“You couldn’t write it!” Is the phrase I hear most these days. In the train, at parties, on the phone, friends and strangers drop their jaws, shake their heads and murmur, “you couldn’t write it!”
And they are right. House of Cards is a mere maquette for this drama noir we have been playing out these past weeks and sadly, the greasepaint does not get packed away, the advance tickets are sold and we are in for a long run…without Sheridan Smith or any decent understudies.
“I was in St Ives having a well-earned holiday,” I shall tell my grandchildren when they ask me where I was when England committed Hari Kiri. My Remain vote safely posted, my head hit the pillow smugly in the belief that I would wake up to find that sense had prevailed and everything would go on more or less as before. None of us admire the EU but we realize, surely, that on the whole we benefit from it. Leaving was not a serious option because one can never go backwards in life, to a golden era which, in reality, had mercury fillings, casual racism and rickets.
It couldn’t get worse. It did. The very self serving fools who took us out have glided away from their responsibility in foul swoops. Boris Johnson, speaking in tongues, both of them forked, has melted away from the chaos he created. Did he walk or was he pushed? We may never know until he obfuscates his side of it. Never has there been such a volte-face without explanation.
“I realized that Boris could never fulfill his duty as a prime minister,” blustered Gove to an incinerating Andrew Marr. How do you suddenly realize after six weeks of campaigning and a promise to second his leadership bid, that your man has all the wrong qualities for the job? Of course, by the time you read this, Gove’s tail will be between his legs – a pretty awful thought– having lost the leadership race, and the bitter Iain Duncan Smith will go very, very quiet on the back benches.
Nobody but the warped will seriously bemoan the loss of Nigel (the thinking man’s thump-it) Farage, but is there no honour even among thieves? He’s propelled us into Ruritania by dint of racism, fear of the stranger in our midst and rampant fabrications and he considers that Duty Done. There is no future plan, no plan B, not even a cunning plan for this complex negotiation, facing an EU in punitive mode, frozen investment and a currency , as predicted by the alleged fear-mongers of Remain, in fluctuating chaos. The consequences of his actions are not his field of interest. Back to the stock market and the snug.
Even David Cameron for whom I have some respect - a decent man with gravitas, who has done a reasonably sterling job of steering the country through hard times - has washed his hands of us. Is that right? To call a referendum, based on a yes or no vote, rather than a percentage minimum vote, with no contingency plan for possible exit, and then to say: “I lost so I’m not playing.” To have no intention of facing the finale music. Theresa and Andrea can clean up the mess then Dave? That’s what women are for isn’t it? Keeping the country working while the men fight.
The sheer excitement of it all, laced throughout with a sick feeling of loss is a lethal mix. I am living with my radio to my ear, my phone on alert and my nerves on the edge. Britain suddenly feels like Israel, a country under siege.
Actually, at one point I imagined all the global leaders would be serial philanderers with dodgy hair. Trump, Boris, Hollande, and Putin. Then, before I had chance to Google Victor Orban’s private life it all turned on a euro and suddenly we may have an all-woman ticket: Hillary, Theresa, Angela , Erna in Norway, Marie-Louise in Malta, Kolinda in Croatia, Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma and Beata in Poland. Wow! And why not?
I haven’t mentioned Angela Eagle yet, because the Labour party’s misfortunes, is beyond parody. I have bemoaned Corbyn’s limp response to antisemitism in his party before in these pages, so I shall not go off on one now, but could there be greater stupidity between Jezza and his speechwriters as to invoke Isis and Israel in the same breath at the public reading of a review on antisemitism?
And – and, having so done to then watch in abject silence when a Momentum thug insults a Jewish Labour MP, at the same event? All he had to do to restore his credibility was to tell the bigot that his behavior today was exactly what the Chakrabarti review was condemning and suggest he apologise to Ruth Smeeth or face suspension from the party.
Instead he was seen afterwards laughing and joking with the perpetrator of the hate crime. Corbyn cannot take dissent in any form. He can only communicate with those who share his views, as he has done for the last thirty years. A useful attribute in the leader of the opposition.
What riles me the most, what sends my aged teeth on route to the canal, is the certainty that because of Brexit, there will finally be reform in the EU. Perhaps if the EU had given Cameron a better deal he might have returned with less of a die to cast. Post-Brexit of course, bureaucracy will diminish, some borders will be re-established, there will be less centralised government - and we won’t be there to benefit from it. Frankly , you couldn’t write it could you?
