By MICHAEL BLACKBURN.

I DON’T THINK any of the political class thought that the EU referendum would turn out to be an inflection point in British politics, an action that would set in motion an almost revolutionary chain of events that would change the fate of the nation for a long time to come. They did not expect it to result in the violent shaking up of the major parties or the polarisation among certain parts of society or the dangerous confrontation between the people and parliament that is in process at the moment. They thought it would be politics as normal in which the establishment would get its own way somehow or other and life would carry on as before, despite a bit of grumbling here and there.

Instead it has accelerated processes that were already at work within the party system. Processes of decay, and possibly of reinvention.

The Liberal Democrats, having abandoned their gung-ho free market, laissez-faire economic principles aeons ago, and finding themselves relegated to third place in the system, have simply become a loony adjunct to Labour, fellow travellers who avoid the smear of being called socialists. Their leadership regenerated itself from the portentously dim Vince Cable to the pretentiously dim Swinson, changing age and sex in the process like Doctor Who but without any of the erstwhile intelligence, wit or charm. The best thing that can be said of them is that they openly remain opposed to leaving the EU, which is honest. So at heart they’re traitors. They might as well call themselves the Quisling Party.

Labour under Comrade Corbyn has just about reduced itself to its quintessence (least it has one, unlike the Tories). Unfortunately that quintessence is Marxist…

Labour under Comrade Corbyn has just about reduced itself to its quintessence (least it has one, unlike the Tories). Unfortunately that quintessence is Marxist — authoritarian, dogmatic, economically insane, anti-British and anti-Semitic. Or just plain evil and destructive, which is a more straightforward description.

The so-called moderates of the party have shown themselves to be no more than a gaggle of hand-waving big girls’ blouses. Or if you find that offensive, big Jessies. They couldn’t get rid of the Comrade through the normal means of a vote of no-confidence and they couldn’t do anything about the Jew-hatred encouraged by his cohorts and they haven’t been able to get him to stick to the party’s policy of committing to leaving the EU.

Some in the party have probably realised the game is up and they will never get old Labour back. MPs, of course, are hanging on because their salaries are more important than their principles. And most of them do not want to acknowledge the brutal truth, which is that the essence of Labour is inevitably the vicious, resentful Marxism propounded by McDonnell. It does not matter how long people go on about progressivism and social democracy, etc., pretending there is any form of benevolent socialism, the beast will eventually reveal itself.

They do not have the nous to perceive this nor the courage to renounce it totally. When you listen to the likes of David Lammy, Jess Phillips, Diane Abbott and Emily Thornberry, you realise you are encountering ignorance and stupidity of such adamantine density that even if they found themselves being shipped to the gulags on trumped-up charges they would still believe they were on their way to an expenses-paid holiday, a Butlins for Bolshies.

As for the The Tories they are at last dissolving into possible nothingness. It is unclear whether there is any conservative quintessence left. The surrender to the left’s programme, parading under the term “liberal”, probably began back in the Victorian period but the real rot started after the Second World War, when the Attlee government embedded statist welfarism into the British political system which no Tory administration, not even Thatcher’s, has truly reined-in or negated.

Thatcher defined those limp, interventionist-loving types as “wets”. Chief among them was Heath, of course, the villain who took Britain into the Common Market and who loved coming up with ineffective and unTory policies that gamed the economy (unsuccessfully). The wets ultimately ousted Thatcher and we ended up two-and-a-half decades later with a female version of Heath in Theresa May, one of the most feckless Prime Ministers of modern times. The Tory party had meanwhile refilled its ranks with spineless, politically correct clones who thought pandering to the latest fad, whether it was gay marriage, transgenderism, climate emergency panic or anti-sugar taxation, was the cool thing to do and a vote-winner with the general public.

There’s the stumbling block. It has always been the general public the politicians and media have ignored. That’s why they misjudged the EU referendum. It’s why they are consistently misjudging the mood of the people at the moment. Listen to any broadcast, interview, discussion about the state of play with the government, parliament, Boris Johnson, the no-deal Brexit and so on, and you’d think this was purely a drama involving politicians and journalists. Us oiks don’t get a look in.

It is an absolute truism that the political class are disconnected from the populace. Instead of making contact to find out what people really feel, they rely on the media to tell them. And they are dumb enough to believe the media are telling them the truth. But not only are the media lying, they themselves don’t really know either because they see themselves as a part of the political class. What is worse is that they don’t want to know. They all live in a self-contained feedback system into which reality rarely intrudes.

Except…except — and dare we hope, or are we to be disappointed yet again by our elected representatives? — do Boris Johnson and his advisors have more of an understanding of the mood of the people than the majority of buffoons around them? Theresa May certainly had none. Expelling the rabble of discontents from the Conservative party was indeed a ruthless move by Johnson, just as his curt response that he would rather die in a ditch than agree to an extension of the Brexit date was visceral and unpolitic. It was, however, the kind of language that we hoi polloi warm to, given the regular evasive prevarications of politicians.

There may be some remnants of Conservatism left that Johnson & Co. can revivify, which would be a good thing because there needs to be some solid opposition to Labour’s Marxism, and someone unequivocally committed to the vote in the referendum. Every day it becomes apparent that parliament is now arrayed not just against the government but against the people. They won’t allow the government to govern and they won’t allow a general election so that we can decide who governs. Many of us would prefer to see them in a ditch than put up with their antics any more.

We are living in a time in which it is definitely not politics as normal. How abnormal it gets depends on the arrogance of the politicians and the patience of the people. The latter is more likely to run out sooner than the former.

Who knows what then?

♦

Currente Calamo columnist, poet and writer Michael Blackburn lives in Lincolnshire. A Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Lincoln University (2005 – 2008), his poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies over the years, including Being Alive (Bloodaxe) and Something Happens, Sometimes Here (Five Leaves Press). His most recent book is Albion Days (perennisperegrinator press). Sucks to Your Revolution is a collection of his Fortnightly columns.