Not a chance. With Liberal Democrats rolling into Bournemouth for their annual gathering, Uncle Vince had to grab the headlines. As we live in an age of outrageous claims and lies I suppose they needed something - their electoral endeavours and polling aren't redolent of that magic term, 'LibDem revival'. With 12 MPs and their rapid advances on the local council by-election scene a distant memory, when pressed on his ludicrous ambition all Vince can offer is the observation that politics is in flux and therefore anything can happen. Le sigh. His favourite soundbite at the moment is how the Tories are engulfed by civil war and that Labour is in the midst of now simmering, now suppressed internal strife. Yes, just as a broken clock is right twice a day so a Liberal Democrat leader occasionally tells the truth. However, understanding why this is the case explains why Vince's hopes are among the most forlorn ever harboured by a leading politician. The Tories are having a hard time ostensibly because of that general election, but their result only brought long-term problems to a head. For the last five years this blog has banged on about the declining fortunes of the Conservative Party. This is expressed in an overall tendency for their membership to shrink and their vote consolidating around declining demographics. Theresa May's achievement, and in normal times she would have been lauded, was to firm up that support. UKIP were destroyed, inroads made in "old" working class, Labour-loyal areas, and mobilising unionist voters gave the SNP a bloody nose. These constituencies, however, are not getting any larger and hitherto the Tories have relied on their greater propensity to turn out. Tory divisions, which have always mapped on to different configurations of business interests and their allies in the classes beneath them, are exacerbated by a sense of creeping doom, of having zero handle on what's coming next. As declinism set in its leading politicians have grown ever more preoccupied with short-term party interests, of any old wheeze and gimmick to turn around its fortunes. It's why we are where we are. As the pace of political change has quickened, we know we're normal times. A combination of fear of the Tories and the programme Jeremy Corbyn's Labour offered unexpectedly powered it to the party's highest vote for 20 years. It rode the wave of a new, reconfigured class politics and cemented an alliance between increasingly dominant immateriallabourers. Labour's difficulties arise from being the de facto party of the new working class, of responding to them, mobilising them, and encouraging them to move into politics in large numbers. Labour is ascending because the forces powering the party are on the rise. And likewise, the conflict in the party is a direct consequence of the new colliding with the bureaucracy, habits, and politics of the old. This is the story of British politics. After years of fraying loyalties and mass abstention, the direction of travel is in the opposite direction. It also looks like this situation is going to persist, and not just because fear of the other has stiffened support for the two main parties. Not only do they map on to two class coalitions with opposed existences, but seven years of Tory austerity - aided at every turn by Uncle Vince - have sharpened the contradictions. May's government doesn't offer anything apart from more of the same, Britain's political economy is going to stay largely the same, and so politics looks as though it's going to retain its polarising aspect. What room for the Liberal Democrats? Well, there isn't much of one. They can carry on eking out an existence on the margins, but the famous liberal allergy to anything resembling a structural analysis of how societies work not only makes the LibDem leader sound deluded, but it marks him and his party out as singularly and willfully stupid.
Nick Cohen's latest article for The Observer is idiotic. In fact, it is triply so. There are the demonstrable untruths, the nonsense about Stalinism and personality cults, that Corbynism is not just about the "left behind" middle class but is now, apparently, the expression of "a significant slice of the British bourgeoisie". Ridiculous. Then there is the undermining of his own argument. On the left, even among the husks for whom the spark of social conscience was extinguished long ago, there is a long tradition of using 'the middle class' as an insult. By labelling something middle class, you are inviting the reader to dismiss whatever is under discussion. This classic ploy is initially so fielded by Cohen to question the legitimacy of Corbynism. Then he does a 180 and starts exploring the grievances and concerns powering the movement. He even comes close to acknowledging that Corbynism may have a point. But then he remembers he's supposed to be attacking and witters "less understandable or forgivable is the nature of today’s middle-class backlash against a status quo that is rigged against them." Eh? Is voting against an anti-austerity party somehow an "unforgivable" activity? Last of all is the bewilderment that has marked his "journalism" since Jeremy Corbyn was catapulted from backbench obscurity to the top of the Labour Party. If you want to understand how the well remunerated professional and the precarious care worker, along with a large majority of the under-40s populate the activist and voter vase of Corbynism you've got to get a handle on the changes to Britain's political economy, on how it is shifting from material to immaterial production. I can understand why some people don't want to understand, because it calls into question everything they know about politics as well as their assumptions about the social world (and, indeed, their position as privileged interpreters of it). But as I'm fond of saying, understanding and explaining isn't the same as excusing. Studiously avoiding thinking about change, the likes of Cohen and his mates in the dead centre embrace their bewilderment and cling to the illusions hanging over from the recent past. That's why we see a cavalier disregard for the facts, zombie arguments from the last couple of years and, of course ritual abuse. When your name in journalism is made and, presumably, have dinner partied with the great and the good of Fleet Street, we see "stars" getting paid handsomely for turning out of the most egregious rubbish. Cohen is by no means the worst offender, though he's increasingly in competition with Dan Hodges for being the wrongest about everything. Yet where is the quality control? Where are the editors? Don't they care about the reputation of their own rags any more? Whatever the case, Cohen has given us yet another example of how not to write about Corbynism. Though, to be truthful, I hope he and his ilk keep on keeping on. Every sentence and paragraph advertises their estrangement from the world, which is guaranteed to ensure those growing numbers trying to make sense of it are going to give them a pass.
