Today Tony Blair's former spin-doctor Alistair Campbell has been moral high-horsing about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
If anybody should be an expert on Labour anti-Semitism it should surely be Alistair Cambell himself, because who could forget the time he personally masterminded political attack posters depicting the Jewish Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, as a Fagin type character and superimposing his head onto a pig?
Not only was Campbell involved in an anti-Semitic poster campaign, rates of anti-Semitism were much higher in the Labour ranks back then than they are now, having declined dramatically since the massive influx of genuinely left-wing and socially progressive people into the Labour Party since Jeremy Corbyn's election as leader in 2015.
Today Alistair Campbell accused Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership of "drowning in a sewer of anti-Semitism of your own making" but when he was fingered as the mastermind of the anti-Semitic attack posters back in 2005 he had a startlingly different take on the issue:
After telling the BBC journalist who was investigating the story to "fuck off and investigate something important you twats" he went on to dismiss the whole anti-Semitic posters issue by saying "never known such a silly fuss since the last silly fuss but there we go. Must look forward not back".
In light of this belligerent attitude to his own anti-Semitic behaviour, it's quite extraordinary to see a massive flock of 'centrist' dupes lapping up Campbell's comments and treating him as if he's some kind of wonderful moral authority on anti-Semitism today.
But then people who hang on Campbell's every word, even after the Iraq dossier deception, are nothing if not gullible are they?
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I'm getting really sick of tribalist Brexiters misleadingly caricaturing my position as pro-EU. It happens on every single Brexit related thread on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page.
I'm not pro-EU or anti-EU. I'm a pragmatist who can see that like membership of any massive organisation it's going to have numerous positive and negative aspects. Anyone who adopts a completely pro- or anti- EU stance is clearly being incredibly glib and absolutist about an incredibly complex subject.
In reality I've probably written far more analytic criticism of the EU, the European Central Bank, enforced austerity in Greece and the TTIP corporate power grab than any of the Brexiter tribalists who crudely misrepresent me as being a pro-EU propagandist. But then stuff like facts, evidence, honesty and good faith debating tactics are clearly alien concepts to a lot of these people. They just crudely caricature me as part of the enemy pro-EU tribe and outright refuse to read the articles I've written for fear of suffering bouts of cognitive dissonance when their narrow-minded absolutism is subjected to scrutiny.
When it came to David Cameron's Brexit referendum I decided, despite having serious concerns about the EU, that it would be best to adopt the precautionary principle.
In my view quitting the EU with no plan whatever for the aftermath, and enabling the hard-right fringe of the Tory party to make things up as they go along, was highly likely to cause much more severe negative consequences for those who aren't wealthy enough to insulate themselves from the ruinous economic consequences than just leaving things as they were.
In my view Brexit was always likely to end up as a classic example of the "out of the frying pan, into the fire" scenario.
My articles hardly ever criticise the actual concept of Brexit, they criticise the Tory government's lamentable handling of it:
The rushed, under-informed and staggeringly dishonest referendum campaign; the total lack of a Brexit plan from the Tory Brexiters; the lack of a Brexit contingency plan from David Cameron who was so full of hubris that he assumed that he couldn't possibly lose his gamble with the nation's future; the immediate unravelling of all the Tory Brexiters' lies and false promises on the day after the result; six months of nothing but meaningless platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" as the Tories tried to cobble together some kind of strategy; the Tory efforts to scrap parliamentary sovereignty that were twice defeated in the courts; the eventual unveiling of their toddler tantrum of a threat-based diplomatic strategy in Theresa May's woeful January 2017 clown costume speech; the revelation that the Tory government did absolutely no economic impact assessment whatever on the "no deal" scenario before making the threat of it the centrepiece of their "negotiating strategy"; the ridiculously anti-democratic Great Repeal Bill to allow Tory government ministers to redraw thousands of laws with no parliamentary scrutiny; bitter old Tory failures like Michael Howard coming out to bang the war drum for a war with Spain over Gibraltar; and Theresa May shaming Britain by sucking up to madmen and tyrants all over the world in search of post-Brexit trade deals ...
I'll repeat it again. Almost everything I've written about Brexit is criticism of the government's handling of it, not the concept itself. But loads of pro-Brexit tribalists insist on crudely caricaturing me as part of the enemy pro-EU tribe and outright refusing to consider what I'm actually saying for fear of suffering cognitive dissonance when their absolutist faith in this Tory administered Brexit is questioned.
It seems like it's literally impossible to engage these people. They've decided that Brexit is a good idea and it doesn't matter how much evidence is presented that the Tories are screwing it up, they outright refuse to consider even looking at anything that might shake their absolutist worldview that Tory Brexit is double-plus good and the EU is double-plus bad.
It's incredibly frustrating that these Brexit tribalists turn up on pretty much every single Brexit related Another Angry Voice thread to tribalistically misrepresent my views and demonstrate beyond doubt that they didn't even bother to read the article before spouting off. But what else can I do other than continue trying to get the basic message across?
Even if you think Brexit is a good idea in principle, how on earth could anyone be naive enough to imagine that Theresa May and the three Brexiteers are competent enough to oversee the most complex and risky diplomatic negotiations since at least the end of the Second World War?
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
