None of the philosophies and ideas that drive Left or Right have been proved successful in real life

Whilst socialism has been pursued to the point of human and societal destruction by communist leaders such as Stalin and is then written off by socialists in the west with words that suggest it only ‘failed’ because it wasn’t executed in the right way, the right have also been pursuing a social experiment of their own.

For the past 50 years or more, the right has led what is in reality a socio-economic experiment based on an alternative set of ideas called Neoliberalism.

Yet for past successive UK governments of that time and from all political sides, Neoliberalism is the foundation upon which all of their legacies are defined.

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Original thinking in British Politics no longer exists

Political Philosophies and textbooks are the go-to advice guide, where both our politicians and the people who advise them are concerned.

The people leading the UK are all led by the nose, by ideas and ways of thinking that appeal to them only because of what they offer as the suggested result.

Yet those results were usually written about or defined in very different times.

It’s not a ‘no deal’ Brexit we have to fear. It’s the ineptitude of the Politicians who are ‘in power’ and will be ‘in control’

img_2543From the top to the bottom of the Government, the display of self-interest and wanton disconnect from the world outside of Westminster has been both exposed and demonstrated for how serious it now is. Brexit has certainly demonstrated the worst aspects of our Political System for all that they are and it is indeed troubling that it is not possible to list anything that we could consider as being the best aspects in the very same sentence.

The malaise affecting Government isn’t only of it. In fact, the problem with the quality of those in Government is perhaps better illustrated by the same reality which has rolled itself out across all areas of influence too. It is present across all the sectors and in its simplest form has come from the cultural disposition which is focusing on all the wrong things when selecting candidates for key jobs and responsibilities.

It isn’t as simple as having a bitch about some old boys network or any other form of nepotism. Those certainly exist. But they are in no way nearly as damaging as the impact of a failure to focus on what is important and how you qualify any individual for a position which is then going to have considerable impact upon others – whether that be in politics, government, charities or business.

Because so much is taken at face value when decisions are made, we have people leading this Country who in many cases simply have no understanding of, nor the disposition to emphasise or learn about the people and the lives they are responsible for or upon whose lives their actions will impact.

So when you have a Government that can’t even see nor understand where its metaphorical feet and therefore foundations are located, they then reach out to membership organisations like the CBI, who are supposedly representative of the business community, but are run by people who are unikley to have ever been at the cutting edge of the genesis an unsupported, sole-trader/SME start-up business and the process of developing it thereafter, and think that entrepreneurism is a skill which can be learned by reading about it online.

This Country has unwittingly sleepwalked into a position where inexperienced leaders are being guided and led by the inexperienced because they are too inexperienced to know what inexperience looks like.

Until now, this downward trajectory didn’t matter. The over ambitious and self serving have been left to get on with managing everything, because as a culture, we the British People have just stood back and let them get on with it as we accepted that this was the way that things were always done.

But then came Brexit.

Right from the moment that the abuse of the compact between the Establishment and the People was first taken to a new place and David Cameron instigated the European Referendum (which should never have been needed anyway, had many previous Governments been doing the job they should have been doing exactly when it should have been done), the whole ball of bandaids which we have allowed Government after Government to stick upon problem upon problem, has began to unravel.

They didn’t know what to do then. They don’t know what to do now. Simply because they now know that it is no longer inevitable that they will always get their own way.

If the majority of the political construct which is our Parliament were to be honest with the Public, they know what the People were asked to Vote on in 2016, and that it was not anything like or even a derivative of Remain.

However, because they simply have no idea how to manage uncertainty of any kind when their experiences have always told them that their career pathways and responsibilities are assured – so long as they always play ball, they cannot bring themselves to accept that anything other than problems and trouble will exist if the UK were to go any other way than Remain.

The greatest opportunities for this Country exist with the set of circumstances where we are as one agile enough to adapt to and accept them all for what they are.

That agility will never come from pretending we are another country where the sclerotic set of rules only ever constructed to create the pretence of a level playing field between 28 different cultures will inevitably mean we will not ever be the same again, whilst we will never have the confidence to value who we really are.

That confidence will only come from Leaving the EU. We must Leave without ties and with full and unequivocal Independence from the EU Regime. That should have always and must now be our only and overriding purpose.