Timing is always an issue in politics. Boris Johnson's periodic reminder that he's tussling for the Tory crown raised an eyebrow or two, coming as it did on the evening of a terror attack on the tube. Still, such trifles are nothing when we're dealing with a historic personality of world importance. The latest phase in the BoJo vanity project is a return to the scene of his vainglorious disaster - Brexit - to double down on the pledge repeated ad nauseum throughout the campaign, that the money Britain saves from its European Union membership dues are going to be spent on the NHS. The Telegraph's precis gives us a tour of his magisterial intervention. By magisterial, I do of course mean vapid and empty. As per the Johnson way it's all piss and wind with few insubstantial points and a heavy dollop of dishonesty, as Jon Worth's fisking establishes. Still, at least there is some consistency here. His pro-Brexit affiliations were entirely mercenary and obviously self-serving, and last night's Brexit intervention carries on in the same vein. For example, a lot of words are expended slapping down hard remainers (which, to be honest, are irritating, if well-meaning), massaging the brittle egos and fissiparous arguments of bottler Boris's batshit Brexit base and, well, avoiding the politics. The dishonesty piles in with the attacks on the non-existent GDP drag of common regulations. He likewise dismisses talk of a transition period that eases, rather than throws Britain out of the single market and the customs union. The deceit barrels on as he pretends trade deals can be negotiated and be immediately ready to forestall the economic shock a sharp divorce from the EU would entail. He also reckons the EU would be "protectionist" when it comes to the introduction of new technologies such as driverless vehicles while Britain would have a regulatory environment open to experimentation and implementation, entirely forgetting the German car industry is vying for the title of world leader in the field. The whole thing drips with complacency, as well as the idiocy of the EU needing Britain more than Britain needs the EU. When it comes to the thin film of substance, Johnson lounges in the warm bath of deregulation - the go to for lazy and clueless Tory politicians. And the restating of the £350m/week. And that is it. No attempt to locate the source of a funding boost, but certainly strong on implication that the EU is preventing the government from prioritising the health service. Johnson's essay was a proper exercise of writing 4,000 words when a paragraph would have done, a skein of delusion and lies wrapped around empty ambition. Nevertheless, some people are easily impressed; The Telegraph refers to Johnson's screed as a post-Brexit "grand vision". With little to show on Brexit, why has Johnson advertised his vacuity? As noted at the beginning, his essay is less a leadership pitch and more a reminder to the party and the country that he's still a power in Westminsterland. With Theresa May saying she's in it for the long haul, this is Johnson jogging her memory that she remains on borrowed time. Furthermore, for such a towering ego it must have hurt to see the media treat Jacob Rees-Mogg as their favourite, both as a leader-in-waiting and, well, the new Boris Johnson. Ouch. The £350m wheeze sees Johnson relaunch himself by associating with the most memorable and popular promise of the Leave campaign. In his mind's eye, he's cottoned on to making him synonymous with the pledge can surely mean nothing but electoral good for his prospects. Yet he's forgotten the taint hanging about his person. The British public are used to seeing the bumbling and the fooling and, well, those voters ain't what they used to be. Johnson as Have I Got News For You-sponsored rock star is an awkward memory, and for millions of younger people he's as repellent and awful as the rest of them. While polar opposites vis a vis May in people skills and pretending to humanity, there are further millions utterly alienated by him because of his Brexit opportunism. Factor in all the other problems the Tories enjoy and he's yesterday's man for yesterday's party. That certainly makes for a nice fit, especially as, assuming trends continue, his party walks out the exit after the next election. Boris Johnson is haunted by the phantom of missed opportunity. Stabbed in the back by Gove and blocked from what he regards as his destiny by a Prime Minister too deluded to quit, he can sense his moment passing. Too cautious by far to launch a coup, it's only a matter of time before despair and despondency come knocking.