Brexit

I didn't see any of the speakers, I couldn't get close enough. And I haven't had a chance to watch them yet today.

Ah. An optimist.

I think it isn't entirely about Corbyn, who is doing a magnificent job of alienating his own side. Not all of the various attendees at that meeting at Chequers today are - I'll be kind - especially bright, and a couple of them have proved over and over again that they could be outwitted by most vegetables, but I'm sure they all - perhaps except Mrs. May - know very well that whoever is in the driving seat when/if we leave the EU will be punished for it, and probably destroyed by it. Leave voters were promised a land of milk and honey and a great big cash bonus for the NHS, and that's not going to happen. Remain voters, and there were almost as many of them, are becoming increasingly vocal, and plenty are incandescently furious about the various rights and privileges that would be lost under either a future relationship defined by the red lines contained in Mrs. May's withdrawal agreement or in the fallout from a no-deal exit, and are also incandescently furious at the way Mrs. May has not merely ignored but frequently insulted Remain voters during her lurching progress through the "negotiations" (which of course were never going to be negotiations, because our side never understood what they were dealing with). BOTH groups will blame whoever is holding the keys to Number 10 on the exit date, whenever that is. And there are also potentially serious political consequences arising from any other way forward. The coup has collapsed, I suspect, because nobody wants the top job, because they all know it's poison.

I meant a lot of things, including but not limited to that. He is a walking disaster, and his influence has rendered his party toxic. It was striking, in that crowd on Saturday afternoon, just how much anger was directed at Corbyn - at Labour generally, but specifically at Corbyn, whose performance as leader of the opposition has set new records for incompetence. The Tories made this mess, and a Tory Prime Minister has spent two-and-a-half years doing her level best to push through an outcome that would be (even) more destructive than a deal which kept us in the single market and the customs union and accepted all four freedoms (even Norway+ entails a hit to the economy compared to full membership - just a smaller one than we'd take if we left the single market), but with a (very) few honourable exceptions, our main party of opposition has sat back and let her.

But I also meant a culture within the party in which the word "centrist" has become a term of abuse, and his staggeringly incompetent management of the anti-Semitism row, and the way he's appointed a front bench composed more or less entirely of acolytes and banished nearly all his most intelligent, most competent MPs to the back benches, and... you get the idea. As I said, he's a walking disaster.