No Deal is a dangerous fantasy

The Brexiteers know the disasters we are facing, they just don’t care, and they don’t care because they have “faith”, faith that the grass is greener outside of the European Union, that we will prosper if only we have faith to stay the course.

New Statesman

There is one thing we should remember about people with faith, they’re unshakable in their convictions. You can not argue facts and figures with them until steam exhales from your ears, they have their “faith”, and their “faith” will see them through.

Brexiteers are fundamentalists, and like all fundamentalists, they would rather do something suicidal than admit what they believe is wrong. You can unpick the logic, offer mountains of evidence, but as soon as they say “I believe”, the argument is over. It’s over because evidence based thinking is heresy.

The problem from the start of this project, is that Remainers allowed the Brexiteers to frame the argument, and that argument was framed in the hyperbolic emotion of faith.

Brexiteers only have themselves to blame for the UK’s disastrous fate

I agree with George Eaton in The New Statesman, Brexiteers only have themselves to blame for the UK’s disastrous fate.

The New Statesman

The promises made my Leave were never deliverable, because their ambitions were never in the country’s interests. Leave’s ambition were entirely personal. They were motivated entirely by delusions, personal ambition, and greed. It’s what happens when you let the debating societies of public schools loose in the real world. They wreck the restaurant and get to walk away, what does it matter if someone else is paying?

No future, and England’s dreaming

The New Statesman

George Eaton’s assessment of our imminent crash out of the European Union its me in mind of a line from the Sex Pistols “God save the queen” that predicts “no future, And England’s dreaming”.

The rest of the John Lydon’s lyrics could’ve been about written for the occasion.

God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb

God save the queen
She’s not a human being
and There’s no future
And England’s dreaming

Don’t be told what you want
Don’t be told what you need
There’s no future
No future
No future for you

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
‘Cause tourists are money
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems

Oh God save history
God save your mad parade
Oh Lord God have mercy
All crimes are paid

Oh when there’s no future
How can there be sin
We’re the flowers
In the dustbin
We’re the poison
In your human machine
We’re the future
Your future

God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves

God save the queen
We mean it man
There’s no future
In England’s dreaming God save the queen

No future
No future
No future for you

No future
No future
No future for me

No future
No future
No future for you

The revolutionaries of Algiers

Andrew Hussey reviews Elaine Mokhtefi’s book “Algiers, Third World Capital: Freedom Fighters, Revolutionaries, Black Panthers” in The New Statesman paints a picture of Algiers as a “hotbed of political and cultural activity as idealistic foreigners flocked there to help build a new world in the experimental nation”.

The New Statesman

“Mokhtefi, née Klein, was a young Jewish woman from Brooklyn” is compelling as the political activist, “working as a translator for a variety of anti-colonial causes”. The story has potential as the subject of screenplay.