We have the Budget's headline policy: one, on Stamp Duty, lifted from the Labour manifesto, but then successfully messed up by Philip Hammond. The Conservatives engaged in organised public school jeering when Jeremy Corbyn dared to mention poor people, but they have their own catastrophic growth, productivity and borrowing figures to worry about. Corbyn has had a good day. He is at his best when he is angry about poverty. After that BBC Two documentary about Kinnock and all that trash, he can now be as authentic as he pleases.
Come back George Osborne, all is forgiven? Well, not "all". But you were certainly better than this. My letters are now published in the Evening Standard, even prompting debate that you allowed to be aired. And as the heir to the Baronetcy of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon, you had the wit to bail out Ireland as, among other things, our closest neighbour when the people with neither your background nor, for example, John McDonnell's were shrieking into the Internet and onto radio phone-ins that "It's not! It's not! That's France! That's France!"
The people who have been allowed to delude themselves that they decide General Elections in this country, the ones who want to know whether or not a potential Prime Minister would press a science-fictional nuclear button, and who believe that economic policies endorsed by Nobel Laureates and the IMF would turn Britain into a Venezuela that they themselves could not locate on a map, have absolutely no concept that the United Kingdom has a land border with another sovereign state, even while being extremely exercised about long ago Northern Irish affairs of which they know nothing more than has been told to them by some barely literate relative who was briefly "over there in the Army".
Mercifully, if it ever kicked off again in Northern Ireland, and this Government's incompetent handing of Brexit makes that a distinct possibility, then either the Conservative Government that would therefore replace this one, full of people with Ascendancy connections, or any Labour Government, full of people with Irish ties of a very different kind, would just pull out. The Republic could have Northern Ireland if it wanted it, but we would just quit, regardless. Across the political spectrum, hardly anyone in Britain ever really wanted to fight the war in Northern Ireland the last time. The mere suggestion of doing so again would bring down any Government that suggested it, and would confine that Government's party to electoral oblivion.
The people who have been allowed to delude themselves that they decide General Elections in this country, the ones who want to know whether or not a potential Prime Minister would press a science-fictional nuclear button, and who believe that economic policies endorsed by Nobel Laureates and the IMF would turn Britain into a Venezuela that they themselves could not locate on a map, have absolutely no concept that the United Kingdom has a land border with another sovereign state, even while being extremely exercised about long ago Northern Irish affairs of which they know nothing more than has been told to them by some barely literate relative who was briefly "over there in the Army".
Mercifully, if it ever kicked off again in Northern Ireland, and this Government's incompetent handing of Brexit makes that a distinct possibility, then either the Conservative Government that would therefore replace this one, full of people with Ascendancy connections, or any Labour Government, full of people with Irish ties of a very different kind, would just pull out. The Republic could have Northern Ireland if it wanted it, but we would just quit, regardless. Across the political spectrum, hardly anyone in Britain ever really wanted to fight the war in Northern Ireland the last time. The mere suggestion of doing so again would bring down any Government that suggested it, and would confine that Government's party to electoral oblivion.
No comments:
Post a Comment