Have you ever wondered what dogs do if they catch the car? It seems that dogs have fun chasing cars but they really have little idea what they might do with one if they ever catch it. We have an excellent example of the problem for you: it is called Brexit.
Watching the horror of the Brexit build up over the campaign of two years ago was an exercise in disbelief and shock. Canadians have their own image of the stoic, stiff-upper-lip Brits and it is a mixture of both admiration and distain. We have seen it too often. Our history books are full of it. It is a combination of a cavalry charge against cannons; it is Florence Nightingale soothing the wretched wounded.
But Brexit was a tanged web of bigotry, frustration and opportunism and Brit pride and prejudice. The hordes were at the gates in Europe and the Brits wanted to slam the door many years too late. It scared the hell out of the Northern Irish and the Scots but there was little they could do about it. (Their time will come.)
Whatever kind of false pride caused PM Theresa May to think she could steer her ship of state through the shoals out of the safe harbour of the European Union, she was obviously suffering delusions. And thinking she had bought off Boris Johnson with the foreign secretary job was the worst delusion.
From day one as mayor of London, Johnson has had one objective. He is an egomaniac in the Donald Trump tradition. He wants May’s job. To him, Brexit is just a means to an end.
Like Trump, Johnson has no understanding of the economic consequences of his actions. He thinks a pyrrhic victory is just another of the Peloponnesian wars. He has made it clear from the beginning that he wants a ‘hard’ Brexit, with no side deals with the European Union. He has no understanding of the pain and suffering he will cause for the working men and women who voted for Brexit because of his rhetoric.
Johnson’s jealousies of the French and German dominated European Union will leave the United Kingdom a quaint tax haven for the rich, a money laundering facility for the unscrupulous and an island-wide sweat shop with low wages for the workers.
And like the yelping dogs who caught the automobile, they go around to each tire, lift their leg and then go home to lie in wait for the next.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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