Great article HERE by Jorg Schindler at Speigel Online about the Conservatives. He examines how Europe has all but destroyed the party, tearing it apart for thirty years while leading members pretended they were really all one happy family with just a slight disagreement over Europe. Now we know that Europe for the ultra Brexiteers is the one super issue that overshadows every other. Each side thought they could settle it by the referendum but the narrowness of the result has only given it more destructive power.
Everything in it rings true but as an onlooker you might be amused at his recounting of an event organised by The Spectator last year:
On a relatively temperate evening in late November, around 600 conservatives gather in London for what is essentially a public therapy session. They've been promised they will learn about the future of their party here at the Emmanuel Centre, a massive circular building in the heart of Westminster. The event has been organized by The Spectator, a weekly political magazine that generally maintains close ties with the Tories, but has lately despaired of them.
Organizers have placed a caricature at the front of the podium: It depicts the government as a mob of furious saber-rattlers preparing to finish off Prime Minister Theresa May between them. Rather coincidentally, three words from the New Testament, Matthew 1:23, can be seen on the cornice above in bronze: "God with Us."
One could be forgiven for having one's doubts.
"Things are bloody awful at the moment," says historian Anthony Seldon, adding that even the Suez crisis in 1956 seems minor in comparison to Brexit. If you think about it, Seldon says, things have never been this bad in the Tories' 230-year-history -- and things could get worse yet. If the party doesn't "loosen the buttocks," Seldon says, a socialist might soon move into 10 Downing Street.
The crowd starts to murmur. If there's anything left that can still arouse the Tories' survival instincts, it's the fear of the left.
What follows are 90 minutes of helplessness. That is, until something occurs to young parliamentarian Suella Fernandes: Nothing is preventing Britain from aiming to become the world leader in the digital revolution, she says. If the country came up with a self-driving car, for example, it could once again "move forward." Some in the audience sigh. "A driverless car," quips one, "that's precisely our problem."
Yes, don't laugh, Suella Fernandez thinks if only a UK company could come up with a driverless Allegro we could "move forward", presumably that's always provided someone doesn't forget to fit some forward gears - always a possibility in this country - and the car can only go in reverse.
She campaigned tirelessly for Brexit perhaps under the mistaken impression that the EU has slapped a ban on any member country inventing a driverless car. So, Brexit was actually unnecessary but since we've started we might as well finish. All we need now is someone to develop the driverless car. James Dyson is rumoured to have started to recruit from the automobile industry so you never know. Of course his version will look and handle a bit like a vacuum cleaner but never mind. Google, Uber, Mercedes and a host of other manufacturers are at least a decade or more ahead of us while Dyson has never even produced a conventional car. This is the way we do things in Britain. It's straight out of the pages of The Beano, circa 1954 and about as close to reality as we'll get.
Ms Fernandez by the way, is now a junior minister in DEXEU, a fact which seems to have escaped our friend from Der Spiegel. No doubt if he had realised this he would have been even more shocked. How the stupid have risen.
