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Do you think all these people are so vehemently anti-European because they're secretly European? I know for a fact that despite all his protests Nigel Farage is having secretly having sex with a European. Surely you could only be this anti-Europe if you really want to be European but are worried about what your friends and family will think.
By the way, Brexit readers, this is just a joke. No need to email me and tell me that we are all European or that you’re not anti-European. I am just playing.
With Farage and Geldof baiting each other on the Thames today the tone of high farce and pantomime continues, even though this is a momentous and life-changing couple of weeks for our country. Part of me is hoping we will vote to leave, just to see what will happen to our nation. But then I remember I live here and I am chilled to the bone. The prospect of a government led by Johnson or Gove with Farage in the Lords, with the possibility of Trump in the White House is the stuff of nightmares. Who needs IS when we’re so bent on self-destruction and destroying our own liberties? Still it’s all great for the political satire. Until the government gets really right wing and satirists find themselves strung up from lamp posts.
I am not sure it’s actually the best time for satire, partly because when politics gets this extreme, it’s much more stupid than anything you could make up (imagine pitching the Farage/Geldof sea battle), but also because fear can be a bit stifling. Entrenched views whether about why you should be allowed to own assault weapons, or why someone else’s sexuality is your business or why your enemies should be destroyed to appease an imaginary man in the sky or why there must be trigger warnings and safe spaces (or whatever the fuck people think they’re right about) mean there’s no end in sight to any of our problems. And it’s going to take something pretty spectacular to sort out any of those issues, like an asteroid hitting the earth and destroying pretty much everyone. The way forward to me seems to come together and embrace our differences and highlight the things that make us similar (which is pretty much all the important stuff), not to pull apart and form factions. The extremists do each other’s work for their opponents. How delighted must the terrorists be about Donald Trump and his followers? And vice versa. They’re all fighting for the same thing with a different hat on.
Democracy is all well and good and I would fight with my life to defend it, but it does slightly ignore the fact that most people are way too dumb, ill-informed or self-interested to make informed decisions about anything (and I include myself in this). I hope our country will dare to try and live in the future rather than an imaginary past and help shape the European Union rather than just absent itself. I understand that it’s a gamble either way and it’s certainly not cut and dried and I am just going on my gut feeling as much as anyone. Though losing for either side will probably be the best thing in the sense that whoever fails can then spend the rest of their lives going “See!†when stuff doesn’t pan out.
Ultimately I am confounded and amused by the fact that I am genuinely prepared to die for a system that doesn’t really work and which is likely to produce the opposite results to the ones I want.
I just wish I could be watching all this from China or Mars or somewhere where I could just enjoy the delicious comedy, without having to worry about what fills the vacuum. But whatever happens this month I think we’re heading for some rocky times and something has to give. It’s like we’re mixing pre-revolutionary Russia with 1930s Germany. Sadly I think Rupert Murdoch will have died of natural causes before it happens though. It’s so much less satisfying when you have to dig up a corpse to stick its head on a spike.
RHLSTP series 9 (can it really be the ninth series? The good thing about doing stuff yourself is you can’t get cancelled) is up and running now.
You can watch the video at any of these fine portals
youtube
vimeo
itunes
And Joining David Cross on the 20th June will be Marcus Brigstocke.
All details here. Spread the word if you can. There must be a lot of people who'd like to see that but don't know it's happening. Can’t believe there are any tickets left for this one. It’s going to be amazing.
