For the first time in a very long time, it’s actually been a moderately decent week. We even had some sunshine! To be fair, most days have been grey and windy with spitterings of rain but the occasional burst of sunshine seems to be all the more appreciated for its relative rarity so far this summer. I guess we’re saving up our decent weather for when our multitude of guests arrive during the weeks to come.
We had an excellent time on Sunday with Nick, Lucy and Annabelle at the Stratford River Festival. The sun shone and the food and drink stalls were plentiful and even the half hour or so waiting in the traffic queue served its purpose – by the time we hit the festival we were famished. Thankfully, there were stalls selling burgers and pulled-pork sandwiches and other edible offerings from the moment we reached the festival grounds. There was face-painting and Bubble was transformed into a butterfly. There was also an opportunity for her to enjoy her first encounter with cotton candy (how did we ever like that when we were young? Spun sugar?!!) and there were opportunities for blowing and chasing bubbles. What more could anyone want?
We’ve had more of the Brexit fallout this week, most notably the beginning of the election of a new leader of the Conservative party and, hence, a new Prime Minister. One of the things the new Prime Minister is going to have to oversee is the trawling through all the UK legislation which is based on European law and deciding which laws to reject and which to introduce as new, UK-based only initiatives. In an irony that seems perfectly apt following the vote to leave the EU and stem the “flood” of immigrants who are swamping these shores, the government is going to need to recruit hundreds of new civil servants to negotiate the detail of the UK’s Brexit from the EU.
For the many free market proponents of leaving the EU, there is a bitter irony to Brexit. Leavers of the right wing are united in their dislike of the public sector. Yet to leave, experts say that a “massive” wave of recruitment will be necessary.
Not only that, inevitably many of these new recruits will have to come from abroad, i.e., exactly the immigrants that the Brexit camp has been so quick to condemn.
And, also in the Telegraph – Boris Johnson, one of, if not the main reason, many people voted to Leave, having run away from the cesspit he helped to create, now dares to suggest that the UK needs a plan for Brexit. The headline of the article says it all:
Boris Demands Post Brexit Plan
Yep, you read that correctly and no, you couldn’t make it up. A prominent politician who had ambitions to be Prime Minister is declaring that now, after the result of a referendum which he campaigned for, he thinks that perhaps it might be a good idea to have a plan. A bit late, perhaps?
Maybe it might have been a good idea to have enumerated his plan a few weeks or months ago? But, never mind, he’s given us his Five Point Plan now.
Unfortunately, it’s looking a bit thin. Point 5 of Boris’s Five Point Plan, for example: “The future is very bright indeed.” isn’t really a plan as such, is it? It’s somewhat akin to, “Take Back Control”, the Brexit campaign’s slogan, i.e., meaningless without a strategy to implement it.
One thing is for sure though; the new Prime Minister will be a woman. Teresa May and Andrea Leadsome (our local MP) have made it through the first two rounds of voting by Conservative MPs. Now, those two go forward to a vote of Conservative Party members who will elect the new Prime Minister. All 150,000 of them.
It’s rather like choosing between the Wicked Witch of the East and the Wicked Witch of the west. They are both on the right of the party, Leadsome on the extreme right. Although May campaigned for Remain (out of loyalty to Cameron) she has always been an exceedingly reluctant European. Leadsome, on the other hand, is a vehement Brexiteer and was one of the leading lights of the Leave campaign. It looks like May has the advantage – she has considerably more experience and a much higher profile in government but in this topsy-turvy world who would dare to try and predict how card-carrying members of the Conservative party will vote. No point crossing your fingers – Brexit has essentially screwed us no matter what happens next and whoever wins is going to carry the can for the incompetence of Cameron and Osborne and the idiocy of Johnson and Gove. It’s remarkable that anyone wants the job after watching the architects of the lunacy fleeing in horror at the consequences.
Frankie Boyle had a very humorous article in the Guardian the other day about the leadership contest which is well worth a read. It’s been overtaken by events to some extent, i.e., the five leadership candidates have been whittled down to two, but it’s still good fun.
We’ve also had the long-awaited Chilcot report into the disaster that was the Iraq war. Tony Blair has been spinning for all he’s worth, arguing that the report vindicates him in some way. Not surprisingly, that’s not how most people read it.
When Mr Blair set out the UK’s vision for the future of Iraq in the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, no assessment had been made of whether that vision was achievable, no agreement had been reached with the US on a workable post-conflict plan, UN authorisation had not yet been secured, and there was no decision on the UN’s role in post-conflict Iraq.
A conflict that began in haste and endures today did not have to start when it did, nor in the way it did, Chilcot said. “The evidence is there for all to see. It is an account of an intervention which went badly wrong with consequences to this day.”
And so, we muddle on. The pound continues to go south, stocks and shares continue their downward slide and the reputation of the UK continues to spiral down the crapper. Private Eye had a “number-crunching” snippet in its most recent issue:
£8.5bn – UK taxpayers’ net contribution to EU budget in 2015
£10.8bn – UK taxpayers’ loss on RBS and Lloyds shares [owned by the government] since Brexit vote.
Much love to you all,
Greg