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of Marx's Capital, for my money the most significant and monumental work of social science ever published. Something would be amiss if a few words couldn't be summoned up to mark this occasion. While not one of Marx's better read works, it's level pegging with the Communist Manifesto for the mantle of most influential. Indeed, such is the power of the analysis explored in this breeze block of a book that it jumped its pages and, over the last century-and-a-half, set up residence in the heads of hundreds of millions of people. It would be fair to say Capital is the most influential book that hasn't been read. Marx's project was simple in inspiration and exhaustive in its scope: to unmask the dynamics and tendencies of capitalism (which, curiously, is not a term he himself used) and in the process critique and damn the economics of apologia used to justify, and thereby mystify, the system. Capital is truly an execution of Marx's dictum of "the ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be." Marx dissected and deconstructed the arguments of his contemporaries and forebears, chiefly Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and with wit, sarcasm, and the marshalling of voluminous data destroyed their muddled, convoluted schemes. Marx's great achievement is that Capital peeled back the liberal and conservative bullshit and showed the system for what it was: a turbo-charged, expansive (and expanding) dynamo that owes its revolutionising qualities to the class antagonism at its heart. He showed definitively that profit was not rooted in buying cheap and selling dear as per the fairy tales of mainstream economics, but was in fact the consequence of the exploitation of one class by another. Volume One was to be the first in a series of volumes. It was concerned with the process of production of capital, the second its circulation, the third on profit and forms of surplus value (or "the process of capitalist production as a whole"), and the never finished volumes four, five and six were to deal with wage labour, the state, and the world market. Arguably the work of Marxists since has been the filling out of the planned-for volumes. Certainly the work of Toni Negri, who's featured here quite a bit of late, straddles these phantom works and particularly the unwritten book on wage labour. Unfortunately, the status of Capital in economics and the other social sciences demonstrates the efficacy of the materialist assumptions underpinning the methodology of Marx's work. Despite eviscerating capitalism, revealing its class bound character and its inexorable tendency to crisis, economics particularly and social science generally carry on as if the book never existed. The half-truths, errors, and ideological fallacies Marx critiqued and lampooned from his desk in the British Library continue to crop up in the 21st century iteration of the dismal science. Capitalism is exploitative and, more to the point, mortal, but these findings are overridden and overwritten by the class truths that dominate all capitalist societies. Mainstream economics is always partial and frequently nonsensical because it is bound to the class power of the owners of capital. Yet just as capital without a working class is impossible, no matter how Capital is critiqued and dismissed, the class truths it speaks, of a propertyless class who have to rent out their labour power in order to live, are never going away either. Capital today remains relevant because the social and economic system it describes and critiques is still with us. Should capitalism last another 500 years the analysis Marx made will retain its explanatory force. The three published volumes are to social science what Darwin's The Origin of the Species is to natural sciences, a tremendous achievement that gives us the tools to diagnose the condition of the present and think about what we need to do about it. This book may be 150 years old, but the theory and polemic it contains are still among the most modern there is.
