The rather vile, moralising, rude, abrasive, childish and sick struggle between the inners and the outers, and the outers and the inners has very little to do with politics. It is a bunch of highly privileged politicians fighting for their political lives.
There may among them be some honest Joes or Josephines trying to have a serious political debate about the carbuncle thrown up ad hoc and called the European Union, but the flatulence of most of the fights is paramount. That Eton rules both houses, and boys will be boys, is not for me the most troubling factor. It is more the naked need to win the high ground of office, and the sense that this has sweet Fanny Adams to do with the peoples of the British Isles.
It is not gladiatorial, because gladiators show skill. There are no skills, not even the skills of a bare-knuckle fight. It’s a snide and bitching affair, as if two parts of a family are arguing over who gets granny’s jewellery.
Are the big boys of politics fighting for those who need health to work for all, for the weak and defeated?
I spent bank holiday weekend in a camping and caravan park, among people who seemed decent, honest, organised and respectful of each other, in the county of Norfolk. I visited a church and marvelled at the flint stone. And noted sadly a new grave for a six-year-old and was mortified by the thought and sight. Was there nothing our great and, at times, lumbering NHS could do for the poor mite and his distressed family?
Are the big boys of politics fighting for those who need health to work for all, for the weak and defeated? Or are they like hungry carnivores who want to be the dog with the biggest dick? Or at least the high office from which to make such a claim.
I doubt in fact that this has anything at all to do with Europe – that offshore continent that perplexes, astounds, confounds and inspires most of us all at the same time. Out of which comes most of our French, German and Latin culture. Originally sons and daughters of the Iberian Peninsula for thousands of years, we have since become an eternal mixture.