the papers keep telling their millions of sponge-brained readers that he is unelectable.

Of course the reason we are approaching a third General Election in four years is Brexit. Soon after pig-fancying gobshite David Cameron snatched power from Labour in 2010 the Tories introduced legislation that meant that the full term of an elected parliament should be five years. Previously it had been four with an option for a fifth depending on how likely the incumbent Prime Minister felt that a General Election victory might be at the time. Despite this legislation the Tories have called two elections since Cameron made his contribution to history in 2016, calling a needless referendum on the UK’s EU membership without first offering anything approaching a debate on the subject. That decision has brought us to the brink of all-out civil war. One side accuses the other of refusing to respect the ‘will of the people’ while the accused fire back with their own allegations that leave voters had no idea what they were voting for at best and that at worst their vote was motivated by xenophobia and outright racism. In addition the Leave campaign was mostly built on lies scrawled on the side of a bus. There may be good arguments to leave or remain in the EU but we haven’t heard a single fucking one of them above the din created by these two warring factions.

If we can have three General Elections in four years how is it that we cannot have a second referendum on the UK’s EU membership? It is quite clearly bonkers to witter on about democracy when arguing against a second referendum only to then call another General Election. Leave voters counter with the argument that the wishes of their 2016 vote haven’t been carried out but that is to ignore the fact that parliament has spent three years doing absolutely bugger all else except try to work out a way to pass Brexit legislation that won’t destroy the economy. What Leave voters failed to understand is that the referendum was advisory, and that MPs would still need to pass the legislation through parliament for it to become law. That is how democracy works. I have every sympathy with Leave voters who believe that they are not being listened to but this goes back to the point about having the referendum before the debate. We had to make a decision about our EU membership without knowing anything of the complexities of Article 50, the Customs Union or the effect on the peace process in Northern Ireland. It was only after Leave won an unexpected victory that the politicians started to ponder these imponderables. It is no wonder that a large number of them backed away from the precipice when they found out what it really entailed. And yet still we seem to be holding on the dogged and stupendously dim idea that the result of a referendum in these circumstances should be legally binding. We have reached peak Brexit when the man on the street, when warned that leaving the EU could mean that he won’t get access to the medications that he needs to survive can only retort that ‘Leave Means Leave’. There are actually people out there who are stupid enough to not mind very much the idea of dying as long as the rest of us are forced to suffer with them. In the meantime, while all of this failure to secure a sensible Brexit deal has been going on piffling issues like health, education, transport, human rights, the environment, defence and cultural issues have been left to rot in the in-tray of MPs. While we are busy arguing about which course of action will turn the country to shit in the quickest time the country is turning to shit before our very eyes.

The greatest trick that the Johnsons and Jacob Rees-Moggs of this world have pulled is to convince us that we’d be better off after Brexit. It wasn’t long before that rather bold claim became something closer to ‘it’ll be ok in the end’ until now some kind of moronic reminiscence of Second World War Blitz Spirit has kicked in. If we survived being bombed to shit by the Nazis in the 1940s we will survive Nissan moving to Belgium or wherever it might be. Romanticising the Second World War in this way is an affront to the people who lived through it and especially those who fought in it. They didn’t fight for our freedom so that we could become an insular set of fucktards with the intellectual capacity of Isabelle Oakeshott. What is worse is that the vast majority of people going on about the Second World War as if it were just some character-building period of mild hardship were not around for any of it. Not to pick on anyone in particular, but Geoffrey Boycott springs to mind as an advocate of this kind of thinking. The same Geoffrey Boycott who was born in 1940 and so has memories of the Second World War which are restricted to potty training and just about taking on solid foods.

It will be difficult, but if you can find anything in the pre-Election debates other than Brexit you have a pretty stark choice on a variety of issues. On the one hand you have the Eton-educated posh boys who are set to get rich off Brexit while you bear the consequences, and on the other you have a Labour leader who wants to rein in the greed of the rich so that a higher standard of living and better quality public services will be available for all. All of which flies in the face of the absolute bullshit theory that all politicians are somehow ‘the same’. If they were all the same we wouldn’t have the NHS for starters. The Tories deny that they are trying to sell off the jewel in the UK’s political crown to that orange buffoon Trump but who believes them? I read on social media today that Jeremy Corbyn is the one trying to get rid of the NHS which, for all the faults of the train-dwelling lame duck Labour leader is a pretty out-there theory. He’s a socialist. He certainly is not going to endorse the idea of forcing people who are already financially challenged to stump up a few hundred thousand for their cancer treatment. Johnson on the other hand has publicly stated that if we had to pay for the NHS and health care in general then we would all ‘appreciate it more’. Those who could afford it might appreciate it more. Those who cannot will literally die in hospital corridors if we go down that route.

