So it looks like Marxist Mugabe is finally on his way out. Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 then within a few years became a despotic basket case while the leader was allowed to carry on plundering the nation's wealth and racially cleansing the population with impunity while the world looked on.
Meanwhile over in Latin America Venezuela is slipping further into the economic and political nightmare that is socialism. Another wealthy country that was hijacked by the Marxist thugs of Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro. Just when you think Venezuela can't get any worse the Marxists prove you wrong. How long before Maduro is overthrown in Venezuela? It doesn't look like it will be through the ballot box judging by his reaction to his party's crushing electoral defeat in 2015. He ignored it and just carried on. But it will happen.
The EU, and its Remoaner puppets in the UK, are desperately trying to scupper Brexit. They fear that when Britain leaves the domino effect will kick in leading to the death of the EU as it exists today. The EU are not known for their skill when negotiating but suddenly the Remoaners claim it is our government that is incompetent and of course the opposition happily peddle this line. I'm not too happy with the government's handling of Brexit but it seems to me that all the EU want to do is screw us for as much money as they can, smear and threaten us and hope that by humiliating and screwing us it will put other countries off trying to gain independence. Well it won't work even with the anti-democratic Remoaners in parliament doing their best to scupper Brexit, it will happen.
So now there is talk of our government being in disarray and Comedy Corbyn's outfit being a "government in waiting". Wrong, not quite on both counts but wrong all the same. The government is in a state of disarray but nowhere near the scale of John Major's disastrous shambles that I can't even bring myself to call a government from 1992 to 1997. Theresa May had a majority but called an election this year and blew it. She blew it because she isn't actually a very smart or charismatic politician so we are now stuck with a fragile cobbled together government that lacks the stability of even the coalition we had from 2010 to 2015, with a leader who is lacking in conviction, belief and discipline. But the alternative is worse. In 1997 Major was up against Blair, this government is up against Corbyn, a huge, huge difference.
Corbyn over the years has been an admirer of Mugabe and has championed Venezuela, first under Chavez and latterly Maduro. He was always Eurosceptic but now nobody knows what his party thinks about Brexit. It seems more and more that you can just keep asking Labour politicians what their position is on Brexit until you find one that gives you the answer you want. Corbyn is a student politician who is more interested in gestures and rabble rousing than putting forward grown up solutions to the problems facing this country in 2017. He should be running the students union in a Tom Sharpe novel which is why, since being elected in 1983, he hasn't even been trusted by Labour to be the most junior bag carrier. By contrast Blair, love him or loathe him, wanted power and knew how to get it.
People aren't stupid, deep down they know what Corbyn and his thugs in Momentum stand for and they don't like it, they don't want us to be the next Zimbabwe or Venezuela. I've been quite soft on this government today but most of us look at the state of affairs and can only wonder that the best Labour can scrape is a 3% lead in the polls, some polls even putting the two parties neck and neck. May still beats Corbyn in the polls when people are asked which of the two would make the best PM.
By contrast I remember the polls before the 1997 election with Labour's lead in the twenties and even the thirties over the Conservatives. If Corbyn had been Labour leader in the 1990s, I suspect the polls would have been similar to the polls today and we may have avoided the catastrophic thirteen years of immoral and dishonest governments we suffered until 2010.
If Labour had a half competent leader I would be very worried, but they haven't. By the time of the next election Brexit should be behind us and with a half competent leader the Tories should see off Labour quite comfortably.
2 comments:
Part of Major's omnishambles was the public recollection of the ERM fiasco which pushed up interest rates so high that many businesses failed, people could not afford their mortgages and had their houses repossessed - all to keep sterling at a fixed parity with the Deutschemark in preparation for joining the euro currency. Things got better remarkably quickly once we dropped out ( leaving Mr Soros with a profit of over £1 billion). Then the government actually did quite well on the financial front, so Inflation came down but it was Gordon Briwn who inherited a clean set of books. People remembered the ERM which destroyed the Conservatives' reputation for understanding money and made that nice young Mr Blair look attractive by comparison. It would be 18 years before there was another (small) Conservative majority - and Mrs May blew it!
A botched Brexit will not be fixed by such a simple interest rate adjustment.. The effects will last at least ten years and people will remember the party responsible. I see very small evidence of competence in the Brexit business. If it comes to pass, the Conservatives will face a wilderness period at least as long as they suffered after the repeal,of the Corn Laws in 1846 - or even near total eclipse, such as the Liberals experienced after 1922.
A very good piece. I hope you're right about Labour's election prospects. The thought of a chaotic Brexit and a Corbyn led Labour government makes me feel really ill.
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