Oh damn, still in this dream.

It worked so well for Charles I.

So we have a second long parliament. Big deal.

When something unites Alastair Campbell and Michael Heseltine the world has experienced the sea-change.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/24/alastair-campbell-says-he-voted-for-remain-party-in-eu-elections

Full fathom five, thy country lies
Of its bones are sniggers made
Those are laughs that were its Ayes...

I'm rather afraid the joke's on us. Now to grin and bear it.

How do we deal with a divided polity?

We can't have another referendum because that would deny the first one, even though the first one was tainted. (However, parliament can and will vote on the same measure considerably more than once to get an answer the government wants.)

Parliament is sovereign, but can't go against the will of the people.

No-one listens to the PM but she can't be forced out of office because of the Fixed Term Parliament Act and the constitution of the Tory party. So Parliament itself is a chaotic and random place of little or no discipline on the Tory side and subject to breakaway and walkout on both sides of the House.

We have a titular PM who does not command parliament in the job of a person who needs to be able to command parliament; even if that command is normally exercised through the Whip's office.

No one can negotiate on our behalf who does not speak for a majority, and there is no majority for anything, only against things.

And instead of giving folk the actual information needed to be able to understand the nation's predicament, the propaganda rolls on.

Even if we were to revoke Article 50, the opportunity cost of the last three years, in terms of institutions etc upping sticks and moving to the EU, will come to billions.

I must state here that I am a remainer.

But, alas, what England needs is an ultra-hard Brexit that brings it to its knees. It's the only language that folk in favour of Brexit will understand. Then they can champion their freedom to their heart's content. And, knowing the way things are going, it may just lead to enough of a revolution to really unsettle things and turn us into a failed state proper.

And I don't need to be able to read sacrificial entrails or interpret the flight of birds on the Capitoline to make that prediction; just the normal amount of sense coupled with my own hubris.

We are fucked; but I've said that since the day after the referendum. Either democracy loses, or we have committed the most public act of self harm since Mishima.

Because I am a believer in democracy, seppuku it is. Woefully, there appears no other way. And this is what has brought Parliament to a standstill. Maybe we need some friend to step up to be our Kaishakunin.

As an aside, why hasn't anyone flung Cicero at Boris? Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?

That's one betting slip I can tear up then. So much for my vaunted  ability to predict the future. My augeries have let me down. Next time it's goat's entrails: enough of the birds flying from left to right and all that Roman jazz.

If you want to know how truly dumb we've been, and how utterly stupid the idea of torturing information out of the enemy is, please read this extract from the today's Guardian:

Al-Qaida 'planted information to encourage US invasion'


Richard Norton-Taylor
Friday November 17, 2006
The Guardian


A senior al-Qaida operative deliberately planted information to encourage the US to invade Iraq, a double agent who infiltrated the network and spied for western intelligence agencies claimed last night.
The claim was made by Omar Nasiri, a pseudonym for a Moroccan who says he spent seven years working for European security and intelligence agencies, including MI5. He said Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who ran training camps in Afghanistan, told his US interrogators that al-Qaida had been training Iraqis.

Libi was captured in November 2001 and taken to Egypt where he was allegedly tortured. Asked on BBC2's Newsnight whether Libi or other jihadists would have told the truth if they were tortured, Nasiri replies: "Never".
Asked whether he thought Libi had deliberately planted information to get the US to fight Iraq, Nasiri said: "Exactly".

Nasiri said Libi "needed the conflict in Iraq because months before I heard him telling us when a question was asked in the mosque after the prayer in the evening, where is the best country to fight the jihad?" Libi said Iraq was chosen because it was the "weakest" Muslim country.

It is known that under interrogation, Libi misled Washington. His claims were seized on by George Bush, vice-president, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell, secretary of state, in his address to the security council in February, 2003, which argued the case for a pre-emptive war against Iraq.

Though he did not name Libi, Mr Powell said "a senior terrorist operative" who "was responsible for one of al-Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan" had told US agencies that Saddam Hussein had offered to train al-Qaida in the use of "chemical or biological weapons".

What is new, if Nasiri is to be believed, is that the leading al-Qaida operative wanted to overthrow Saddam and use Iraq as a jihadist base. Nasiri also says that part of al-Qaida training was to withstand interrogation and provide false information.

Nasiri said last night he was later sent to London by his French handlers to infiltrate Finsbury Park mosque and spy on its imam, Abu Hamza, as well as another radical cleric, Abu Qatada.

He said MI5 and French intelligence were watching the two clerics in London from as far back as 1997. He said he told them that Abu Hamza was carrying out combat training and how he listened into conversations relaying messages between Abu Qatada and the training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"At the time we didn't think that the growing threat from al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden was sufficient to put more resources on it," Bob Milton, a Metropolitan police special branch officer, told Newsnight. "We were monitoring what he was doing, certainly working with the US and European colleagues to do that. But at that time we were still unsure what the threat would be," he said.

Abu Hamza was charged in 2003 and convicted this year for incitement to murder and race hate crimes. 

How fucking retarded. We went to war because they told us porkies, or we told them to ourselves.  Flip a coin. 

They've got what they wanted. Sometimes we are so stupid. I think the time has come for me to kill myself (except I cannot leave my duties undone).

On a lighter note:
I give you Iggy Pop's rider, for those that haven't seen it before.