No. 176 – Time to Get into Your Life Boat James?
Dear James,
Can you hear it? The sound of rivets popping. The sound of a keel twisting. The crack of metal stringers breaking, of spars rupturing. It started almost a year ago in Northern Ireland. Ever since, the creaking and straining have become ever more prominent, ever more persistent. Bit by bit, James, the ship of state is beginning to crack up. The United Kingdom has never been under such strain from within and without and much of it is to do with your party, its ideology and the lack of coherent, inspiring, leadership.
Yesterday came the Great Northern Revolt. The Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham and others in the north including some Tory MPs, are refusing to accept a diktat from central government ordering them to go in to level 3, the top level of the new coronavirus Richter scale. At a meeting yesterday morning the government told them either you are with us or against us. The implicit arrogance and threat was clear. Central government rules even when the ship is floundering below. Burnham was not against the level 3 plan but wants an appropriate financial packet to go with it. The country is angry.
But this is so much more than disaffection in the north. Last December Boris Johnson did a deal that Mrs May had said no British government could ever contemplate. He told the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, that Northern Ireland could stay within the EU single market and customs union after Brexit to allow free trade to continue across the border with the Republic. The deal clearly stated that there would instead be a border in the Irish Sea between the EU and the UK with the necessary customs structures. Boris solemnly signed the deal and then three months ago said that he would have to break the agreement and international law should it be necessary. Trust, that principle spar in the UK’s ship of state, had busted. For the first time in centuries the British government had threatened to break international law. The noise of that spar breaking resounded through world capitals.
Yesterday an Ipsos MORI poll for STV News revealed that 58% of ‘likely to vote ‘ Scots are now for independence from Britain. That puts support for independence at its highest yet. The Scots are fed up with Tory arrogance expressed in its highest form, Brexit and its lowest form, Boris. They feel they would be so much better in Europe.
The day before, the First Minister of Wales had asked the Westminster government to close the borders with England to prevent people from Coronavirus hotspots in England from bringing it into the Principality. The government refused. The First Minister has since found the powers to do it himself. It will be put into force from Friday. Yet another row of rivets pop. Recent polls showed that even in Wales support for independence has grown to about 25%.
The North is against the south. Scotland is against Westminster. Wales is exercising its new found powers. The young are in danger of breaking with the old. And Boris and Cummings continue in their arrogance that little England can flourish alone in this twenty first century world. Because the biggest crack is not yet upon us. The sound of the keel twisting to the point of breaking is very near. On December 31st we finally leave the EU. Which ever it is, deal or no deal, the UK will be alone on the high seas with every sign that Boris’s hope of rescue by the USA, will land on deaf ears in the next Oval Office.
James, the ship of state is a metaphor that has always served our United Kingdom well. It implies stability, compromise, mutual respect between the nations and the combined strength that comes from all those things to face anything that comes our way. We are at war with a virus and we need a calm coalition of effort not the frantic madness of single issue obsessives. We require real leadership and that is what we have not got. Instead our ship of state is in danger of tearing itself apart. Instead, the government is pouring billions of taxpayers money into its private friends in an attempt to bale out the sinking ship while all around them it has had a well established but unused life boat system. The alarm bells are ringing James. The warning lights are flashing. The rivets are exploding from their mounts.
Time to get into your own lifeboat James?
Kind regards,
BH - Your Concerned Constituent