I see you spitting feathers in your maiden speech, your trademark voice cracking like two dying cats fucking in a detuned piano. You’re absolutely bloody livid, aren’t you? Livid enough that the words just spill out of your mouth and even Nigel Farage visibly panics for a moment when the word ‘slaves’ pops up without irony. You’re the Brexit Party’s greatest asset, the only one below him with any name recognition whatsoever, an attack nana with a long and established history of saying any old awful shit if it keeps you in the headlines. He might squirm for a moment but by the end Nigel has visibly creamed his trousers, safe in the knowledge that you’ve served your purpose. This is what we can expect from our elected representatives in the European Parliament now, isn’t it? Outrage and newspaper inches, as much actual substance as diarrhoea in a colander. What a surprise that it turns out the Brexit Party intend to put as little actual work in as Farage ever did.
How grotesque we’ve become. The idea of patriotism has been reclaimed by vile, squawking clowns who recast it as justification for embarrassing ourselves on the world stage and we clap and applaud them for it. We’ve collectively turned our backs on the antiquated notion of British decency; we’ve allowed ourselves to be utterly overrun by a grotesque core of deeply unpleasant little Englanders who revel in their rudeness and their deluded notions of grandeur. If this toxic grandstanding from a proven vicious old bigot is to be our swan song then we’ll thoroughly deserve the potential ruin it could bring us. We just don’t learn. By 2025 you’ll be able to beat a gay to death with a brick inside Parliament and provided you’re willing to go on Dancing on Ice and make an absolute twat of yourself you’ll still get re-elected six months later.
We can thank Brussels, too, for once again singularly failing to have a shred of self-awareness about the growing distrust in the EU’s democratic processes. Nominating Ursula von de Leyen behind closed doors is just viagra to the outraged hard-on of the EU’s critics. It doesn’t matter that she still needs to win the backing of MEPs. Optics are all that counts to the vast majority of the furious masses voting for increasingly right-wing nationalists across the continent. All they need is some thin shred of justification for screeching “this isn’t democracy!” et voila, Ann fucking Widdecombe.
Brexit has utterly consumed us, reducing us to a bitter dogfight between two completely polarised extremes. For Christ’s sake, Ann Widdecombe, you literally appeared on Doctor Who endorsing The Master. You are an absolute parody of yourself, a desperate attention-craving narcissist willing to cosy up to any authoritarian who raises your stock, be they Farage or fiction. These duplicitous twats, whatever flavour they take, whether they’re the Brexit Party or Boris Johnson or Trump and his little fireworks party crowning himself as the new Grand High Wizard of the Covfeferacy – they ARE the establishment. They ARE the very thing they’re pretending to rally against. For as long as we tolerate the complete imbalance we live under these entitled, awful people will continue lining their pockets in the name of fake ideals that will do nothing to improve the lives of those who consider them their saviours.
Is there anything more ridiculously perfect as an analogy for all that than the very notion of a Brexit Party MEP? You aren’t a politician any more, Ann Widdecombe. You’re a reality TV star, a hateful little shell of noise and bluster drawing a salary for doing nothing but distracting and disrupting. It’s years later and you’re still nothing more than a national joke, dancing to someone else’s tune for our embarrassment.
Enjoy it while you can, Ann Widdecombe. If it all goes Nigel’s way it won’t be long before there’s a reckoning. Slavery is a grotesque comparison but if we’re pushed ever further into this nightmare of deregulation, zero-hours contracts and social engineering there will, at some point, be a breaking point. And if you think the country won’t see the fact it’s people like you running the plantation you’re fucking kidding yourself.
I see you, Ann Widdecombe. I fucking see you.
