The world outside

There is a world outside Malta, though perhaps you could be forgiven for forgetting this, such is the crass insularity that afflicts us. It comes from living on a small island, with the “little island” mentality that goes with this.

This malaise does not afflict only us. The (relative) majority of British voters chose insularity and separatism in voting to leave the EU.

Note that I did not say that the vote to leave was inexplicable.

With the benefit of a hindsight that encompasses the horrendous picture of Donald Trump being elected as (ostensibly) the most powerful man in the world, it is hardly surprising that British voters fell for the lies and obfuscations of political crooks like the eminently likeable Boris Johnson and the awesomely disgusting Nigel Farage.

The occult machinations of the spinners and weavers using methods developed by outfits like Cambridge Analytica made the bigoted oiks and rude mechanicals of the two “Us”, the US and the UK, easy prey.  After all, the average voter for Brexit was only following in the tradition of a country made up of people who had opposed a Channel tunnel “because of the threat of invasion”.

Now that Brexit has been voted for, Theresa May, a remainer originally, has found herself with the task of cleaning out Johnson and Farage’s detritus from the stables, a Herculean task that she is tackling gamely but that continues to look impossible.

Helped in no measure at all by the smug preening of the winners, for whom the “Out!” vote vindicated their lies and moral corruption, she has to balance her duty to the country with the realpolitik which governs the life of the politician who seeks to continue in power.

If she wants to stand even a snowball’s chance in hell of fighting off the twin, if incongruous, threats of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, May has to untangle the horrendous mess she inherited as a result of Cameron’s craven capitulation to the xenophobes and bigots.

Cameron didn’t expect Brexit to prevail, just as Clinton (and the civilised world) didn’t expect Trump to win, but win they did.

Northern Ireland is looking like becoming a problem all of its own, which is hardly something new, and many analysts continue to paint in stark relief the many problems the UK will face once they leave, always assuming that Trump is not let loose by his minders to blow us all to hell in the meantime.

Will this make a difference if May grows a backbone and takes the country to the polls again?  What the electorate has done can only be undone by the electorate.

Sadly, it is highly unlikely that much will change. If the microcosmic evidence of Malta in 2017 is anything to go by, Trump would win again and Brexit approved, again.