The Impossible Task of Changing Hearts & Minds

Posted on May 17, 2018

Several years ago I got together with a woman who I thought was a sound individual. After a while, something was telling me the situation I was in was fundamentally flawed and had been based around lies that accompany a narcissistic disorder. For some time I initially refused to believe I had been mugged off but in the end, all my gut feelings came to chaotic fruition and I was lucky to escape a nightmare situation of my own making.

It was the first time I had felt such personal denial against the obvious signs of being sold down the river and it was, ultimately, a harsh lesson. It was also one that, I am grateful for as even the hardest lessons are good lessons if you have the opportunity to realise your error of judgement and repair the damage you’ve inflicted on yourself.

This came to mind when I was reading a blog the other day that was sent by a friend of mine from the cricket club.

It was about the chaos surrounding Brexit and the customs union that is basically, a situation that is unsolvable. Brexit can’t work in any form that will have a positive effect on the UK unless (as many are suggesting) it takes shape in the form of a ‘Soft Brexit’ where nothing changes with our relationship with the EU, except in name. Of course, this beggars the question, “Why bother leaving at all then?” 

The Fervent Brexiteers who know the game they are playing are those on both extremes of the political spectrum.  This has created a bizarre situation where the Far Left in the ‘Labour Leave’ camp have been taking substantial funding from groups with right-wing ideologies where everything has a price (see the graph below).

Our Prime Minister, Theresa May, knows Brexit is a disaster and whilst she can take some solace that her husband (who advises tax dodgers) will get rich out of it, is that how she wants to be remembered? As much as I dislike the pious old bat, I’m not so sure it is.

I think it is more a case that she knows she doesn’t have the charisma to change the hearts and minds of normal people who are walking to the edge of a cliff. A cliff where, if the far right take control, deregulation and the selling of public services will, literally, be the death of the proletarian.

The far left want Brexit so they can take everything the private sector has raped back under state control without EU interference, which is an admirable ideology if only it could work. That said, it has to work with regards to health and education and the collapse of Carillion suggests privatising services in its current format is a busted flush that is an open goal for the financially corrupt such as the government’s former commercial responsibility advisor, Philip Green (no, I didn’t make that up).

So, how do you explain to people, in the kindest way, that Islamic fundamentalists don’t come from Latvia and that you can’t have the public services enjoyed by Norwegians by administering United States style tax cuts? To prove this point, another friend of mine has just come back from Seattle on a business trip and was shocked to his core by the swathes of homeless people that rises every year he visits. Low taxation, low wages and no public services are creating a dystopian nightmare in the USA and that, in my opinion, is not where we want to be heading.

Don’t get me wrong, if you have millions stashed in the Cayman Islands, the deregulation of Britain (effectively making it a tax haven) is fantastic as you won’t need public health, education or welfare because you are loaded. Otherwise, you are sitting duck to have everything you have worked for taken away in fees from rogue insurance and equity release organisations.

Imagine paying a mortgage all your life just so you can spend all your equity on a private healthcare firm? It’s a crazy thought but that’s where we are at.

So, despite swathes of politicians knowing that Brexit is an accident waiting to happen, I can’t think of one who has the charisma to drag brexiteers out of denial and explain, without being patronising, that Britain is about to load its guns and blow off both feet. I really do believe it is that bad.

Just when it is time for someone to take the lead and tell the citizens of this green and pleasant land how it really is and what we are heading for, we have a list of individuals who make Steve McLaren’s tenure as the England football manager look like a major success.

The only plausible ‘Exit Brexit’ candidate I can think of is the better Miliband. However, Labour, long time experts at self-flagellation, chose his sibling underdog who, by perception looked weak, resulting in him losing a winnable election to David Cameron, the man who loaded his guns and ran off back to the Cotswolds for his tea.

In my personal life, I found out about denial of bad judgement the hard way and reversed it before it was all too late. It looks like, metaphorically speaking, the UK is about to do the same thing on an ideological scale never witnessed before, with the difference being I am not sure the UK will be as lucky as I was.

Surely, it is now the time for someone to stand up, break free from media barons and tell the real truth about Brexit and tell them that there is no shame in changing your mind when you have been conned.

*You can read the blog I was talking about by clicking the link below.

https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/the-customs-row-reveals-fundamental.html

 

 


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