Who we are and what we stand for.

Subject: Who we are and what we stand for.

Lewis Carol could not have written a better script.

Alice (Joe Public) had landed down a rabbit hole we know as Brexit and faced with a party, in fact a parliament full of parties, the Mad Hatter, code named Boris, was whimsying  about the state of 'his' world in which reality is turned on its head, black becomes white and we lose any sense of what is real and what is unreal.
If one keeps repeating something which is 'make believe' it doesn't make it any more right and yet it seems a political assumption, that if we say what we feel 'should happen' then it will. It appears that this political rhetoric is a substitute for truth and that truth is a dangerous concept only, as we row back from it, it stands out like a lighthouse signalling its position for all to see. 
Johnson's thrust at the EU Commissioners regarding, for instance the Irish Backstop is to behave like a child, sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting la la la to substitute his own closed thinking from what could be called, the EUs closed thinking. If these matters regarding Brexit had been negotiable then they would have been negotiated but it's the irrevocable truth that there is no solution, given that the nature of the European Project relies on strict rules of membership and any country wishing to leave,  threatens the fabric of the remaining structure. 
Our reasons for leaving, free movement of labour and people, the European Courts interference in our own concept on legal matters, the ability to trade outside the EU, the fisheries question and the agricultural diktats which in themselves provide stability for the farming industry, doesn't fit well in our Anglo assumptions on free trade and market forces. 
Never having been occupied, never having heard the tramp of foreign boots on your streets has always made the EU Project much more a reality in countries over the Channel than here. We went along with it when Edward Heath bit his tongue and accepted the scorn of Charles de Gaulle, back in the 70s. Mrs Thatcher bullied the Commission into giving us some substantial rebates and Tony Blair was compliant in accepting the benefits of a large market but  it's largely within the Tory Party that the issue of sovereignty and the interference (sometimes for our own good) in the edicts issued by our own Parliament, edits often in favour of the shareholder class and rarely with the interests of the common people at its centre. These politicians have made it a lifetime desire to leave at any cost. David Cameron's decision to fight the right wing element in his party and put our remaining in the EU to a referendum which in reality he never dreamt he would loose. Unfortunately, being so out of touch with the country he governed, he never foresaw the deep divisions and unrest in the mind of the people left behind after the financial crash, people who would grasp at anything to blame for their dreadful economic position, blame anything but themselves for voting the man and his plutocrat cronies into power. No, rather blame the immigrant, rather follow the Daily Mail and the Express blaming Europe for our dreadful productivity, productivity born out of inadequate investment and a shocking approach to educating the sons and daughters of the people who, when given the chance, voted to leave.
"Off his head" said the Queen but unfortunately, we don't have that option any more. As Boris bumbles around the political elite in Europe, foremost in Germany where he is at the moment and then in the G7 which meets next week it appears he is much the laughing stock, the buffoon, the clown who in our darkest hour has come to represent our nation, who we are and what we stand for. So different from that other period in our history when we stood alone against the tyranny in Europe, that was also our 'darkest hour' but we had the leadership to sustain us.