Go To Your Happy Place

At a time when Plan B is desperately needed - when UK MPs are required to process the narrow but unambiguous rejection of their advice and get on with the job that they were elected to do - those who have found it easiest to adjust are the ones who are just pushing Plan A. The SNP (led by the person who is currently probably today the UK's most popular politician on any side: pocket dynamo Nicola Sturgeon) thinks that Scottish Independence may be the answer. Sinn Féin feels that Irish Independence may do the trick. Conservative MPs are getting down to the serious business of trying to stop Boris Johnson getting to Number 10. And Labour MPs are trying to remove Jeremy Corbyn.

Removing Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, not so much the Plan A of Labour MPs as the One Plan To Rule Them All. Since this mild-mannered and rather bland specimen of Far Left extremism was foisted on them by the contemptible rank & file they have been waiting on the steps of the capitol with a murderous gleam in their collective eye hoping to catch sight of him cycling by, but have been repeatedly cheated of their prey. They were already to pounce after the Oldham West & Royton by-election last year (which confounded their hopes by resulting in a ringing Labour victory) and almost did so at the time of the underwhelming council election results in May. Had he delivered in terms of the election failure that all Labour MPs so clearly covet, he would have been gone by now.

Under the circumstances, the Parliamentary Labour Party has picked now as its time to strike (if strike be quite the word for the centrist wing of the party with its inherent mistrust of unions). Seemingly, the EU referendum result is to be laid at his door due to the tepidity with which he campaigned for a Remain victory.

Well, that's the ostensible reason at least.

Setting aside for now the question about whether changing the leader is wise at such a time of convulsion, what is the benefit to the party to remove anyone, let alone the leader, on the basis of a lack of Euro-enthusiasm? Broadly there are two options: Brexit or a rejection of the Brexit vote by the political elites. If the political elites refuse to enact Brexit (which may still happen) then it doesn't really matter where people were on the referendum. On the other hand, if Brexit is going to be enacted then it will require Brexiters, Bremainers and everyone between those two camps to come to the aid of the country.

Labour can turn itself into the perfect pro-Bremain party, but that transformation will be too late to be anything but position the party on the other side of the question from the majority view of its voters, and any leader palatable to the PLP will almost certainly be someone whose wisdom on the question has just been rejected by the electorate.

Of course, Labour MPs are not thinking straight at all. They know that Cameron is going, that a general election may be years closer at hand than expected and that the bloody business of decapitation needs to be done now. In response to the crisis, they have gone to their happy place not by means of calm meditation & positive visualisation but with a massive intracardiac injection of whatever high-potency variant of cocaine fuels them. They think that - like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction - all they will do is thrash around the floor for a second and sit bolt upright with everything alright again.

Except - like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction - what they think is cocaine may be a fatal overdose of something else.

Careful What You Wish For

Like participants in an especially hedonistic stag party, UK voters awakened today to the challenge of distinguishing reality from the ghastly fever dream that had troubled their sleep. A dawning realisation will be transferred from face to face as people pass one another on the street and look nervously away. By God, it's true, we did that.

That (for those tripping over this very small corner of the internet whilst looking for something else in years to come) is this: the UK voted to leave the EU. Yes, the Little Train That Couldn't, did, and it turns out that Casey Jones was at the engine, going full steam to catastrophe.

When many of us went to bed last night we did so in a markedly different world: Farage had reputedly conceded; David Dimbleby had announced that the pro-EU campaign seemed to have prevailed; and even the pro-Leave talking heads seemed to think that the issue had been settled for the status quo. This consensus, however, was based on the idea that a large turnout would favour Remain: a narrative that was at odds with what many were saying about the demographic of their supporters. If those who vote Remain are the most educated, metropolitan, Guardian-reading members of society, aren't these the people who reliably vote in every election? Who were these other people registering and voting in large numbers? Why was the assumption that people who took too little interest in politics to vote in a General Election were suddenly rallying to the flag of the European Union?

The reality of the matter - that the Leave campaign had prevailed on the basis of a massive turnout - has proven to be a national act of civil disobedience. The vice anglais was well-named: the British people has cast aside its safe word and asking to be whipped a little harder please Miss. We're often told in the political context that turkeys don't vote for Christmas, yet the UK electorate has basted itself, cooked itself to perfection and has a saucière of cranberry sauce balanced on its left wing.

Quite why that is we will probably never know because the votes that swung this referendum are not the votes that we could see (the active, UKIP-voting people of Middle England who could be heard on every radio debate prior to voting day) but the votes that we couldn't: the quiet, unannounced votes that tipped the balance.

But if you're looking around today for someone to blame in the weeks, months, perhaps years to come, it's worth bearing in mind that the referendum only took place due to a cynical piece of manoeuvring from the man who professed to want it least. David Cameron jeopardised (History may say "sacrificed") his entire nation solely to minimise the UKIP vote at the last General Election, promising a referendum that would/could never pass in a bid to cling to power. On the morning after the night before, he proved to be not the result's only - but certainly its most prominent - casualty.

If the poets have tragedies yet to write then let them ponder that.

The Little Train That Couldn't

If you believe the mythology of these things, Neil Kinnock sunk Labour's chances of victory in the 1992 General Election at a rally in Sheffield where he uttered the deathless soundbite "We're alright!" The rally - which fittingly took place on April Fool's Day - is notable as being just about the last time in British political history that a politician ever made the mistake of showing spontaneous feeling at a conference podium. But the sentiment was at least positive.

Two days out from the EU Referendum, Sordel is ready to capitulate to the prevailing logic. Cameron has me convinced. The Department of Trade & Industry can't negotiate trade agreements. Countries investing in Britain are not after anything that we have to trade; they are primarily interested in our access to the Continental marketplace. Membership of NATO and the United Nations counts for nothing, and if you're pining for The Commonwealth, pine on Grandad. Britain cannot make it on its own, and certainly not with any of the likely potential pilots at the helm.

And this isn't sarcasm.

There is, admittedly, a positive argument for remaining in the EU. We're better inside helping shape the decisions than outside suffering the consequences of them. This affords the UK to effect genuine global change through multilateral action with European partners irrespective of their frankly waning power and relevance. None of that is wrong; people join exclusive clubs for a reason and they don't give up membership on a whim or without qualms.

But the positive logic is as nothing compared with the negative logic of staying in Europe. The UK didn't need an EU to shape international affairs in the past, but then it had leaders who would not have dreamed of devoting months of their time fighting a completely unnecessary referendum on the basis of the UK's fundamental weakness.

This is not party political sniping: Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems (whatever happened to them?) are as one on this point. It can't be done, and - if it could - we can't do it.

Maybe some other UK with some other leader. Not this one. Not with Cameron, or Corbyn, or (let me check my notes) Tim Farron. Not with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage or Michael Gove either, lest you think that Sordel dreams of princes across the sea.

If you can't trust your politicians, Brexit is too big a risk to take, which is why I cannot vote for it.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Slogan, and the slogan for these times is this: "We're All Wrong."