The BBC seems strangely quieted this morning as the most important election in our lifetime gets underway. Make no mistake, if the British people vote to give Johnson a majority today we will have given up any semblance of being a serious nation. The people will have made clear they do not want to be a good neighbour or cooperate in a great project to make Europe a better place to live and work, safer for future generations with a cleaner and healthier environment.
We will have willfully chosen as our prime minister a man who has shown himself to be a coward and a wimp, a fool, liar, cheat and utter moral vacuum. I wouldn't entrust him with running a whelk stall. And yet, if the polls are to be believed, it seems more than likely he will be returned to No 10 in the next 24 hours. A majority will mean Johnson taking us out of the EU, probably at the end of January, with all of the consequences for our children and grandchildren.
Brexit, for which he should bear a heavy responsibility, is seen internationally as a mystifying act of national humiliation and self harm. He is looked on as a mendacious, shambling oaf, leading a gullible nation of half-wits to global irrelevance. Yesterday's daily gaffe was him hiding in a fridge to avoid being asked questions by an ITV reporter, and widely reported around the world. One wonders what humiliation is too much for him. Personally, if that had been me I would have bought a false beard, changed my name and left immediately for Katmandu.
It will mark the end of Britain's reign as a respected world superpower as Patrick Cockburn said in The Independent a few days ago. This general election will be the point of no return he says:
"Future historians may well pick 2019 as a decisive year in the decline of the US and UK as world powers. Of course, the UK started at a much lower level in the international pecking order than the US, but the direction of travel in both cases is the same.
"This geopolitical shift comes exactly a century after the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919, when the US and UK were at the peak of their power in determining the fate of nations after the First World War. They self-confidently redrew the map of eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa according to their own interests and with minimal concern about the effect on others."
Of course 2016 was the really decisive year. Trump was elected and we chose Brexit. But I can see his point. We may today show ourselves not just lacking in judgement or even the basic reality of our place in Europe and the world, but unable to see through the charlatan who is leading us to disaster. Never was it so true that the people get the government they deserve. If Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson is indeed our prime minister tomorrow morning with enough of a majority to do as he pleases we will have become accomplices in our own demise.
This election is a chance to come to our senses, to think again about what kind of country we are. If we spurn it then we really are on a slippery slope.
Half or more of the electorate have been possessed by a collective madness, a belief that Britain's empire can be rekindled without force of arms and using trade instead, as Germany, Japan and more recently, China have done.
The Anglo-American dominance of world affairs is certainly coming to an end. A majority of people in America and now Britain, in a last desperate gamble, have entrusted the attempted resurrection of their nation's golden past to two simple minded, slogan chanting imbeciles. In this country we may be able to begin putting things right - but don't gamble on it.
Today I am off to Wakefield (as all local Conservative's like me should be) to help Mary Creagh get out the vote (GOTV). What a mad world it is.
Incidentally, you might want to read this article by Denis Staunton in The Irish Times yesterday. It foresees the possibility that Johnson's strategy of trying to get the perfect arrangement where we can benefit from a US trade deal without losing very much by Brexit, winds up delivering the worst of both world's. It's a nicely argued piece, well worth reading. This is his conclusion:
"Eurosceptic backbenchers, their numbers bolstered by new, hardline MPs, will seek to block any trade deal with the EU that involves meaningful level playing field commitments. But public opinion, especially in former Labour constituencies, will not allow Johnson to agree to US demands on food standards and drug patents and for US companies to provide more services to the NHS.
"Caught between his backbench Brexiteers and the British public, Johnson could find himself in the worst of both worlds, with lower access to the EU market and no prospect of a trade deal with Trump."
This is what we have always feared isn't it?