It is not only the NHS that is under threat. Austerity politics is having a thunderous and devastating effect on many people in their every day lives. Yesterday there was a story doing the rounds about a disabled woman who had been deemed not quite disabled enough to qualify for a motability car. That is quite common under this government to the point where we have reached the rather shameful stage of becoming desensitised to it almost. Yet this story caught everybody's attention. This wasn't just some old timer with a bit of a limp that right-wing plebs might shout 'snowflake' at (for that is the limit of their vocabulary in an alarming number of cases). This case is something else altogether. She has bone cancer and a fucking prosthetic leg! Tory austerity politics are literally killing not only disabled people but poorer people as I write this. But sure, politicians are all the same. Have a word with yourself.

Look it is not really my business how you vote or indeed whether you vote at all. I just wanted to check in with you today to remind you that on December 12 we will get the government we deserve. Either we take some positive action to get rid of this cruel, self-obsessed bunch of fuckwits currently running the country or we will allow them to continue unchallenged. Corbyn is far from perfect and I suspect that Labour won’t win a majority as long as he is in charge. The saddest part of it all is that if Labour had a more moderate leader, a middle of the road type figure who knew how to handle the media and how to cultivate a more positive image they would wipe the floor with the worst collection of right-wing fruit loops since Thatcher’s reign of terror in the 1980s. Yet even if we shouldn't expect an outright majority for a left-wing or even centrist party there might be a chance that we can salvage some sort of coalition between those parties who are a good deal less psychotic than the Tories.

The alternative is to let far right ideas which have been on the rise since the referendum continue to gather pace. If you think that is fanciful then ask yourself why such an esteemed organisation as the BBC, built on impartiality, continues to give a platform to the likes of Nigel Farage, Tom Harwood and Oakeshott. Farage has failed to be elected to the UK parliament on no fewer than seven occasions and yet still manages to convince one of the world’s leading broadcasters that he is worth listening to. He’s a man who barks loudly about the tyranny of the EU while, you guessed it, actually making his living out of being an elected member of the European Parliament. The same European Parliament that he would have you believe is undemocratic and should be disbanded as soon as possible. If he gets his way and the UK leaves the EU he is going to have to find another topic to barf on about on the BBC or on LBC Radio otherwise his tweed wardrobe won’t be getting stocked for a while.

If we are talking about pandering to right wing cranks Question Time is especially guilty here. What was once a sensible and enlightening topical debate show has degenerated into a right wing shit-show led by uber-Tory host Fiona Bruce. Her mask of impartiality slips so often on that show I keep waiting for her to stand up and deliver a full hour monologue on the greatness of Thatcher. I'm not basing this on any recent experience of watching to be honest because I gave up on it weeks ago.

It isn’t just the Beeb though, with most TV broadcasters having been guilty of taking the racist filth spewed by Tommy Robinson far more seriously than is warranted over the last few years. He’s just an EDL white supremacist who thinks he has the right to prejudice court proceedings with his vile message of hate. Yet somehow he is also a household name. How the fuck does he even get a platform? This is where we are in 2019. Meanwhile in the written press Rod Liddle has just created a storm by suggesting in his column for The Spectator that we should hold the General Election on a day when Muslims would be prevented from voting for religious reasons. This is bigotry and nothing else. By the way ‘Boris’, your Prime Minister, was editor of The Spectator until 2005. Make of that what you will. Just don’t tell me that all politicians are the same.

We have less than six weeks to think about this. Irrespective of the Brexit outcome we have to decide whether we want to continue persecuting the poor, sick and the disabled for the benefit of the wealthy or whether we want to go down another path. It might not be much of a choice given the shortcomings of Corbyn, but let’s be clear. It absolutely is a choice. You will get the government you deserve.