The Judge RANTS!
Date: 09/11/19
Although I do not intend live-blogging the upcoming sham of democracy (for reasons explained here), I suppose that I can't possibly avoid comment on it from time to time. After all, we've over a month of this crap to sit through yet.
This election presents me with an unprecedented dilemma.
I have voted in every election at every level - and at every referendum - where I was able to vote since 1980, the odd occasion when I didn't being down to practical issues rather than apathy.
In all of the elections, I have voted - where they were fielding a candidate - for what used to be called Plaid Cymru, but latterly seems to market itself as 'The Party of Wales'. This is down to the fact that I have been a Nationalist in my own fair and multiply-crapped-on land's cause since I was about fifteen.
This has not always been an easy thing to do; during the misleadership of Milord Dafydd Elis Elis Elis-Thomas-Thomas of Nantconwy in the County of Gwynedd in the mid-1980s, where the party was dragged towards the far left at a time when the 'left' in general was held in wide and not entirely unjustified contempt, it was often a Toynbeean 'nosepeg moment' avant le lettre; similarly, during the period in the early part of this century where the party was led by a sequence of inoffensive country solicitors who appeared terrified even of being heard uttering the word 'ind*p*nd*nc*' in public; and on into the era of the self-identified class warrior Leanne Wood, where the cause of the nation seemed not only to take a back seat but had been bundled off the bus altogether and left fatally bleeding in the left-hand carriageway.
I had had high hopes of a revival of a genuine commitment to independence from the arrival home from Harvard of Adam Price to claim what seemed to be his birthright as leader of the self-determination movement. Here was a man of considerable intellectual heft, an ability to communicate, and he was gay as well (thereby potentially appealing to a 'demographic' beyond the traditional support). Now, I (and many another) thought, we'll see some progress from the electoral flatlining which the party had experienced since the great Dafydd Wigley was defenestrated in a palace coup just months after he had led it to its most successful poll results ever.
It goes without saying that I have been sorely disappointed. If - as Enoch Powell said - all political careers end in failure, then the same might be said in spades (if you'll pardon the use of that word in the same sentence as the name of that infamous bigot) for the hopes of those who support such careers.
For there have been so many mis-steps, so many examples of bad faith, so many bad decisions, that one cannot help but feel that what still describes itself as a radical political party has become too comfortable with the position of permanent opposition to be of any use in bringing the radical political and psychological change which is essential if this ancient nation is even to survive in any meaningful form, let alone revive.
And so the obsessive identity politics and (when all is said and done) marginal 'issues' of the self-described 'woke', which had displaced the supposed main aim of Ddy Parti Of Wêls, have been pursued with the same vigour as they were during Wood's tenure. This has included: the hounding out of the party of Neil McAvoy (the party's most effective and outspoken Assembly Member) on the basis of smears and lies put about by the party's vociferous rad-fems and a shady consulting company with its claws deep within not only Plaid but the Wales branch of the British Nationalist Labour Party as well; the forcing into disgusted resignation of all the party's city councillors in Cardiff; the effective closing down of the party's branch in Llanelli after that branch complained at having one of the Sisterhood imposed upon them as a Westminster candidate (said parachutiste took the party from a fairly close second to an embarrassingly-distant third); and the attempts at entryism to seek control of the main independence campaign movement YesCymru.
And upon this Ossa of obstructionist obsession has now come the Pelion of pathetic posturing. Instead of recognising that the people of this nation - misguidedly in my opinion - voted to leave the European Union, Ddy Parti Of Wêls has become fixated on becoming a mere appendage of the laughable 'Unite To Remain' campaign, which claims to seek the maximising of anti-Br*x*t MPs after the election. It was under this rubric (a campaign which prominently features that design disaster of a flag known lovingly in some quarters - Ireland, Bengal, Argentina - as 'The Butcher's Apron') that Plaid stood down its candidate in the recent Brecon and Radnor by-election to give the Liberal Democrats an easier run. The fact that their victory gave the junior party of austerity, privatisation and darkie-bombing worldwide publicity whilst erasing any Welsh dimension from the event should have sobered Ddy Parti up a bit.