The significance of the opportunity that awaits us as a Country upon Leaving the EU cannot be underestimated.

Talk of having to have a deal to leave a relationship is all that it ever was.

The only reason that the Establishment is so focused upon perpetuating the myth that Leaving with No Deal will be a disaster, is because the people who populate its lead positions today are incapable of making decisions in live time, without a pre-ordained plan or strategy.

It is on this basis that we should perhaps be asking ourselves the question, what has this, the Country of Thatcher and Churchill really now become?

We really have no reason to fear a misnamed ‘no deal’ Brexit, as we will always have a deal, agreement or whatever you want to call it with the EU.

It’s the ineptitude and unsuitability of the Politicians and Society figures who are supposedly ‘in power’ and will therefore be ‘in control’ when we do that we should really be concerned about.

Because it is they who will cause the problems, as they cannot see and therefore embrace real opportunity for what it really is, simply because its something that they have never experienced, are qualified to manage or have been appropriately prepared for.

 

The problem with the plan for Brexit, is that Brexit has become all about having a plan

When Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Downing Street in May 1940, he didn’t have a plan or a date in mind for the War to end in 1945. He just knew what he had to achieve, and took the initiative to lead.

Right now, Brexit has effectively fallen on its arse. Not because the instruction given by the Electorate on 23rd June 2016 wasn’t clear. It was.

Brexit seems to be going nowhere because almost everyone has become obsessed by the ‘plan’ that will get us ‘there’.

Having a plan in itself isn’t a problem. Having plans is pretty normal. But when you allow yourself to become paralysed and glued to the spot, just because there isn’t a plan in place which appears to suit your purpose, there is little wonder that everything soon begins to resemble one giant mess.

Plans, or creating plans for any aim or desired outcome is a very deceptive process. Having an ‘agreed’ plan gives a false sense of security, built on the complacent view that everything will then work like clockwork and turn out as good as you could possibly hope.

In practice, or perhaps I should say the real world, plans rarely work out as anticipated, particularly when it comes to Government or running anything which involves the input or influence of more than one person.

Roll that idea out into a negotiated peace with the European Union, its advisors, negotiators, commissioners and 27 Nation States in between and we can begin to get a very real idea about how hard agreeing a plan which will suit all of them – and don’t forget us – would actually be.

The elephant in the room with all of this process of working up and then waiting for the EU to agree a plan, is and always has been that it is completely unnecessary.

The result of the European Referendum was a clear instruction. An instruction to Parliament and our MPs to take every step necessary to facilitate and then implement the specific action of rescinding, and therefore leaving Membership of the EU.

That instruction wasn’t advisory. It wasn’t just a view. The Electorate’s instruction was not a request for MP’s to go away and spend two years arguing over what the word ‘leave’ actually means and dream up excuse after excuse to excuse themselves from doing that which they have been told to do.

It certainly wasn’t an invitation to delay, divide and destroy a legitimate democratic process by creating the pretence that you don’t need to be in or out, but can hover happily somewhere in between. You can’t.

Even attempting to create a comprehensive or exhaustive plan to undertake such a complicated process as returning full sovereignty, law making and responsibility for our own trade, was always going to be impossible to achieve. But that is no reason to fall into the trap of thinking that without a plan, Brexit or rather leaving the European Union is something that we should not or disingenuously then have an excuse not  to do.

In 1940, Churchill had no plan for winning World War 2. Yet one way or another, dealing with each and every battle, set back, resource issue and foreign affairs nightmare as it came, he achieved for him his aim and for us as a Country, much more besides. As our leader, he just took each and every step, looked each and every day in the eye and didn’t accept defeat as an option which was on the table, let alone a choice which was his alone to decide.

It didn’t take one big plan to win that War. It took a whole series of many smaller plans to do what adds up to being the same.

It’s simply the case that hindsight has allowed the story to fit together snugly when the words of history overlook the mistakes, blunders and blind alleyways that lurked continuously in between his appointment and our Victory.

What the delivery of such a giant task did take however, was leadership. And when we look at the way that we are being led into Brexit today, compared to Churchill’s take on being ruled from Europe from 1940 to 1945, there remains an almost universal gulf sitting in between.

image thanks to Wikipedia