Isn't it strange how it's possible for bad situations to escalate gradually so that people don't actually realise how extreme things are getting until its far too late?
Watching Theresa May's approach to the Brexit negotiations become ever more deranged is a perfect example of the way social groups tends to accept a slow buildup of erratic behaviour until it reaches a crescendo of insanity, when an immediate outburst of insanity from the beginning would have shocked people out of their indifference and forced them to put a stop to it.
Just imagine for a moment that during the Tory leadership contest Theresa May would have outlined her Brexit strategy along the following lines:
- We fob the electorate off with utterly vacuous "Brexit means Brexit" platitudes for around six months while we desperately try to cobble together some kind of plan.
- As we are trying to botch together our plan we will fight two futile court battles trying to scrap parliamentary sovereignty while our supporters in the right-wing press will whip up an unprecedented wave of public hatred towards the judiciary and the legal system.
- After six months of sitting on our hands we will finally announce that the centrepiece of our negotiating strategy will be a ridiculously juvenile threat to severely damage both the UK and the EU economies by walking away from the negotiations with "no deal".
- Our Brexit minister will then make it clear that we did no impact assessment of the damage a "no deal" strop away from the negotiating table would actually cause to the UK economy before we decided to make it the centrepiece of our negotiating strategy!
- Another important step in the process of securing a "good deal" will be to throw away the Single Market and Customs Union bargaining chips before the negotiations have even started.
- We will announce a Great Repeal Bill that will give government ministers the ability to rewrite thousands of UK with no democratic oversight whatever.
- We will send a very clear message to the EU that we intend to use the lives of EU citizens in the UK as disposable bargaining chips by stripping out a simple amendment to the Article 50 bill that would have obliged us to at least begin working on our proposals to protect their rights.
- We will attempt to blackmail the EU by implying in our Article 50 notification letter that the UK would turn a blind eye to terrorism and security threats in Europe if they don't give us the kind of deal we're demanding.
- Immediately after setting the clock ticking on the most complex negotiations the UK has ever faced we'll take a two month holiday by calling a snap election, ensuring that the focus of our attention is on that rather than the diplomatic process.
- We will make the impossible demand that all of the Brexit negotiations are done in secret, while the supposedly "undemocratic and unaccountable" EU want the negotiations conducted in an open and transparent way so that the 27 member states can understand what is being negotiated on their behalf.
- We will have a disastrous meeting with EU representatives where we make it clear that we have no conception of the complexity of the task we're facing, then when details of this dinner are leaked to the German press I won't react with a "poker face", I'll deliberately poison UK-EU relations even further by spouting a load of paranoid anti-EU conspiracy theories about how there's some kind of sinister personal vendetta against me going on.
- The next important step in my Brexit strategy will be to double down on our "no deal" nuclear Brexit threats by drawing up and publishing a plan of action for how we would attack and undermine the EU economy if they don't give us the kind of deal we're demanding.
A psychotic divorce strategy
However you decide that this kind of approach is a sinister plot to undermine you, and instead of dealing with things calmly and in a sensible order, you're going to write them a furious letter going into great detail about all of the depraved schemes you've dreamt up to make them and the children suffer if you don't get what you what you want!
Do you honestly think that kind of approach would work? Do you honestly think that in real life you wouldn't get arrested if you tried sending a letter full of threats to your ex during the divorce process?
Boiling the Tory frog
If Theresa May had outlined this gradually escalating lunacy as her Brexit negotiating strategy during the Tory leadership election, she would have made the wingnut Michael Gove look like a sane and stable leadership candidate in comparison wouldn't she?
It's escalated to such a level that writing out a list of threats against the EU is now the actual approach being taken by Theresa May, and what's even more shocking is that nobody in the Tory party has the guts, or the sanity, to stand up to her and tell her to calm down and stop making threats that are absolutely certain to backfire in her face (and in the face of the UK public too)
The Tory party in its current state is like the (hopefully hypothetical) frog that doesn't realise it's being boiled alive as the water temperature in the pot is gradually increased.
Where are the sane Tories hiding?
There are sensible and level headed Tories. I disagree with them on their hard-right economic agenda and the social disregard they've demonstrated so callously since 2010, but they're not all completely insane. Some of them are liberal One Nation type Tories, others are libertarians who should be horrified at Theresa May's hard-right authoritarianism.
There have got to be some Tory MPs who understand that the more Theresa May threatens a catastrophic "nuclear Brexit", the ever more likely that economically ruinous outcome is becoming.
But because the insanity has built up incrementally over many months rather than all being launched in one lunatic outburst, the Tory party are still somehow actually going along with it, and the British public look likely to elect her with a significantly increased majority in parliament!
There's apparently nobody in the Tory party, or in the right-wing press, who dares stand up and question the astoundingly reckless game of brinkmanship she's playing with the UK economy, and the livelihoods of millions of people.
How much worse could it get?
Just think about it: If it's already got to such an intense level of insanity after less than a year with a slim majority in parliament, just imagine how bad it could get once she has a super-majority in parliament and the dire consequences of her reckless threats start to hit home?
Imagine the deranged ways in which she would lash out if her threat-based diplomatic toddler tantrum ends up in a self-inflicted economic meltdown.
Does anyone honestly think she'd apologise and resign in disgrace?
Of course she wouldn't, she'd divisively turn the blame on anyone but herself (the EU, people who criticised her threat-based approach, opposition parties, the judiciary, the unemployed, the Scottish ...) in order to maintain her grip on power. It wouldn't even have to make any sense at all, as long as the blame is deflected elsewhere. It would all be portrayed as a sinister plot to undermine her "strong and stable leadership".
How could anyone believe that she's a sane and mentally balanced leader who would deal with failure by doing the decent thing and resigning, when she's already managed to escalate the situation to such a level of chaos, divisiveness, insane conspiracy theory nonsense and threats in the space of well under a year?
The obvious conclusion
If you're horrified about how extreme this is getting you need to make sure you're registered to vote so that you can vote against the Tories in protest at Theresa May's ever more erratic behaviour.
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