British Politics is a bit like Watching An Episode Of Game Of Thrones.
For the last couple of months, I have been in and out of London, using it as a base for our various sorties to Europe and Ireland.
As always London is a delight in the summer and on the surface, life there seems to be humming along at a decent clip. Hundreds of cranes dot the skyline as ever more apartment towers emerge out of the ground. Lunchtime drinkers stand about outside pubs across the nation no doubt talking about the merits of English cricket seemingly without a care in the world. All the while, frenzied shoppers, dash up and down Oxford Street like demented zombies desperate to get their hands on whatever is on offer before it disappears.
Perhaps they have reason to be so frantic in their endeavours for, bubbling just below the surface the threat of BREXIT is busy brewing in Westminster’s witch’s cauldron. Looking across the Thames towards the majestic houses of parliament one can only wonder just what the hell is going on within its hallowed halls.
Right now parliament is telling Britain’s newly minted Prime Minister, Boris Johnson that he can’t do things that he says he doesn’t want to do anyway but still for some reason still gets angry about it.
It truly has been a seriously bad week for him.
Before he had even settled his portly rump into the P.M.s chair a few staunch, long-serving conservative M.P.’s promptly up and resigned. If that wasn’t bad enough, he went on to lose a couple of votes and, to then, to add insult to injury, his brother a serving M.P. abruptly quit. I suppose that this amounts to losing his Johnson and consequently can no longer get an election!
Right now, this fiasco, that is British politics feels like being compelled to watching the entire eight series of Game of Thrones rolled into one messy episode.
It’s not exactly been a great beginning for the tousled headed, Eton educated buffoon even though it has been his lifelong ambition to attain Britain’s top job.
Once he assumed power he felt it was his right to have a damn good clean out of all those pesky M.P.s who didn’t support his questionable policies and, once he had his hands on the wheel politicians were duly fired faster than Donald Trump could tweet an insulting comment about one of his staff.
Now, don’t get me wrong every now and again everyone should have a good cleanout. You know how it goes; bag up all those clothes and shoes you no longer wear and drop them off at the local charity store. Only in Boris’s case, its as if he bagged up the family puppy along with a few vital policy documents and loyal colleagues then on returning home said, “Oh shit, I think there was some pretty important stuff in there.”
The political farce continued when the M.P. Phillip Lee, who basically no ones heard of decided that enough was enough and stood up defiantly and crossed the floor to the opposition benches hoping that at least some of his fellow M.Ps would follow him. Halfway across the floor of the house, he stood forlornly looking behind him like somebody at a party who starts a conga line and nobody joins in.
Later in the week, to try and garner at least a bit of sympathetic press, Boris and his partner, with the media in tow traipsed to a local dog shelter to adopt a pet. Last heard, the newly acquired Labrador is frantically trying to get reallocated back to the shelter from which it came!
Nothing it seems can go right for this upper-class twit!
Just yesterday parliament voted overwhelmingly to send Boris back to Brussels to ask the E.U. for yet another extension to the Brexit fiasco. His reply, “I would rather be dead in a ditch before I have to return to grovel before the E.U.” Given the current state of his attire and his dreadful haircut, it appears that he has already taken up residence in some forlorn ditch on the outskirts of the capital.
Watching this new P.M. go about his duties is the same as observing somebody who, after having just one swimming lesson attempts to breaststroke across the English Channel! Its all rather sad really especially as his very first motion before the house went down in flames when it was overturned by a whopping majority. This has not happened since Pit the Younger’s first bill was defeated way back in 1783!!
The country’s previous embattled Prime Minister, who reluctantly inherited the poisoned chalice that is Brexit and, after gamely trying for two years to put a feasible plan together was unceremoniously dumped.
Right now she is probably sitting at home watching BBC Parliament sipping on a glass of chardonnay having a damn good chuckle. Untold billions of pounds have been spent recklessly spent trying to thrash out a deal for a situation that should never have happened in the first place.
The British public, bless them seem to stoically go about their daily lives buoyed by the fact that they have just won cricket’s world cup and that they can still get their European goodies at the local Sainsbury supermarket.
However, the reality is that this once great nation is on the verge of careering blindly over a whopping yawning precipice.
Now, I must end here and nip down to the local deli to get some French Brie for I feel that come the 31st October that French delicacy will be just a memory.
London. September 2019
