Quick note on Brexit, since it’s flavour of the day.

The entire Brexit project, a far-right grab bag of Imperial fantasies and disaster-investment opportunities, belongs to the Conservative Party from top to bottom.

/1

It was sold on the basis of a series of lies: that immigration was smothering public services and driving down wages; that Brexit would be a net financial gain and increase our freedoms and allow investment into the NHS; and that it would restore our global power.

/2

There were iterations of this nonsense that were less damaging rather than more. The Conservatives have followed a track of bluster, pomposity and neo-Fascist bilge to this moment, where we either get a thin-as-air deal or none at all. That’s down to them.

/3

We already know what the costs will be: job losses, lowering of standards, lowering of quality of life and probably life expectancy. Vast damage to an economy already reeling from COVID-19. A likely fire-sale of state assets, which will be dressed up as prosperity.

/4

There were opportunities for Labour to turn the tide - only a few, but they were there. There were opportunities for moderate Tories, too. All were squandered. Jeremy Corbyn stands out for his sequential counter-fantasies of unachievable Lexits, but he’s far from alone.

/5

All honour to Phil Wilson and Peter Kyle, who produced a roadmap no one seriously tried to read.

But this thing towards which we slouch at year’s end is Johnson’s Gove’s, Farage’s, Rees-Mogg’s. It belongs to them utterly.

/6

When we arrive at the dried-up, infertile patch of scrubland where the sunlit uplands are marked on Brexit’s map, surrounded by the bones of dead cats, and dogs that - ironically enough - were never going to hunt: plant a Tory flag in the sand and salt. It’s all theirs.

/ends