We’re still sitting back and processing the news. Right now there is a shit-storm of cliches being bandied about the place like there is no tomorrow. Post-fact politics reigns supreme and social media banter has definitely taken the upper hand over reasoned discourse. A referendum result fuelled by misinformation could only have a mega-Babel as its unreasonable direct heir. The words “democracy” and “democratic” continue to be thrown about and misused with alarming simplicity and we are still firmly situated in the No Brain’s Land of “Knee-jerk reaction”.
While the dust continues to settle I will try to point out some interesting articles in the press and reviews that might be part of a wider picture relating to the demos, sovereignties and peoples of Europe. My guess is that more often than not we will find that in the globalized world nothing is ever too far apart as not to be intricately linked and have direct consequences on a myriad other matters.
Let us begin with this article from the Guardian about the performance of Brexiter Cummings before the Treasury select Committee. Here’s my favourite bit:
No, he couldn’t confirm whether a Vote Leave advert had been deliberately designed to look like an NHS brochure. No, he couldn’t confirm Britain was in the single market, because we definitely weren’t even though we definitely were. No he couldn’t confirm why Vote Leave was claiming that intra EU trade had fallen since 1999 when official figures showed it had actually gone up by 39%.
So it went on. No, he couldn’t confirm when Vote Leave would make the macro-economic case for Brexit because these figures were obviously top secret and if he were to make them public then they wouldn’t be secret any more. No, he couldn’t name the Goldman Sachs operatives who had bribed everyone in Brussels, because he’d be killed. No, he couldn’t name any of of the umpteen ambassadors who had told him at secret trysts that they really hated the EU because if he did they would all just say he was crazy.
