Thursday 27 April 2017

Cui bono?

Having backed themselves into a corner, with only UKIP for ideological company, the Prime Minister and the Government are increasingly - perhaps in desperation, as it's all they have -  directing empty nationalist rhetoric against our friends and allies in the European Union.
Of course, it's a situation largely of Mrs May's own making,  it seems because of an fixed obsession with immigration as being the only significant cause of Brexit (yet something she oddly failed to reduce as Home Secretary, despite already having many of the tools to do so),  but it's a growing tragedy for which we will all pay dearly - in terms of economic decline, social division and cultural isolation.
I am now becoming deeply ashamed and saddened beyond words at the self-destructive direction in which our country appears to be heading. It's not enough to repeat the foolish and self-serving mantra that it is the 'will of the people: the necessary question is always 'cui bono?'  We can be sure that it won't be those in the regions alienated by Westminster's long and studied indifference, it won't be those struggling to keep their heads above water, it won't be those queuing at the food banks... it won't even be the majority of those who voted (for whatever reason) for this strange, almost somnambulistic  march towards national humiliation and the diminution of our influence in the world.
To adapt those possibly apocryphal words of Marie-Antoinette, "Qu'ils mangent de la souveraineté"...