let a thousand flowers bloom (and the smile on the face of the tiger)

chairman mao (apocryphal) and a limerick of unknown provenance.

‘infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it infamy’ - kenneth williams carry on cleo

poor boris (not a phrase horsemouth ever thought he’d write) - it’s a bad day when not even the police want to be photographed with you (and are demanding an apology). the royal road of comedy has deserted him and he wanders parched in the wilderness. ok ok he’s got the weekend off to pull his bruised ego back together and contemplate the humiliations about to be heaped on his broad (if hunchbacked) shoulders (god his posture’s terrible).

when gove and boris hitched their wagon to brexit there was a brief flurry of the 'let a thousand flowers bloom' rhetoric - horsemouth assumes they are taking the western (non althusser) view of the cultural revolution (actually the hundred flowers campaign was earlier) as a move by mao to involve the people in the ideological battles of the chinese communist party. with brexit they find the people already assembled (as a result of years of propaganda by the red tops, the torygraph etc. - instead of the centralised authority of the tory party they have found another source of power. they defect to the leave campaign.

here's a little vignette, IDS attends a meeting on an estate in chingford about brexit - he is shocked to discover that 'the people on the estates' are really interested (having previously viewed these people as unreachable).

of course (to mix fake colonial metaphors) this is a bad case of tiger riding and not guaranteed to end well at all. what led people to vote for brexit (all those years ago) is an inchoate mixture of grievances many of which will in fact be made worse by brexit itself (of whatever stripe). is it the job of a progressive to warn against it or to shoo it on its way (so that it can all be worked out dialectically).

it is (perhaps) the low point in the story for boris the hero - shackled and humiliated by his party and parliament, the knives glittering the darkness around him. it’s boris versus the establishment - but at some point he will get to make his appeal to the people, he will twinkle, he will buffoon like a pound shop Churchill, and if he looks like he can deliver they will vote for him.

but they can’t vote for him they can only vote for their local conservative MP (as many as are left) whose behaviour may (or may not) have pleased them - then there’s always the brexit party.

and let us salute those glorious principled heroes of the people leaving the tory party - nicholas soames, amber rudd (fucksake)...

last night horsemouth watched a documentary on the rise of hitler (focusing on the german aristocracy’s welcome of him and perfect for these democracy anxious times), then dad’s army (probably the cause of brexit if we are honest) and then a 50 years of monty python special.

hence we witness the power of political satire.