WTF!

I mean… WT actual F!!

I do try – tucked away as us semi-retireds are in this idyllic corner of the planet – not to let myself get too exercised about the frankly bizarre goings on in other parts of the world. Regular browsers of these meanderings may also have noticed that I have been trying in these dog days to refrain from allowing my feelings regarding the current political – er! – climate in the western world from igniting my admittedly short fuse and triggering one of my more intemperate rants on the subject.

Sometimes – however – such a zenlike state of restraint is just too difficult to maintain…

It is bad enough having to watch the orange buffoon re-invent international diplomacy by adoption of the mores of the play pen. Following the roaring ‘success’ of his apparently entirely content free summit with the North Koreans the tiny-handed blob has clearly determined to outdo himself. His recent European tour involved giving NATO a good kicking and then lying about the outcome of the summit, followed rapidly by issuing a (twitter) declaration that the European Union is an enemy of the US! He then trashed his hosts in the UK in an interview with a tabloid rag even before the visit had properly started, announcing that the Prime Minister of that independent state had got it all wrong and that she would be better replaced as leader by the rebarbative (and recently resigned) BoJo – a buffoon even more ludicrous than the 45th president himself.

All of this was, however, merely a teaser for the climax of the tour – an historic summit with Russian Premier Putin in Helsinki during which the orange one happily threw his own country under a bus over Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election (a position from which he has inevitably retreated once again back home). It was all that Putin could do to keep the smirk off his face whilst the cameras were still rolling. Jeez!

And what of Brexit – I hear you whimper? What indeed? Watching the tories tear themselves apart as they lurch from crisis to crisis is usually cause for amusement (as it is with Labour – though somehow never quite as funny in their case) but this has gone way beyond a joke. Having spent now fully two years getting somewhere near the point that they should have been before invoking article 50 in the first place they are now rapidly approaching the terminus with all the velocity of a runaway train and the resultant cataclysmic collision is not just going to hurt the tories as a party – it is also going to cause as yet unimagined damage to the United Kingdom itself.

This worries the hard-line Brexiteers not a jot. They simply force open the throttles and pile on the steam, whistles awailing, pounding ever onward toward their unicorn-inspired ignis fatuus of a low-regulation, low-wage economic playground in which they can all filthily enrich themselves before retiring from the resultant wasteland to live abroad.

At each of their successively more outrageous stunts Prime Minister May – seemingly almost as cowardly as her predecessor – bends over and gives them what they want. What neither she nor they seem prepared to admit is that the parliamentary topography has shifted to the extent that none of the possible options for Brexit is now likely to be able to attract a majority in parliament. Do any of them care? Eyes closed, fingers firmly in ears they simply chant “Na na na na na!” at each other.

Let us be blunt – no-one has the slightest idea what will happen next or how this farce can possibly be resolved!

Thus far the EU has itself had little say in the proceedings – and nor has it yet had to. The image that comes to my mind is that of a championship golfer – or tennis player or suchlike – who, geared up for the big match, watches in amazement as their opponent simply implodes psychologically before their eyes – gifting them an unexpectedly easy win.

Seems Putin is not alone!