It has been only six days since the world awoke to some of the biggest news in the history of Great Britain – the UK had voted to leave the EU.
However, despite being less then a week old – the chaotic aftermath of our decision has seen the political situation in this country fall into pure disarray – with more resignations, in-party civil war and coups, petitions, economic backlash, and overseas disagreements than one would expect in an entire year.
So, first things first – the UK chooses to leave the EU, despite many Leave voters not actually understanding the implications of leaving the EU before voting.
In the immediate aftermath of our decision, the pound nosedives to its lowest value in over 30-years, there is a spike in racist incidents, and the Leave campaign already begins to deny some of their biggest promises.
By 8am on Friday, Prime Minister David Cameron makes a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in which he confirms his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party – while promising to remain as leader for the next three months so the economy can, somehow, go back to normal, and so the Conservative Party has time to elect a new leader.
However, what Cameron didn’t mention in his resignation speech was Article 50. But what is Article 50?
In short, Article 50 is essentially the UK’s official declaration to the EU that it wants to leave.
When pushed, this will involve a two-year negotiation period, after which the treaties and rules of membership no longer apply to the UK.
But why would Cameron slip off the resignation podium without mentioning this? Well that’s relatively easy to explain.
Because whoever pushes Article 50 will be remembered for eternity as the politician who pushed Article 50 – whether leaving the EU is a massive success for the UK or the biggest catastrophe in political history, something that pretty much every politician is afraid to chance.
Originally, Leave campaigners had planned to push Article 50 at a later date, however the EU then spoke out and essentially told the UK to fuck off as quickly as possible.
So following the PM’s resignation and the EU’s annoyance at our plea to leave, the front-runners for Conservative leadership are Theresa May and Michael Gove – while Stephen Crabb, Liam Fox, and Andrea Leadsom are also leadership hopefuls.
Originally, it was thought that former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, would take over from Cameron, having pioneered the Leave campaign with Nigel Farage from day one – however just before 12 o’clock today, BoJo announced that he would not be running for leadership, just a matter of hours after Michael Gove stabbed deep into Boris’ back when he claimed that Boris could not provide real leadership or unite the Tories.
Now, I don’t mean to speculate, but Boris seems to have pulled a Cameron. When Cameron resigned without mentioning the need to push Article 50, he effectively slipped away from any responsibility regarding the after-effects of pushing Article 50 and ultimately leaving the EU.
The responsibility of pushing Article 50 would then seemingly be passed on to the next Prime Minister – with most expecting Boris to take up the role. But now, in a lousy attempt to preserve his career and not be remembered for potentially fucking up the country and Europe as we know it, Boris has sat down – probably to wait for somebody else to step in, push Article 50, and then he can hop back in free from any blame.
As national treasure Ewan McGregor said: ‘You spineless cunt’.
It’s a win win situation for BoJo. If Article 50 flops, he can then say – ‘I didn’t run for leader because I knew Article 50 would never work’. If Article 50 is a success, he can say: ‘I knew leaving the EU was a great decision. That’s why I led the campaign’.
Politically that is borderline genius, but on a personal level this is merely further proof that Boris is a weak, slimy, and afraid creature of the conservative kind – afraid not of fucking up the country, but of fracturing his own success.
As Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said:
Boris follows the Bullingdon playbook: you break it and someone else has to fix it.
So now we have Michael Gove and Theresa May dominating the run for the leader of Conservatives – which is quite frankly a terrifying reality.
As a result of this political confusion, chaos, and lack of order it would appear that Labour was essentially handed a chance to prey upon the unpredictability, disarray, and now leaderless Tory party – however, instead of seizing this vital opportunity, they formed a coup against their leader Jeremy Corbyn and dished out a vote of no confidence.
Could they not have just waited a couple of months?
More than three quarters of Labour MPs voted to show that they had no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn, yet still Corbyn has refused to resign.
As a friend of mine put it: ‘I sort of feel like Labour was handed a massive hammer to pound a confused and divided Tory party with but instead decided to smash its own teeth out’.
Perhaps the most irritating thing surrounding Labour’s misguided revolt against Corbyn is the blatant and obvious hypocrisy surrounding it.
Just over two weeks ago, MP for Wallassey and potential next Labour leader, Angela Eagle, proudly announced:
Jeremy is up and down the country, pursuing an itinerary that would make a 25-year-old tired. He has not stopped.
However by June 27 it would appear that Angela’s praise for Corbyn had instantaneously died down, as she wrote:
Under your leadership the case to remain in the EU was made with half-hearted ambivalence. I have come to the conclusion that you are not the right person to lead the party we both love.
One big issue with the Corbyn coup is that Corbyn has already refused to resign and said that, if needs be, he will stand again for leader of the Labour party.
So what we have on our hands here is a Labour party whose MPs seemingly don’t trust their leader, but whose supporters thoroughly do – which can be proved by just a quick glance at social media, or from the gargantuan mandate which saw Corbyn propelled into leadership just last September.
Ultimately, our choice to leave the EU, even though we haven’t actually left the EU just yet, has sent the UK into utter pandemonium. Whether you were pro-Brexit or pro-Remain, it is genuinely undeniable that the UK, and the entire continent of Europe is in a worrying state of disorder at the minute.
All we have left to do is see what the future holds.
Here’s to the future.
