Brexit disaster

As the wretched Tory government of Boris Johnson irresponsibly prepares to lift all Covid restrictions, I look at how the delusions of Brexit, which is crippling British businesses, have fed into a political climate in which the Tories’ irresponsible and sometimes criminal response to Covid gets overlooked, and how Johnson and his Cabinet prioritise whatever will keep them in power — opening up sports events, for example, and cynically capitalising on England’s success in the Euro 2020 championships, while almost entirely abandoning the country’s cultural sector. I also look at how, under Priti Patel, almost all immigration has been shut down (despite job shortages that are making many businesses unviable), as this particularly vile home secretary also seeks to stamp out all political dissent, as well as criminalising the way of life of Gypsies and Travellers.

As Boris Johnson defends Dominic Cummings’s shameful flouting of the coronavirus lockdown rules back in March and April, the outrage shows no sign of diminishing, as is entirely appropriate. Cummings has shown contempt for all the people who observed the lockdown rules, even when it involved great sacrifice and personal loss, and his refusal to resign – and Johnson’s defence of him – shows how both men believe, very fundamentally, that there is one rule for them, and another for the rest of us. Both of them must go.

Here’s a link to, and description of my most recent radio interview – about Boris Johnson’s lamentable victory in the UK’s recent General Election, and also about Guantánamo – with Chris Cook on his Gorilla Radio show in Victoria, Canada. Chris has been interviewing me on and off for ten years, mostly about Guantánamo, but occasionally about other topics, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to talk about the dangerous state of British politics in the wake of Johnson’s victory.

My post-mortem on Thursday’s depressing General Election, which delivered a majority for the Tories under Boris Johnson, largely because of Johnson’s simplistic hammering home of a false promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ at every opportunity. The slow and agonising reality of getting Brexit ‘done’ may, however – if there is any justice – eventually derail his shallow and deeply mendacious premiership.

My call to arms for tomorrow’s General Election, urging people to vote tactically to get the Tories out, and also calling for urgent reform of our profoundly unfair and unrepresentative first past the post voting system.

I look at the increasing violence of Brexiteers’ rhetoric regarding the UK leaving the EU, and my fears that the ideological civil war that Brexit represents is being stirred up by the disgraceful Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings into a much more physical manifestation of a civil war, even though Johnson – and his backers – are only really interested in a no-deal Brexit as a way of making huge amounts of money.

In my first article about Boris Johnson since he became the almost unspeakably unsuitable Prime Minister of the UK, I look at his chronic failures, and also profile his chief advisor, the alarming maverick Dominic Cummings, enthusiastically promising to deliver a “no-deal” Brexit by October 31 – in his case, to fulfil some warped dream of destroying the entire British political establishment.

My review of this week’s WOMAD world music festival in Wiltshire, looking particularly at how, although it was a wonderful festival, the global environmental crisis hung over proceedings, as, to my mind, it hovers over everything these days, demanding that we get involved in bringing down the entire suicidal capitalist system that is destroying us.

My analysis of the UK’s elections to the European Parliament, which took place on May 23, 2019, in which I look at why the Brexit Party’s performance is not as good as it might initially appear. I also congratulate the Green Party on their performance, thanks my fellow Londoners for voting the most sanely in England, and propose a few solutions to the ongoing Brexit deadlock.

Today marks 25 days until the UK is supposed to leave the EU, and my band The Four Fathers are taking the opportunity to release — via Bandcamp — our anti-Brexit anthem, ‘I Want My Country Back (From The People Who Wanted Their Country Back)’, which has become something of a live favourite over the last few years.