So I’ve been particularly busy as of late enjoying my life (it is altogether noticeable that I lost patience for this thread’s discourse, including its predecessor, and I don’t recall any other time where I’ve managed to talk a subject into burnout), and I doubt I will be able to fulfil my promise to reply to all those posts made days ago (fitting, given the recent talk about pledges made, pledges broken on so many levels). But I can more or less paraphrase the various discussions on this topic I have had the pleasure of having to the tune of claret and cheekiness from Dundee.
First off there was the Labour party. Honest to gods, what the hell happened. Down the grapevine, Labour is so fractured that no one in Labour really knows what’s happening either. The short down is that in the aftermath of the EU referendum, in the outcome of their defeat, Liberal Labour MPs executed their most powerful coup yet against the socialist Union Labour faction. Jeremy Corbyn has not been a stranger to coup attempts, mass resignations, MPs working from without to sabotage him from within or MPs suspended for antisemitism, but the sheer scale of all four happening in such a short span of time is fatal.
Indeed, with everyone in power asking him to resign, David Cameron even begging him exasperatingly to resign with dignity as he did, the sheer fact that Corbyn still remains standing is both a source of criticism and praise. Most amusing is how Momentum wants Labour MPs to respect the will of the people when it comes to Corbyn, whilst vetoing the will of the people when it comes to the referendum. I can't think of many people who would still carry on under such assault.
On a personal note I have always fought the notion that democracy should be about crushing your opponents and achieving victory, but such idealism will not survive long, it was barely born to begin with :
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Corbyn’s stubbornness, his complete refusal to back down is a double edged sword.
Uncertainty is the key word here, and with a Leader leading a Party in revolt, Labour is effectively paralyzed until further notice. I’m not even going to go into detail about the antisemitism, Naz Shah saying all Israeli Jews should be deported from Jerusalem to the USA or Ken Livingstone saying Hitler rose to power on a Zionist platform, I do not know where to start, only knowing when to laugh. I imagine most people reading this will not care much about what is happening to Labour – and this is indicative of the issue, the opposition party should be able to mount a considerable opposition to the ruling party in service of her Majesty, but so far all it has done is work ambivalently with the ruling party and eat itself.
This can I think all be traced back to when Corbyn began his purge. Corbyn prided himself on creating an inclusive, dynamic cabinet – that only held people loyal to him and his ideology, and excluded women from all shadow posts of great power. This killed liberal faith in him at a time when it was already faltering, and has meant Corbyn has become fully reliant on his socialist allies in Europe and the Trade Union and student activists of the UK – a dangerous position to be in. I’m not sure if he can come back from this, I don’t think he can, but if Labour are going to cut him at the knees, they better have a replacement Leader capable on deck yesterday.
Then there’s the Conservative party’s infighting, which took a dramatic turn that managed to surprise even me! When asked what I would do were I in one of the big lads shoes, I thought Boris Jonson’s best chance for negotiations with the EU were to have Theresa May lead them. Thing about the negotiations is that I don’t think the results matter all that much as much as how they are marketed to the public, as by their end the public will be too tired to dispute beyond high-energy activists and lobbyists (business as usual). What does however matter incredibly, is at least satisfying everyone powerful enough that they don’t decide it’s better to destroy everyone than admit defeat, the key here is finding a compromise that many hate and can blame on someone ineffectually, whilst many find the compromise better than nothing and grudgingly accept it, meaning stability is ensured and life moves on.
For this reason Theresa May would be highly qualified for the task, she seems to be of stalwart integrity and character (whether she is or not – she seems it, and that’s what matters). To paraphrase what I read in the papers about her recently, she is not very popular amongst her peers because she refuses to gossip and only talks business, Nick Clegg referring to her as the Ice Queen because she is professional to the extreme – thus is most likely, exactly who she seems to be. If politicians are nervous around you, you have strong moral spine. Also noteworthy is that whilst campaigning for Remain, she was honest even when such honesty was disadvantageous to Remain – very rare to have an honest politician that advances as far in politics as she has.
Unfortunately as with Corbyn, that moral spine, planting your feet down and refusing to compromise on it, is once again a source of criticism and praise. That Theresa May campaigned for Remain would help alleviate the concerns of Remain voters, in that someone who argued for them would be conducting the negotiations and would be able to secure protections against their wildest UKIP nightmares.
If Boris Johnson backed her, coupled with her reputation for professionalism, the 52% may still harbour suspicion, but would be alleviated too with a Eurosceptic leader placing his word of good faith in her – and if anything went wrong, Leave could blame May, Remain could blame Johnson, and neither side would be at each other’s throats (on the hoi polloi level).
