As the local and European parliament elections hove enticingly into view, you will likely find yourself moved by the Conservative party’s attempt to expand its electoral appeal beyond recent head-trauma victims. The Tories are keen to move past the notion that a vote for them is a vote in favour of a government with no pending legislation, at all, bar the one piece it can’t pass.
Fire up your thousand-yard stares, then, as Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, has apparently got a plan to fix that. In general, I try not to pay too much attention to Graham, who deliberately cultivates the air of a man who’d tell someone politely but firmly to move their car at a point-to-point – then nix their planning permission application if they didn’t. But how can we ignore his reported suggestion that Theresa May should bring the withdrawal agreement bill before the House, except with the backstop either stripped out or time-limited? That, Graham and others reckon, could command the elusive majority.
To which the only sane response is: OH MY GOD. ARE YOU ALL UNWELL? Listen, Graham: every time a Conservative member of parliament inquires: “Why can’t she just take out the backstop?” a fairy books a trip to Dignitas. There are now no fairies left.
As for passing a unilaterally backstop-free “withdrawal agreement”, what is the point? You might as well try to see if you can get a majority for other pieces of fantasy legislation that could never apply. Obviously have a word with the chief whip before you answer, but do you have the numbers to get the Peace of Westphalia through? How about the Representation of the People Act? Second law of thermodynamics? If push came to shove, and it was put before the House in a fortnight, by what majority do you reckon you could pass Murphy’s Law?
Apparently the thinking behind this gambit – and I use the terms “thinking” and “gambit” so loosely as to render them extravagantly meaningless – is that it “sends a message to the EU”. Yes. It does. And that message is: we are not playing with a full deck of Happy Families cards. We’re a whole picnic short of a picnic. Not only are there bats in our belfry, but 90% of them are wearing straitjackets, all have been judged unfit to stand trial, and one of them is claiming to be the last of the Romanovs.
So, that’s where we’re at with the Conservatives, who are mostly convinced that Brexit is still a great idea, but just hasn’t been done properly yet. It’s a lot like communism in that respect.
Attention next week seems likely to turn to Labour, who on Tuesday hold an emergency NEC meeting to decide official Labour policy for the European elections. The question of whether to campaign for a confirmatory referendum is believed to be incredibly finely balanced. On one side is the International Commission of Labour’s National Policy Forum, who according to Robert Peston agreed unanimously that they should, and which includes MPs and constituency representatives. Also on this side are all Labour MEPs, who voted unanimously this way on Wednesday, most of Labour’s big union supporters, and 71% of Labour’s members at last count. On the other side are – ah! – Len McCluskey’s Unite and the leader’s office. So yes, we must all wait and see how that one turns out.
Cleaning up in the meantime is Nigel Farage, who materialised in Clacton to announce that his Brexit party planned to sweep away the remain parliament. Expect plenty more of this in the coming weeks as Nigel blows into various UK towns and enthralls them with his pitch to build a monorail/drill the oil they’re sitting on/deliver them to the not-as-promised land.
That Farage looks relatively savoury is a real testament to the full-spectrum grotesquery of Ukip going into these European elections. This far-right outfit may be led by Gerard Batten, hair by Lego, but the prospective Ukip MEP getting all the attention is one Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber who goes by the name of … hang on, let me get my lorgnette … ooh, Sargon of Akkad. If you’re keeping records, the party’s official election slogan is “Form an orderly queue for your chloroform, ladies.”
Until the latest exposé, Carl’s chief claim to fame was telling the Labour MP Jess Phillips that he wouldn’t even rape her. Leaping to the defence of Carl and his important thought a couple of weeks ago, Batten announced this was “satire”. Sure. And yet, whichever way you shake it, I’m not sure we can really allow Gerard Batten to explain “satire”. Culturally, that feels a little like Julian Assange explaining the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy are “a fresco”. And so with Carl’s brand of satire. Animal Farm is satire. South Park is satire. Some internet edgelord honking that it’s fine to call an Asian person a “chink” doesn’t quite make the cut.
Alas, “chink” isn’t the only racial insult to feature in a video, deleted from his YouTube page, that was highlighted in the latest Buzzfeed trawl of Carl’s back catalogue. Carl continues to justify this sort of thing on the basis that “I like racist jokes”. But … you don’t even tell any? You just say racist things and imagine that the SHOCK! of saying them is the gag. There’s no punchline, there’s no twist or inversion, there’s no art to it. I hate to break it to the lulz-seekers who wet their pants when anyone denigrates their craft, but literally anyone can be racist. It’s super-basic.
No surprise, then, to find that Carl defines himself by that most trendy of epithets, “classical liberal”, presumably to avoid his true classification: “failed comedian”. As with most – all? – “classical liberals”, the material is so dire that they have to claim it’s about free speech, because otherwise it’s just them, up there on stage in their anxiety dream, with no one laughing when they say “chink”. Their attempt to make it a chinstroke about free speech is just some wanky alibi.
Yup, I know they appreciate real talk, so I feel bound to point out that “classical liberal” is just the latest hilariously grandiose euphemism for “unfunny man”. Listen, John Locke was a classical liberal. Adam Smith was a classical liberal. No offence to Carl or his friend “Count Dankula” (the name comes with built-in sarcastic airquotes as standard), but I’m pretty sure that in his breaks from writing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke wasn’t sticking his head out of the window and informing female passersby which of them he would or wouldn’t rape.
Of course, as an actual liberal, I’m willing to have my mind changed by these two gentlemen. Tell you what, guys – you run along and write me the equivalent of The Wealth of Nations, at which point I will gladly categorise you as “classical liberals”. Until then, I’m afraid I have to keep you in the boxes marked “sad sack who taught a doggie a trick” and “guy who probably drives a Nissan Qashqai with the registration R3D P1LL”.
And that about concludes this week’s survey of life in the sunlit uplands. Dankulettes are thanked in advance for their correspondence.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