Hell hath no fury for a Tory scorned. At least George Osborne is acting as if that is the case, given his reported remarks. Yes, saying you won't rest until bits of Theresa May are quivering in multiple bags shut away in the freezer is such a hoot that my sides have hardly stopped aching since lunch time. As chancellor Osborne would have been all over them had something similarly crass been uttered by a leading Labour politician. Still, the only consistency the right has is the pursuit of power and the protection of privilege. Principles are momentary conveniences for momentary circumstances, nothing more. What then is Osborne playing at? In the TL;DR pen portrait in Esquire, it observes how the passage for an Osborne comeback appears closed. With but a gaggle of Cameroons to rely on, his support base is, ooooh, approximately the same size as May's band of true believers. There's also the small matter of him being widely despised in the parliamentary party, as well as the yellowing (greying?) grassroots. Like Dave he was tolerated for as long as they comprised a winning team. Their Notting Hill liberalism rankled, and their half-arsed approach to winging everything - the Scottish referendum, gambling Britain's EU membership (and losing) - annoyed and antagonised plenty of old school Tories. History will record the removal of Osborne from Number 11 and dumping him on the backbenches as among the meagre few actions of May's premiership to merit universal approval. Osborne's not coming back, at least via the Tory party. He was supposedly interested in the centre party wheeze, but as Sam Coates notes for Esquire "George Osborne likes power. And power is executed in a number of forms." His editorship of the Evening Standard is right up his street: a circulation of a million copies in the seat of government and a boss who's a billionaire mate, he's happy. At the Standard's helm Osborne can imagine himself as a real power in the land. As editorial after editorial marks his position against Corbynism (obvs) and unreconstructed rightwingery, the opportunity to define centre politics anew as, well, the politics of George Osborne is there for the taking. This is the centre not as a reheated third way, but warmed over class war Toryism plus EU membership. Inspiring stuff. As the most petty-minded of Tories to have held high office for some years, Osborne obviously enjoys needling the hapless May. But what must annoy is despite her staggering from disaster to disaster, pausing to take in a few crises along the way, is how she ignores him. Following Tory leaders past, the only papers that matter are the Murdoch titles, The Telegraphy and the Daily Mail. They are taken to express the authentic voice of Tory Britain, and so must be pandered to, fed exclusives and receive carefully calibrated leaks. The Standard however is amorphous. As a free sheet it enjoys a huge circulation, but to determine its influence is another matter. Yes, it is a more interesting paper thanks to Osborne's vendetta - at least for sad political people who follow such things - but its celebrity pages have more of a sway over its readers than the cranky, obsessed editorials. To get noticed and to force his antagonist to respond, Osborne has no recourse other than to play with the misogynistic imagery of serial murderers. For as long as May stays in Number 10 and pays Osborne no mind, the more outrageous and unhinged his behaviour as a "journalist" is set to become. Embarrassing for the Tories, ultimately ruinous for Osborne, it's pop corn fodder for the rest of us.
As promised, an unprincipled shower gave the government succour last night by sitting on their hands. Though the withdrawal bill handed unaccountable and arbitrary powers to ministers (pending amendments), not even newly-anointed liberal hero Ken Clarke counted among those defending Parliament's limited powers. However, one honourable member, a man synonymous with political principle was found traipsing through the aye lobby with Theresa May and her "team". You know I'm talking about Dennis Skinner. To be honest, I was not in the least bit surprised. Though it might have come as a shock for some Jeremy Corbyn supporters, Dennis makes clear via Skwawkbox that he's always been anti-EU and is being entirely consistent with his voting record. Fair enough, he has principles. He also voted for Labour's amendments to the bill and had they passed, we wouldn't be having a ding dong on this matter. But they didn't pass and we are having this conversation. Let us remind ourselves what the withdrawal bill was about. The question of whether Britain is leaving the European Union or not is, for the time being, settled. If the bill hadn't passed Brexit wasn't going away. Article 50's tock follows every tick and come March 2019 we'll either be out or temporarily suspended in a transitional arrangement. The main political question now is the manner of that exit and Britain's future relationship with the EU. Yet last night's vote wasn't even about that. It referred exclusively and solely to the government's relationship to Parliamentary accountability. Because of May's failed election and problems getting legislation through the House for the foreseeable future, empowering ministers avoids the possibility of defeat and destabilising the government further. Now, cast your mind back for a moment. When Harriet Harman instructed Labour MPs to abstain on the government's attack on working tax credits "in solidarity" with Labour voters wanting to see the thumbscrews tighten, it still meant refusing to take a stand on an attack on our people. Dennis protested that "I’m not voting for any power-grab", but that doesn't alter the fact that he did. He broke the Labour whip and voted to hand more power to Tory ministers. Of course, Skwawkbox have rallied the defence, singling out the abstainers for criticism (at least they didn't vote for it, guys) and crediting the Tories with a sub-conspiratorial Machiavellianism we have never seen these clowns evidence before. Apparently, they set a trap devised to get us fighting among ourselves. Please. There are plenty of Tories who find the bill objectionable but voted for it because losing could have brought the government down. Yet that unity wasn't foregone. Usually, if you want use Parliament to spring traps you never risk opening divisions on your own side. Second, Skwawkbox's alleged source is saying the party's leadership possess the collective wit of two short planks for not spotting it, that if Dennis was right, so was Kate Hoey and Frank Field. The onus wasn't on the majority of the PLP to follow their lead, but on them to accept party discipline and protect the democratic interests of working class people. Yes, Dennis has fought for our working people all his political life. But not on this occasion. He voted with the enemies of our party to imperil the basic democratic functions of Parliament. He acted against the interests of our class, and his silence over the central issue of the bill while waxing about the ephemera of democratic wills and Brexit voters suggests he knows it too. A sorry blemish on an otherwise upstanding record. All this serves to remind us that socialism is not a spectator sport or a grittier version of X-Factor. It is the collective struggle for the interests of our people to make a society fit for human beings. When one of our representatives works against those interests, our duty is to explain, criticise and hold them to account, regardless of who they are. It is not for us to make excuses and sweep the matter under the carpet. Our movement doesn't need heroes, it needs politicians who work for it and express those interests. And on this occasion, Dennis Skinner has fallen well short.
