No dog in the fight

Were the eight Labour defectors, now joined by Anna Soubry and two other nonentities, to be joined by Caroline Lucas and Yvette Cooper you would have a party that embodied pretty much everything I voted against in the referendum. We are loosely describing it as centrism for want of a better term, but these people represent the pinnacle of Westminster banality. Vapid, conformist. slippery careerists who jump on every passing politically correct bandwagon, always believing that their narcissistic worldview, echoed by the BBC, is the view of the majority.

As Paul Embrey remarks, though, "One of the joys of following politics over the coming months will be witnessing the reaction of the 11 defectors as it slowly dawns on them that, far from representing 'millions', they represent no-one". They are exactly what we are all sick of - politicians who are infinitely interchangeable and could just as easily serve on the front bench of either hollowed out shell of a party.

In many ways this new independent group is largely an excretion from the old parties which have now been colonised by their extremes - both of whom are equally unappealing. Not in a billion years would I vote for the Labour party which I generally find objectionable whoever is leading it, meaning that the Tories, as foul natured as they are, are still the default option. 

The Conservative Party, though, is nothing I especially recognise as conservative. The Tory right are jingoistic ignorant reactionary grunters who mistake knee-jerk right wing posturing for conservative values. But then the rest of the party are social democrat wets. We don't have a conservative party in the UK.

We are told that the tory party has drifted to the hard right - which it has if you only view it through the Brexit prism, but on everything else, it is largely businesses as usual. Whatever crosses their desks, they either ban it, subsidise it or tax it. There is nothing else in their toolbox. 

So then as far as Westminster politics goes, I no longer have a dog in the fight. For a time it looked like the EEA option was back on the table but has no been co-opted by the likes of Boles and mangled to the point where it is neither deliverable or desirable. It's no longer an argument worth having. My only political hope now is that we do not leave the EU without a deal - and if May's deal is what we have to put up with  then so be it. 

One would think that with most MPs being opposed to a no deal Brexit that May's deal would pass without much obstruction. Still, though, the parliamentary arithmetic at last examination, was not in its favour. Parliament remains atomised, incoherent and wholly inept. One simply hopes that the departure of Honda, though little to do with Brexit, is viewed as a portent. Until the penny drops, not a lot else matters.