The two I think, would have been willing to take on this responsibility, reaping the rewards and falls. Well, that is until Theresa May announced she would on no circumstances make a deal with Boris Johnson, notably Boris arranged a meeting with May in which she did not bother turning up, thereafter making it clear to the press, she did not believe it right to negotiate for something she did not believe in (pragmatically and ideologically).
That was before Michael Gove delivered a stunning execution of Boris Johnson, perhaps the greatest surprise of this all. I had believed Theresa May to be the dark horse in this, but I had completely missed in all of this Michael Gove being the Kingmaker – who it now appears will go down in history as the "cunt who arranged it all from the beginning" (that was in the papers, albeit censored, from some unnamed insider of Boris’s team). Michael Gove is an altogether unassuming man, who does not look like a man of great ambition – thus looks are proven deceitful again.
Michael Gove promised his support to Boris Johnson from the start, and in the runup to the Leadership contest Boris felt quite secure in that he had the leadership in the bag, that is until he received a phone call from someone announcing that Gove had gone off and announced his own intention to become leader, completely terminating Boris’s chance of becoming leader and forcing Boris to announce he was no longer running for leadership.
I’m unsure as to what Gove’s reward here was. Ostensibly it is to become Prime Minister himself, but realistically he doesn’t stand a chance – he already betrayed Cameron’s camp, and he just betrayed Boris’s camp, he has isolated himself from his entire party and does not have popular or union support as Corbyn does in the labour party. Thus I suspect he has made a deal with someone, probably 4 months ago, and has already secured his exit path. My favourite quote was from someone describing Gove as a suicide bomber who walked into Boris’s camp wearing his colours, only to reveal at the last moment his ambition – this was not an attack Gove intended to overtly walk away from.
Amidst all this, Theresa May stands to be now the most likely candidate for Prime Minister. I recall earlier a good Belgian inquiring as to why in the race for Tory leadership, I placed in order of likelihood Boris at #1, Osborne at #2 and May at #3. This was because the good Belgian had not heard of May at all. My explanation was: besides her long list of qualifications from working at the BOE, managing of Tory relationships as Chairman of the Tory party, numerous shadow secretary posts and ultimately her rise to position as Home Secretary, Theresa May was considerably less controversial than George Osborne (who tanked his ability to win after his pension cuts scandal, declaring he did not intend to run for Prime Minister) and Boris Johnson (who just lost support of the Tory party after Gove dropped him, meaning if he won, he would be as Corbyn – a Prime Minister with popularity yet no power).
In the event of Osborne and Johnson being cut out of the race, I realistically saw no other candidate who would most likely win than Theresa May. Given her unique ability to be perhaps the only statesman in the UK currently capable of (and indeed, even showing a credible desire to) reconcile Brexit and Bremain, I am firm in the belief that her become Prime Minister is currently the best thing that could happen to the UK in this current year and climate, and that is coming from an ardent Leave supporter, supporting one who could very well obligate us to the European Union. Theresa May would be able to placate the public, but more importantly get MPs on all sides of all aisle in line – both Labour and Conservative, both Leave and Remain. This is of paramount importance at a time when both camps now seem more than willing to destroy themselves if it ensures the other does not win, like crabs in a bucket.
Interestingly amidst all this is that Gove and Osborne plan on going on holiday after the contest ends with their families, as the two were apparently good friends. Snakery aside, it’s good to know that two friends who were so prominent in Leave and Remain can still come together when they must support one another, even at such a time when people believe the vote to have turned children and parents, siblings and siblings, grand elders and grandchildren against one another.
In quite a happy detour, the Juncker faction is about to be mortally decapitated by Merkel, who is stepping in to stop Juncker’s insanity from destroying the European Union. Too late? I don't know, but I my mottos are always you either laugh or you cry, and that you are never too late for damage control.
The EU has been happy to ignore Juncker’s often drunken unprofessionalism, his deep resentment for plebians, his utter disrespect for democracy in which Juncker seems to have tried his best to piss off every European leader who didn’t bow down to him (even getting drunk and slapping Orban in the face ha), who in response to Europeans growing irate at the EU’s continual integration policy, Juncker repeatedly insisted on further and further integration.
Juncker has indeed in response to the UK voting to leave, led plans for punitive measures upon the UK and calls for further integration (most radically in the leaked plan from the Polish source earlier, de jure one state), both of which would spell the end of the European Union. Will Merkel be able to placate Europeans? I do not know. I do believe her presence in negotiations will be of benefit to both the United Kingdom, Germany and of the European Union, even if she does not believe any of the things she says (most notably saying multiculturalism is a failure whilst supporting mass migration, criticizing Juncker for refusing to compromise and seeking further integration whilst she herself will not compromise on open borders and further integration e.t.c.) it will be enough for Europeans to be placated.
