Brexit Britain is Johnson's banana monarchy – be in no doubt

Politicians lie to us, lie to each other and lie to themselves. In this theatre of the absurd, Prince Harry appeals to us to rein things in a little.

“UK’s Prince Harry demands end to ‘greed and selfishness,’” for nature’s sake, said the headline. A Plantagenet, if you will.

Prince Harry’s net worth is somewhere between $25 million and $40m. His family together have a net worth of $88 billion. The sovereign grant to them is £76.1m per year.

But maybe the royals as icons of frugality is no funnier than Farage as a man of the people, or Boris as Prime Minister.

READ MORE: Non-Deal or No-Deal: Can Boris Johnson pull of his Brexit 'plan'?

Boris was there at Manchester spewing out lies and making testicle gags as the nation careers towards economic catastrophe.

Populist language was reduced to a handful of easy-to-remember slogans and numbers: 40 hospitals, 20,000 bobbies on the beat and LOTS of buses. Nice buses.

While Priti Patel ended freedom of movement with a smile and promised a tightening of immigration with a grin, Boris bumbled on with his muddle of techno-babble, Corbyn-bating and commie-bashing.

Any actual detail about resolutions to the Irish border was completely absent. This much anticipated set-to was just a stump speech littered with gags. The audience howled with laughter and lapped it up.

Later in the day, “Boris’s final offer” (which in fact was his only ever offer) was presented. It had no real solutions, created two borders and crossed several of the EU’s red lines. It was and is designed to fail – and fail it will.

The only question is how long the Europeans can be bothered to go through the masquerade of pretending to consider it. The Irish barely lasted a day.

READ MORE: Michael Russell: Here's the proof Boris Johnson doesn't want Brexit deal

We used to think that the UK would be contested between two nationalisms: Scottish nationalism and British nationalism. Today it seems like the forces in competition are between two visions: an Anglo-British vision of Great Britain from the 1950s and an Anglo-British vision of Greater England regurgitated from the 1950s. This is Coronation Chicken versus Chlorinated Chicken.

Now it seems escape routes from Boris’s Banana Monarchy have been blocked off, life-rafts scuppered and zip-wires cut.

Richard Leonard in effect said in an interview with Gordon Brewer: “No – even if a clear majority of Scottish people vote for parties explicitly calling for a second independence referendum, and return a majority of pro-indy MSPs to Parliament, we will not consider that sufficient support.”

The Scottish LibDem leader Willie Rennie has also pledged to stop indyref2 “dead in its tracks” even if pro-independence parties win a majority in Scotland.

The Scottish LibDem leader says his party would oppose a vote even if pro-independence parties won a majority.

The depleted Unionist forces in Scotland have turned from winning the arguments to stopping a democratic vote taking place at all.

Other groups are seeking to subvert and gerrymander any vote when it goes ahead.

The Unionist think tank Scotland Matters is manoeuvring to insert a special condition to corrupt any future vote.

The Scotland Matters petition says a two-thirds vote for change would avoid a disputed result and be “clear, demand acceptance by all and neutralise subsequent efforts to revoke the result or have another referendum”, and give a “powerful mandate” for the government implementing the change.

These are signs of desperation as Better Together’s and the Tories’ talismanic leader Ruth Davidson has left the field and Britain has been reduced to an international laughing stock.

Now what?

Well, groggy as we are from the Brexit drug pumping around our system, a few things are still clear. In the odd lucid moment it’s clear that there are a few Brexit silver linings.

The Conservative Party is destroying itself.

The party in Scotland faces electoral obliteration and will next week appoint the next nobody to oversee this process.

Ireland will be united within a generation.

Scotland will be independent and be able to make its own decisions about its relationship with Europe.

England will face a long and difficult process of coming to terms with itself.

Brexit cold turkey is likely to prove difficult. Withdrawal from the drug of blaming everything on the rest of the world will be harsh.

The problem for those of us opposed to Brexit and opposed to being ruled by a government we didn’t and can’t elect is also clear.

We are defending two institutions – Westminster and “the EU” – that people have very little faith in. Westminster we know a lot about and hold in much contempt. For years – since the expenses scandal and the sleaze years – politicians have been held in increasing contempt.

The EU is a different matter. It’s a set of institutions we know mostly through the prism of the tabloid press. It’s a set of institutions we are almost completely ignorant of. Ask the person next to you who their MEP is. I doubt they’ll know.

As we emerge (eventually) from this hallucinogenic state, these institutions will have to be reformed or abolished, and the political class that led us through this process will need to be held to account.

The next General Election and the coming independence referendum will be processes of cleansing and renewal, because much of what we have in place of democracy is rotten and decrepit.

Now that’s enough for now, it's time for your medicine.