Sunday 9th October

This year, 2016 has been truly amazing.  Who would have thought?  In February we had the ridiculously farcical so-called re-negotiations with the EU in February by Cameron that were supposed to secure the referendum, which hardly anyone believed.  And then the rush to get the vote over and done with before the Leave campaign got their act together.  The trouble was that the entire Political class and the Commentariat misread the whole Immigration argument; they thought that people were just concerned that migrants were claiming benefits or houses, not that most of them just wanted rid of Immigrants altogether, and not even the European ones either.  For years the Mail and Express and the Sun and to a lesser degree the Telegraph and the Times have been peddling an anti-Muslim rhetoric, it is no wonder that people looking for a reason for the apparent lack of success in their own lives found such an easy scapegoat.  And I too misread the public mood and though as polling day neared the polls tightened; it was still a huge shock that Leave won.

That Cameron had to resign was no surprise, but Boris bowing out was a shock – he looked a shoo-in.  Then Andrea Leadsom dropped out and by default it was Theresa the submarine, who had silently lurked beneath the sonar wearing the camouflage of a Cameron loyalist Remainer only to re-surface as an all-out-Brexiteer.  As if having a new Leader of the Conservatives unelected wasn’t bizarre enough we had the unedifying spectacle of Labour re-electing the Leader they already had after the staged walk-out of most of his Shadow Cabinet and a vote of no-confidence by M.P.s.  Then only a few days ago the barely 18 day old new UKIP leader, Diana James mysteriously threw in the towel.  UKIP in turmoil and to cap it all a brawl involving two of their MEPs in Strasbourg – and although one of the combatants was hospitalized the other one swears that no punches were thrown, more a case of ‘handbags at dawn’.  Honestly you couldn’t make it up.

And in America we have Donald Trump trumping even his own outrageous sexist and racist remarks being exposed in a 2005 out-take talking about trying to ‘fuck’ a married woman and how because he was famous he could kiss and grope any woman he fancied.  He has apologized for using such language but not actually for the groping, kissing or anything else of women.  And the American public still seem like rabbits caught in the headlights, blinking but not really seeing.  It is almost a competition to see how badly he has to behave before his supporters will desert him.  “Is this low enough for you?  Or do I actually have to take down my pants or use the F or C word about Hilary”.  Nothing would shock me about the man anymore.    The U.S. election is in early November and we are all hoping that Hilary can hang on and win, or just how low can the American public go?  And we are only in October.  Who knows what other surprises lurk in the remaining 12 weeks of this extra-ordinary year.