Amidst all this mess, there appears to only truly be two winners; eurosceptics and feminism. Eurosceptics across Europe have been calling for their own referendums, emboldened by the victory in the UK – I was gobsmacked to find that the UK was not even the most Eurosceptic country in the world (at the time of referendum) anymore, that Juncker wanted to publicly respond with integration into one state in response was the definition of insanity, doing the same thing every time and expecting a different result. Feminism because as the UK looks set to have Theresa May, the EU is about to be sorted by Merkel, Le Pen is set to take France by storm, the USA will have Clinton - decisions that have already shaken the world, that will decide ultimately the very future of entire civilizations, nations, great powers, superpowers and supranational entities, will be in the hands of women.
Quite so, for even in the UK, our most powerful opposition to Leave is no longer Corbyn, but Sturgeon, and if European leaders continue to pursue anti-British rhetoric, then we shall in the UK most likely not select one who wants to reconcile and compromise like May, but shall instead select the even more surprising dark horse Andrea Leadsom - someone who I ruled out as unlikely to become leader, who is now the frontrunner as a result of Gove's actions. Leadsom comes from a similar background as May, how they differ is in belief - Leadsom is Brexit through and through, and is considerably less concerned with appeasing a Brussels that seems committed to making Britons suffer.
On such a sombre note, it seems quite fitting that in popular discourse we as Britons are so engrossed in the battle of the Somme, one hundred years after Britain's bloodiest day.
The splendour of the European civilisation of the Renaissance and the Holy Roman Empire, of Beethoven and Zola and Liege altarpieces, was under threat from Prussian militarism in 1914 as Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany deliberately unleashed its fourth war in half a century. Imperial Germany had to be stopped before it hegemonised the continent, in the way that Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV and Napoleon had previously tried to do... Yet when the British generals looked at the Western battlefront after nearly two years of warfare in the summer of 1916, all they could see was barbed wire and trenches stretching almost unbroken for more than 400 miles from the English Channel to the Swiss border. How to break through and move the struggle away from the devastated territory of France and Belgium into that of the Second Reich itself?
The story of what went so horrifically wrong on the Somme on the morning of July 1 was been told well and often. The over-optimistic plan of General Sir Douglas Haig; the huge artillery bombardment of 1.6 million shells that nonetheless failed to cut the barbed wire; the large numbers of misfiring shells; the deeper than expected German dugouts; the slow walking pace of the attacking forces, weighed down by an average of 60lb of equipment per man; the Germans winning “the race to the parapet” and getting their machine guns into place in good time; the resultant massacre.
Yet the reason History Today concludes that it wasn’t futile was because the battle, which continued until November 18 and which saw the deployment of tanks for the first time, resulted in Verdun being saved and France therefore staying in the war, albeit with mass mutinies breaking out in the French army in 1917.
In all, the 141-day battle cost the British 419,655 casualties, the French 194,451 and the Germans more than 600,000, but the Germans found it harder to replace their manpower. Indeed, Captain von Hentig of the Guards Reserve Division described the Somme as “the muddy grave of the German field army”.
The most important fact about the battle, however, was what came afterwards. If there is any consolation to be had for the appalling sacrifices of July 1, 1916, it is that the British Expeditionary Force quickly embarked on a revolution in tactics at almost every level, in what has been rightly described by historian John Lee as “a steep and agonising learning curve”. The ultimate result was an army that by 1918 fully deserved to win the war. Perhaps it is part of the human condition to learn more from defeat than from victory.
There is something else that can be usefully taken away from this doleful centenary, and that is to put our own present-day woes into their proper perspective. For however bad post-Brexit Britain might fare, and even if all the worst-case economic scenarios play out (which I do not for a moment think they will), the worst day of our future would still be infinitely better than the best day in the battle of the Somme, when an average of almost 3,000 men were killed or maimed every day of the battle.
Our commitment to Europe was paid in the blood of thousands in those days, rather than merely in the financial price of access to the single market. Today, several hundred HSBC backroom staff are being sent to the continent to anticipate the problems attendant on Brexit; a century ago we were sending similar-sized battalions to be mown down in the fields of Picardy. Our lives are immeasurably better now, and it is largely thanks to the sacrifices made 100 years ago today.
http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/andrew-roberts-the-slaughter-of-the-somme-battlefield-was-not-a-futile-sacrifice-a3285951.htmlAye, make sacrifice when the world is killing
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