Topsier and Turvier

The world seems to be getting crazier – or is it just old age creeping in.  I do sometimes wonder what younger people think about it, but talking to my children they seem to be just as confused as I am.  Sometimes when you are in the middle of a storm you cannot actually tell which way the wind is blowing.  Firstly – three elections in a month have thrown up quite contradictory results.  First, the local elections, mostly in rural areas saw the Tories wiped out.  Labour lost a few seats and won a handful too.  The big winners were the LibDems; the argument seemed to be that they at least had a clear Remain message.  But more people voted for Remain parties than leave – just.  However not all seats were voting, London certainly wasn’t and all I could extrapolate was that this was largely an anti-Tory vote. The European elections were won by the newly formed Brexit party and the two main parties suffered; but we have seen this several times before.  Strangely the very people who declare that the EU is undemocratic consistently vote for parties who have no interest in Europe at all.  Last night Labour won the Peterborough by-election, beating the Brexit party by 680 votes on a 48% turnout.  The bookies and all the press had predicted a wipeout of both Labour and the Tories.  But even the Tories managed a few thousand votes.  Normal service not resumed – but maybe the success of Farage is dented at least.

It is now impossible to predict the result of ANY election.

The Tories are not quite in free-fall, but they are in trouble – whoever becomes their next leader and P.M. will face the same dilemma over Brexit.  Some are promising no-deal and even proroguing Parliament to force it through.  And yet almost daily we are getting news of our manufacturing disappearing because of Brexit uncertainty.

There are Tories now openly calling for de-selection of Tory M.P.s not worshipping Brexit; the very same Tories who were so outraged by Labour activists talking about de-selecting more Centrist Labour M.P.s.   And Labour are still sending out conflicting messages on Brexit; how long this can hold is debatable.

And I had to almost laugh when I caught Trump arguing against gun control by saying that when the terrorists massacred people at The Bataclan in Paris that if just a few French people had guns on them they might have killed the gunmen.  Piers Morgan, the interviewer pointed out that more people are killed by guns in America every day than died at Bataclan.  The gunslinger replied that knife crime was so bad that London hospitals were swimming in blood from knife crime.  What a lunatic.  And don’t even get me started on Iran or China trade wars.  I truly believe that a huge Financial Recession is just around the corner…