From time to time politics presents us with an acid test. Examples might be opposing wars based on dodgy dossiers, not taking more money off poor people, refusing to cheerlead the scapegoating of powerless populations, standing up against the marketisation of the NHS. You know the sort, a vitally important issue that comes down to very clear right and wrong sides. The Withdrawal Bill now going through the Commons are one of those issues. Not because it facilitates or stymies Brexit, but because it's an egregious power grab. It is a self-evident attempt by an authoritarian Prime Minister without authority to rule by fiat, to bypass Parliament and empower the government without check or scrutiny. We all know British democracy is flawed and frequently flaky, but this bill - if passed - makes matters substantially worse. What a disgrace then to see the grotesque chaos of Labour MPs - Labour MPs - scuttling around the TV studios handing out feeble excuses for their refusal to oppose the government. Failing to defend the most basic democratic functions of Parliament finds them on the wrong side. And when you look at the list of names who plan on either abstaining or voting with the government a sorrier collection of entitled has beens is seldom seen. Caroline Flint is the most prominent because, after all, advertising one's moral and political bankruptcy should become a chance for publicity at all times. But you also have John Spellar, Frank Field, Graham Stringer, and Kate Hoey, names that are never going to be synonymous with 'principled' and names, shock horror, that have found themselves consistently on the wrong side. For Caroline it's, you guessed it, all about the constituents. They voted to Leave and therefore she feels Labour should be looking to improve May's appeal bill instead of opposing it. Let's treat this argument with the due seriousness it deserves and classify it as a pile of disingenuous bobbins. Despite getting a deserved mugging by the electorate in June, May is hell bent on inflicting untold damage to the British economy and the livelihoods of its citizens. This, she reasons, will keep her career afloat and retain those voters who've abandoned UKIP to the yawning cynicism of racists and professional Islamophobes. As David Allen Green points out, contrary to the drivel of Caroline and co. the bill isn't really about Brexit. It makes no difference to seeing through of Article 50. It's a matter of how Brexit proceeds. They know this, so why are they prepared to throw Parliamentary democracy under a bus? Throughout her career, Caroline has shown a mercenary streak. Any progressive or Labourish-sounding policies she's championed are window dressing to a rotten core of anti-working class politics. She is entirely comfortable screwing poor single mums, migrant workers, and did float the idea of throwing unemployed council tenants out of their homes. In short, an appalling human being not fit to sit in Parliament for the Tories let alone the Labour Party. Frank Field is little better with his one man crusade to abolish social security as we know it. Kate Hoey and John Spellar go without saying. What unites them all are not the "wrong ideas" that would melt in the light of reason, they're motivated by a desire to cling onto their seats. As stupid empiricists who fell for the fool argument that because Labour constituencies disproportionately voted for Brexit we were looking at a wipe out during the general election, it appears the actual result passed them by. They're doubling down on the right wing sub-UKIP idiocies because it's easier, and less risky, to pander and stir up backward politics. Their dismal opportunism is as simple and as venal as that.
