Irony and the Far Right are like oil and water

DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?  BECAUSE I DON'T....

"We know our future lies in working together to build a better Britain. Yes, we may enjoy the odd triumphant jeer at the mewling, puking infants of Remain (And why not? We’ve put up with the quislings for years) but it’s not we who are ‘sabotaging’ the country; quite the reverse. The world is watching and if anything is making us look foolish and unreliable it is the remainers stoking up the fear factor. No wonder they see division; they are largely responsible for it. No wonder they see hate; they are, literally, asking for it. It’s time for the sulky teens to stop bleating about their lives being ruined and start rolling up their sleeves, like grown-ups."

The above comes from a blog post by a Leave the EU fanatic calling himself Battsby.  There's certainly something batty going on.  He also describes himself as "alt-right", which appears to be the current trendy term for neofascist.  So he might be a cunt, but he's a fashionable cunt.  And, like almost everyone I've come across on the far right of politics, irony appears to be beyond him.

I didn't edit that paragraph at the top, there's nothing left out or added.  He genuinely writes about "working together" in one sentence, and then derides about fifty per cent of the UK population as "Quislings".  To further the ironical moment he uses a term for 'traitors' that was used to identify collaborators with the Nazis.  As that far right inspiration the Daily Fail might put it, you couldn't make it up, could you?

But apparently we're only 'seeing' hate.  There isn't any out there, everyone's friends, and all those reports and statistics proving that hate crime has risen dramatically in England since June are just the bleating of sulky teens.

He's right about one thing though.  The world is watching.  And laughing.  The UK became a laughing stock on 24 June.  Now with the world's worst performing currency (and therefore on the brink of massive rises in food prices) and a leadership that is both authoritarian and clueless.  They don't want parliamentary scrutiny of their actions, presumably for fear of being found out that they don't have a clue.  Even the Tory Chancellor is starting to think so.

OK, it's just one sad blogger I'm quoting, an aging white male with over the top insecurity issues who wants the world to work for him and his ilk alone.  The trouble is that people like him now have a voice in government.  David Davis, once a staunch defender of parliament, has suddenly decided that imperious works better now he has power, while The Disgraced Liam Fox goes around the planet getting mocked.  And then there's Foreign Secretary Johnston (no, I still don't really believe it either....) making sure he upset as many other countries as possible.  It's an embarrassing time to have to admit you're British.

In Scotland we do have our Battsby-like characters, although not generally quite so outlandishly Colonel Blimpish.  But they are a rarity here and have no traction in our society, as the election results for ukip clearly show.  We are, more and more, a different country to England.  For my friends down there I sincerely hope you find a way to change course.  But as long as you have so many passengers insisting that the iceberg looks interesting, we are going to have to think about when we man the lifeboats.