JUNE 8 2019 LISTENER 13
C
H
R
IS(^) S
LA
N
E
point-scoring over leaked goodies.
The morality around leaks and the manner of
their attainment is eternally murky – the grubby
taupe of Resene Mongoose. How murky depends on
whether you’re the leaked-to or the leaked-against
party. It’s all a dark grey Farrow & Ball Down Pipe in
the end.
BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT
It’s not as though our Opposition’s reading our
Budget was the week’s biggest political perversity.
The UK just spent at least £100 million to elect
members of the European Parliament, which it has,
for more than two years, tried and failed to leave.
They will sit for only a couple of months in that
Parliament, which doesn’t want them any more
than they want to be there. The clear victor was
the Brexit Party, whose sole policy is to leave the
European Union. The party’s 29 Europhobe MPs
will, nevertheless, soon be “welcomed” into the
bosom of Brussels.
There’s something about burning villages to save
them in here, but this is the sort of conundrum
that comes with a migraine warning.
Prime Minister Theresa “End Of” May finally
announced her departure date as June 7, but given
that her imminent demise has supplied daily
headlines since she got the job in 2016, it’s hard
to put total faith in Trexit, any more
than Brexit’s latest “deadline” of
October 31.
May engenders sympathy for
the impossibility of implementing
a democratic decision that turned
out to have been made on the
strength of seriously misleading
information, cynically inflamed
emotional perceptions and grievances
quite unrelated to the EU. She was
relentlessly white-anted by (mostly
male) politicians who could probably
not have done any better.
But May fought for and accepted
the job of leading the UK out of the
EU, even though she was a Remainer.
It’s possible to see a certain honour
there – the people have spoken and
all that. But to take a job whose
headline mission is something you
believe to be wrong is more readily
associated with another H-word.
None of this would be so wretched
if May hadn’t looked so utterly
miserable in the job. At least her
arch-foe and likely successor,
Boris Johnson, exudes infectious
merriment as he pursues the possible
ruination of the UK.
Farrow & Ball might even concoct
a new colour in his honour: No-Deal
Brexit, a triumphal road-cone orange.
It’s very on-trend but rather hard to
live with. l
Boris Johnson
exudes infectious
merriment as he
pursues the possible
ruination of the UK.