Laura Muncie

I must admit to crying with laughter at Danny Dyers rant on ITV Good Morning Britain.  I am allowed to cry with laughter because watching the Brexit process, if we can call it a process, evokes those feelings. Cries of outrage, followed with laughter at the absurdity of what looks more like a Monty Python sketch, than a serious attempt at a new horizon, which is what Brexit was supposedly offering.

If you haven’t seen the clip I recommend watching it on YouTube. With hundreds of thousands of shares on social media, and the press feeding frenzy, host Piers Morgan will be delighted.

“Who knows about Brexit, no-one’s got a clue what Brexit is. It’s like this mad riddle” says Dyer exasperated. He is right. Nobody knows what kind of Brexit is coming and with only weeks of negotiating time left it is indeed “mad”.

The Guardian article titled “Speak for England, Danny Dyer. You’ve blown the lid on Brexit” suggest voters in England feel like Danny.

A telling headline and a telling outburst that basically says the English electorate are not well informed. Scotland’s voters were given similar sparse information and discerningly chose to keep the status quo. Out of touch politicians and a media that often misses the undercurrents of voters, that headline by The Guardian may come back to haunt them.

Danny goes on to vent about David Cameron:
“He called all this on, where is he? He’s in Europe, in Nice with his trotters up. Where is the geezer ?  He should be held to account for it”.

Danny’s comic disdain resonates because disdain at the political system is part of the reason we are at the point we are. Pre- Brexit people were stoked up, partly by the press, to feel more and more unrepresented by the politicians they voted for. Social media suggested they were not alone with such thoughts. However that is nothing new, politicians are often confronted with marches and a crowd that says, “we do not agree with this”. Remember the huge marches in opposition to the Iraq war?

But this time it is different, it is not peace protests politicians are being faced with, it is right wing ideology weaving a path through our society, and it is not confined to one party or one country.

At the AFD conference, the German version of UKIP, on December 8th Farage bragged, “the last time I stood on a political platform was in a southern state called Mississippi, with somebody called Donald J Trump, who I am pleased to say is now the President”. Thunderous applause followed.

Nigel Farage later said in an interview with far right AFD deputy leader Beatrix Starch- who was given coverage by the BBC news night on June 19th- that he has never doubted himself because whatever was said in Westminster, whatever was said in the media, the people down in his pub in Kent didn’t think like that.

What do the people down in the pub in Kent think now ? Maybe someone should go ask them.

The public rarely think the same way as politicians, and the press has been London- centric for so long, it is no surprise people don’t relate to it either. It is one of the reasons I started writing for a newspaper. Danny Dyer’s outburst shows information about Brexit is just one long opinion piece after another, much like I am doing. Nothing else concrete has come along yet, leaving little else for the public to go on.

Meantime right wing ideology rolls ahead trying to break down political organisations everywhere. I don’t think that Brexit is the end goal, I think the plan is to end the EU for good. This coupled with a shake down of the Devolved Governments, a complete reorder is what is being sought.

Blame is the last sentiment I took from Dyer’s words. Bring Cameron back from Nice to be held responsible for what has happened. Cameron is to blame ! But is he really responsible for the Brexit outcome we have today? I don’t think he is. Labour hasn’t offered up much in opposition. The SNP and the Greens, the only real opposition to a hard Brexit, are not being heard. Besides the British electorate voted the Conservatives back to keep a hard Brexit on the menu.

Confusion, muddled thinking, outrage,  a press feasting on every moment and laughing all the way to the bank. Something, which all the analysis says the British public won’t be doing.