London Town rang again with the chants and pounding feet of a march, like it does most weekends. Demonstrations are always coalitions organised around broadly progressive issues, and therefore tend toward a left wing colouration. A good indicator of socialist creds is whether it attracts our friends the paper sellers or not. Less common are mobilisations of the right. The EDL and the Britain First Facebook group tend to avoid central London and strike out for the provinces, which more often than not means a car park on an out-of-town industrial estate. But the Countryside Alliance pulled off mass demonstrations early in His Blairness's reign, reminding us the right can organise extra-parliamentary opposition if the forces favour it. Rarer still are liberal marches. Occasional lobbies of Parliament with a dozen or so participants, yes, but tens of thousands? Breaking with convention and entirely in line with our mixed up politics, today's anti-Brexit demonstration is the third or fourth big demo against leaving the EU. Krazy with a capital K. Asking why liberalism is on a march (not on the march) seems redundant. It's obvious, innit. 15 months on from the referendum vote, the political establishment are split this way and that. Brexiteers remain divided between indifference to what a hard exit would mean for millions of people as well as Britain's continued economic health, and those who maintain a modicum of good sense. Similarly remainers are found twisting this way and that. Folks who accept the UK has to leave, folks who want to stay in the single market/customs union, folks who by hook and by crook want Britain to stay in the EU, it has all percolated outwards. The referendum and the general election helped politicise millions of people, and what would normally be the province of politicians, wonks, hacks and hangers on (like yours truly) now has a mass audience. If there is a constituency stirred up by something, then a demonstration is a very good way of, well, demonstrating the depth of feeling about it. Liberalism in the shape of the current fortunes of the Liberal Democrats isn't in tip top shape, but getting 50,000 or so on the streets for Remain will certainly gratify the organisers. And dubbing the politics of the march 'liberal' is amply justified by the speakers and the quality of their contributions. Uncle Vince ponied up to the rostrum as demonstrators ambled into Parliament Square. Fiery oratory will never be associated with the LibDem leader, but no doubt attendees were pleased to hear him attack "the Brexit" the "incompetent, dysfunctional and disunited" Tories are foisting upon us. Can't fault him, but did Vince act with the honesty the LibDems are famed for and remind the crowd his party's position is to honour the outcome of the referendum? I'm sure it slipped his mind. Ed Davey, deservedly ex of Westminster, told the audience that Parliament was against remaining and the odds were stacked against them. What "we" have to do is reach out to leave voters and become a unifying force. Um, when your objective is overturning a divisive referendum result there might be one or two difficulties in "reaching out" to people who fundamentally disagree with your position. Still, you can't but try and our Ed is very trying. Our good friend Jolyon Maugham was there and gave a speech. Woot! Thankfully he steered away from new party/centre party nonsense and talked about, um, nothing in particular. Whereas Uncle Vince and Davey can get away without saying anything - because their personage and position are tied entirely to their party - JoMo doesn't have that luxury. As C-list commentariat, a sideline to the lawyering day job, he's supposed to say it as he sees it, and chart something of a way forward. What sage advice did he proffer? Um. "Taking responsibility". Apparently, responsibility is different for everyone. To wit; "if you’re a student, maybe volunteer in a care home. If you’re wealthy and a parent send your kids to a state school so they know the lives of others. If you’re an empty nester work with a refugee charity to help another human being live a decent life. Look out for one another. Look local." It's easy for old hands to snark, but JoMo typifies a trend. Remainia as a movement is incoherent and suffers from structural naivete. It is a sentiment sometimes finding expression in the LibDems, sometimes in Cameroon dregs and Blairist remnants. It marries together dethroned party elites (and their elitist sensibilities) with layers of the liberal intelligentsia who had transferred hope for a better future to the supranational (if not the supranationalism) of the EU, and are entirely at a loss to a) explain what happened, and b) how to recover the situation. To make matters worse, while 50k is indicative of a certain level of mass support they're squeezed between the growing might of Corbynism and the passive, large but declining support for the Tories. It is a constituency unmoored and cut adrift from polarising politics. Hence they grasp after the EU's comfort blanket just as it is yanked out of reach. Without it and in the absence of a vehicle for liberalism, like a LibDem insurgency or Dave and Blair on the rise, we see confusion become confusionism, and its outbreak across the mediascape as narcissism and cluelessness. All told, folks attending today's march enjoyed a good day out. A few snaps were shared and selfies taken, friends made, virtue signalled and duly signalled back. Yet none would have come away with a sense of direction. Purpose perhaps, but not what to do next. It's a good job there'll be another demo in the Spring.
