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NO POLITICAL COMPASS

1. It's an indication of a lack of democratic accountability when those in power wield it in what amounts to a self destructive manner.

2. The mistakes are glaringly obvious. Upon voting to leave, the European Union & their allies here in the UK waged a war against those who had failed to be cowed by the Janet & John style threats made in the run up to the referendum.

3. George Osborne spelling out, in a deliberately slow tempo, how house prices would fall & immediate redundancies would tip us into a recession.

4. The public don't like being 'told' how to vote by the issuance of veiled threats.

They also don't like being told they've never had it so good when for a decade their neighbourhoods have been subjected to cuts in public spending & their jobs have suffered wage stagnation.

5. The difficulty is when you have a forgotten generation of 'deplorables' they'll take an economic hit for the pleasure of kicking your arse. You can't threaten people with what they're already experiencing, nor can you convince them they're wrong about their own lives.

6. It seems to me the strategy, if you can call it that, came from Brussels. It didn't have a British feel to it. Many of the tactics employed to reverse the vote were reminiscent of a dark time in history.

7. Take a section of society & devalue them, whilst bigging up the portion of society that accords with your political aspirations.

'Half of those who stole your future are dead now, or rabid fascists'.

8. Then we had the citizens assembly. You take 17.4 million votes & give them to a carefully selected panel of citizens who will vote the right way for you, because you're too silly to be trusted with a ballot paper yourself.

9. But the thing about all of this is that most people saw through the shenanigans for what it was. The difficulty being that those using the clumsy tactics of vote suppression were wrapped up in their own publicity, oblivious the the contempt a majority held for them.

10. But by this time it had gone too far. There was no turning back & trying to make peace with the electorate. A functioning democracy requires the art of persuasion. It's a romance of sorts in which the politicians have to offer shiny things in return for your precious ballot.

11. Like a lot of romances, it can end in tears, but by & large when compared to threatening people with super gonorrhea if they don't vote for you, it's not too bad a system for citizens.

12. But it's just so mightily inconvenient for politicians. Much better to shut themselves away in an ivory tower & ignore the plebs. The difficulty with this is the powerful become ever more detached from reality & ever more dismissive of the views of the many.

13. The lack of self awareness & accountability has been quite staggering. The same people lurch from crisis to crisis, making huge blunders along the way, but lack the imagination to:
a) change course, or
b) recognise they're not very good at their job.

14. The difficulty we now face is trust has been shattered. Those in power have abused their positions, cast democracy aside & have backed themselves into a very tight corner with an angry mob shining the spotlight on their dealings.

15. But it's all their own doing - you wage war on the electorate persistently, they're going to come after you & they're going to doubt every single thing you do.

16. This is where we're at now. Trust in the EU has diminished to the point where most leave voters just want out, at any cost.

Yet trade negotiations are meant to be mutually beneficial & carried out respectfully without the need for a slanging match via social media.

17. It's an absurdity that it's come to this. The EU don't want the deal to go before their parliament & our government is in the position where it may attempt to push through a complex trade treaty absent of the usual procedure & time allocation.

18. It seems that right up to the 11th hour we're expected to go along with the charade & hope that last minute desperation waves through a treaty without proper parliamentary perusal because a no deal would be disruptive.

It's a massive gamble & not one I'm comfortable with.