Friday 9 June 2017

BRITISH DEMOCRACY & BREXIT: A BLEARY-EYED REPORT

The take-away from last night's election is dysfunction: and not just the Tories using the ballot box to try to solve short-term internal policies. The problem is assuming the nation is behind Brexit, when in reality the nation remains divided. The problem is assuming Brexit is the only issue, when social policy played a big part.

May with a 'majority' in Parliament based on 36% of the voters, asked for a mandate to move ahead with her own dream of hard Brexit, whose details she would not share with the voters, as if this were a yes/no referendum II.

Yet both major parties accepted the country's 52/48 split on a yes/no vote on an issue of massive complexity and huge constitutional change as 'the will of the people', when in truth it was a chasm in the British populace. The young, who justifiably felt the greatest loss after the Brexit vote, apparently made their presence felt yesterday.

But because the British electoral system is totally dysfunctional, a 42% vote couldn't give May a 'majority' much less a mandate, nor could the rest of the opposition cobble together one (though their popular vote--Lab/LDP/Green/SNP/PC-- would constitute an absolute majority).

You can hear Europe laughing. And after the scare tactics of the Tories and their press about Jeremy Corbyn's 'links' with the IRA, the terrorist-backed Irish tea party of the Democratic Unionists now hold the balance of power in the Disunited Kingdom.

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