Lord MacDonald’s admission that civil servants cried after the Brexit vote is harrowing yet depressingly predictable
Sniffing service
IT is a shocking confession – and yet depressingly predictable.
The day after the Brexit vote, the Foreign Office’s top official broke the civil service’s once-sacred neutrality and announced to staff that he had voted to remain.
3
Lord McDonald was on safe ground – they were busy crying at their desks.
They stayed down to the last man and woman standing and assumed they would win by a significant margin.
They were the heart of the government machinery.
Yet they simply ignored or mocked 17.4 million Brexit voters, most of whom were working class, until it was too late.
Even then, together with Remainer activists like Keir Starmer, they did their best to impose their will again.
Check them out now. The more pragmatic Europhiles have long since overcome their pride and are moving on.
But others are still waving pathetically nostalgic EU flags at the Proms, to the delight of the BBC.
They console themselves with the abandoned podcasts of Rory Stewart – the thwarted Walter Mitty of politics – who dreams, as always, of magically becoming prime minister.
No one seems to have noticed the implosion of the supposedly powerful, liberal Brussels project they adore.
Germany, its engine room, is on its knees.
Right-wing parties are on the rise everywhere.
Yet the Remoaners are still desperate for Labor to drive out the Brexit Tories and set us on an imaginary path to reunification.
They were still talking about Russian black money and dishonest fines.
And they’re still sitting in Whitehall, scandalously screwing up the work.
Zero point
HE was a bad chancellor, but Philip Hammond isn’t always wrong. He is on the right track with Net Zero.
Complacent politicians of all stripes, he says, are forcing draconian environmental policies without being honest with voters about the staggering costs.
3
TRUE. Although he was at number 11 when Theresa May blindly committed us to 2050 and had no idea how we were going to finance it.
And when Hammond says politicians need to “bring the public with them,” then how? If the cost of battery cars or heat pumps remains prohibitive, persuasive words will not work. Then what?
Rishi Sunak needs to be more realistic.
Postpone the arbitrary deadlines for banning oil and gas boilers and gasoline cars until their replacements work just as well – and ordinary people can afford them.
Bar humbug
PUBS certainly have too many problems to ply their customers with even more expensive pints at peak times.
“Dynamic pricing” is bad enough when ticket sellers and airlines do it.
3
The last thing Stonegate drinkers want is a gratuitous supplement at peak times.
Especially when the excuse is so pathetically weak.
Drink somewhere else. You will get the message.