© Lukas Schulze/Getty ImagesA float featuring British Premier Theresa May drives in the annual Rose Monday parade on February 27, 2017
"It's not one damned thing, it's one damned thing after another," as the former Conservative premier Harold MacMillan once said. That Britain no longer has a functioning prime minister is just one damned thing. Add the dysfunctional government, a parliament of herded cats, a foreign policy deep in disgrace, a media subverted to the core by the deep-state, a wholly uncertain economic future, at "war" with the European continent and with our special relationship to the United States daily undermined by a parallel collapse of the power structures in Washington, it's hard not to be pessimistic about the future.
The sight of the prime minister literally rushing from the chamber seconds after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn rather cleverly wrong-footed everyone (not least his own party) by tabling a no-confidence motion not in the government - which would have united her own side and their allies on the principle that turkeys seldom vote for an early Christmas, in this case an early general election - but in the prime minister personally. It was a rational assumption that some at least of the 117 Conservative MPs who had just expressed their own no-confidence in Theresa May might do so again, or even sit on their hands and abstain. They would, after all, be then rid of her and keep their government.
Rational too that the main ally of the government the DUP Protestant zealots from the north of Ireland might do so too, given their recent anathematization of Mrs May in the language of sell-out and betrayal, their lingua franca for a hundred years.
But there's nothing rational about British politics in this weather.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Honourable Member for the 18th Century, who was practically outside the Palace on the Mall in his double-breasted pyjamas last week beseeching the Queen to dismiss the prime minister, is now in the position of declaring she's not fit to be the leader of the Conservative Party but well fit-enough to lead the country! Ditto his equally well-heeled anti-EU zealots on the Tory Right and even the DUP are this week, loyal again.
© Reuters / Phil NobleToys for dogs themed on Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn
Meanwhile scenting that this death by a thousand cuts of the May premiership cannot long be for this world, the May cabinet has begun to splinter in plain sight. Notwithstanding the normal rules of collective cabinet responsibility minister after minister has begun to emerge from the woodwork to express their OWN policy towards the Brexit impasse. Last week we had a rare cabinet by teleconference, this week we have a cabinet in spite of the collective government line. Conservative Leadership campaign Twitter accounts are being readied for the coming struggle for power, premises are being discretely secured, phone-lines purchased.
The EU leaders are stating publicly, daily, that negotiations with Britain are over and no further concessions will be made. The prime minister insists that talks are continuing - with whom, how and about what we are no wiser in this "parliamentary democracy."
Comment: It is meant to seem irrational, but there is method to the madness: the Tories are sticking by PM May for now in order to prevent a general election and keep Corbyn out, while preparing the ground for her to take the blame for Britain staying in the EU once the UK is securely 'back in it' - via either this UK-EU deal or a second (cooked) referendum.
At the same time as the British Parliament plumbs new depths in public esteem, other estates in the land are revealed to be busy undermining the very idea of democracy itself.
The Russophobic tide in Britain has risen in inverse proportion to the country's perceived decline, something which can hardly be hidden, or a co-incidence. One doesn't need to be a psychologist to conclude that this is classic displacement activity. "Look over there" is the new motto on the imperial crest.
The more they cry about "Russian State media" the more our own state corrupts our own media. Day after day some of the most well-known media personalities in the land are revealed to be embedded with not just British Intelligence but MILITARY Intelligence in the "Integrity Initiative" - the illegitimate child of the "Institute for Statecraft". Their employers too.
The state-sponsored BBC is of course in the Van.1 This week they were caught red-handed "out for blood" in the words of their Moscow reporter seeking to establish a guiding hand in Moscow meddling in the mass protests of the Yellow Vests in France - protests which the British media had comprehensively ignored (except to complain that RT was reporting them). The French people as we all remember would not know how to storm the Bastille of a government which had outlived its usefulness. They'd have never dreamed of having a revolution in France if not for Vladimir Putin...
1 to be in front of, or leading a change in, some trend or movement
About the author
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.
Reader Comments
And have you noticed how everything's Amber Rudd this, and Amber Rudd that, this week? Please, no.