Insane is the new normal

Do right-wing Brexiters not understand how crazy they make us sound when they're blabbering on about having a war with Spain?

The former Tory party leader Michael Howard started this deranged idiocy about having a war with Spain over Gibraltar, but instead of being universally derided for his comments he inspired a load of other hard-right Brexiters to begin ramping up the anti-Spanish jingoism.

A serving rear admiral in the British Navy called Chris Parry waded in to claim that "We could cripple Spain in the medium term and I think the Americans would probably support us too. Spain should learn from history that it is never worth taking us on" as if it's Spanish politicians and military figures chuntering on about having a war with the UK rather than things being exactly the opposite way around.

The "we could cripple Spain" comment was music to the ears of the hard-right pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph, which was once a serious broadsheet newspaper, but now publishes all kinds of atrocious drivel (like their article a few weeks ago calling for the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to be executed for having the wrong political views).

The Telegraph article bragging that Britain could "cripple" Spain is one of the most pathetic displays of Brexiter jingoism yet. Just think about how articles like this are perceived on the continent. Stuff like this makes us look like a bunch of fucking lunatics.

Basic questions

There are an estimated 760,000+ Brits living in Spain. What do the right-wing Brexiters who are talking about war with Spain think will happen to all these people if the UK declare war on Spain?

How would the UK economy cope with an influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, most of them pensioners? How would they get back? Where would they live?

The UK exports over £10 billion per year in goods and services to Spain. A UK military attack on Spain would obviously "cripple" trade between the countries. Do the people who are talking up war with Spain consider these jobs disposable?

Spain has made huge investments in the UK. Most of our big airports are now Spanish owned. Santander is one of the biggest banks in the UK. Ros Roca owns the last HGV manufacturing company in the UK. What would be the impact on these sectors of the economy if Theresa May decided to declare war on Spain?

What would the EU response be to the UK declaring war on one of their remaining member states? Would the EU sit back and do nothing, or would the UK have to deal with a trade and travel embargo with the rest of Europe?

Then there's the NATO response to consider. What exactly would NATO do if one NATO member attacks another? Would they take the side of the country under attack? Or would they just sit back and watch it happen?

Insane is the new normal

The answers to the above questions show how preposterous it is that hard-right Brexiters are actually talking about a war with Spain.

The problem of course is that extreme Brexiter nonsense like this is becoming normal, and people are becoming normalised to it.

The vote for Brexit was a collective act of national self-harm and it seems to have normalised deranged behaviour. In recent months Brexiter newspapers and politicians have proposed declaring war on Spain (Michael Howard, Telegraph); threatened to turn a blind eye to terrorism in order to extract economic benefits from our European neighbours (Theresa May, The S*n); declared high court judges "enemies of the people" for doing their job and upholding the law of the land (Daily Mail); and demanded the execution of Nicola Sturgeon for "treason" (Telegraph)!

Perhaps "Insane is the new normal" in the UK, but step out of the Brexit bubble and consider this kind of behaviour from the perspective of people across Europe and the rest of the world, and it's clear that our country is becoming a total laughing stock because of the ridiculous behaviour of the hard-right Brexiters.
The laughter of the rest of the world must however be tinged with a little bit of fear. Last year we were bonkers enough to vote for Brexit despite there being no plan whatever for what came next, then the Americans were bonkers enough to elect the bigoted, lying narcissist as their President, so insanity is clearly in fashion these days. Behind their smirks at the pathetic jingoistic posturing of the hard-right Brexiters the rest of Europe must actually be wondering if the Brits really are insane and economically suicidal enough to do something as crackers as declaring war on Spain.

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