But no. So maniacally obsessed have Plaid become with the EU that they have now agreed a further pact with the LobDums to stand aside in some of the seats up for grabs this time. There will not be even a token, nominally-nationalist candidate in three seats, with traditional Plaid voters being faced with either voting for a British Nationalist party (the Greens voted last year to remain an appendage of the English party rather than follow the lead of their Scottish counterparts and become a separate, independent outfit) or, as I'm sure many of them will do, not vote at all.
A small hint here, buts; you cannot call yourself 'The Party Of Wales' if you fail to stand in every part of the country. So the BritNats are giving you a free run in six constituencies; big deal given that you haven't a cat in hell's chance of winning three of them, two more of them are on a knife-edge after last time, the LibDems are still challenging you in Ceredigion because they want it back, and there's no guarantee at all the the BritNat's voters will switch to you anyway. If you believe otherwise, I have a newly-rebranded bridge to sell you.
Oh, and guess what, cariads? Br*x*t is going to happen anyway. The only two remotely plausible outcomes of the ballot are either an outright majority for Bloody Stupid Johnson or a minority administration propped up by the parliamentary Labour party's permanent squad of Tory-enablers. And even if, by some fantastic chance ('fantastic' in the literal sense of being unreal) Labour does emerge in a position to form a government, all they have committed to do is to get a 'better' Br*x*t (in other words, we'll only be boiled to death rather then fried). So you've been wasting your time, haven't you?
But you're also wasting ours, in addition to squandering the best possible chance to push for independence in history. Consider: the Westminster system has now been revealed to all but the most dense and/or partisan that it is unfit for any purpose other than to be viewed as the neo-Gothic theme park that it really is, in addition to showing its permanent contempt for our nationhood (and it's not just That Fucking Bridge); the Labour Party 'nationally' (i.e., Englandandwalesly) has demonstrated its incapability to stand on any point of principle, and its Wales branch (who you have sedulouly helped keep in power for a large part of the past two decades) has continued to show its arrogance, indolence and corruption.
But instead of seizing this moment, and presenting the nation with something like a genuine alternative, you have allowed yourself - and indeed, you have enthusiastically embraced this fate - to become a mere offshoot of a British Nationalist campaign which goes against the very thing that the people of this nation voted for (however mistakenly; as I've said before, I'm a democrat in the Mencken sense that the people should get what they vote for and get it good and hard).
What price, Adam, the 'sovereignty of the people' and the 'democratic will' now, when you have shown so much contempt for it by these manoeuverings? Because you have arrogantly assumed that all your party's voters want to stay in the EU when many of them are either opposed to that or - like me, especially given the EU's cowardice on the subject of Catalunya - are properly sceptical of its benefits.
You have become a willing catspaw for colonial rule, and your wokeist posturing and vapid cowardice have left me feeling that I, as a sovereigntist and independentista, no longer have a political home, even if that is only as an 'ordinary voter'.
(There is a new nationalist party in formation right now, although it has already been hit by a schism; if the well-known phrase, "Two Jews, three opinions" is true of the tribe of Avram, then it goes redoubled for the sons and daughters of Lloyd George and Aneirin Bevan). And, in any case, they don't intend standing candidates in imperial elections. (*))
So what am I to do on December 12th?
Will I vote? Yes, of course I will, if only on the grounds that not voting morally excludes me from complaining about the result.
Who will I vote for? No-one, even though my constituency doesn't fall within the purlieu of the Price-Swinson Pact).
I give MI5 due notice of this; the ballot paper in Clwyd South which is marked with the words (in large, friendly pencilled letters), "ANNIBYNIAETH!/INDEPENDENCE!" will be mine. I'm available to be picked up for interrogation any weekday afternoon after 1400 hrs, but please don't call at weekends, because I have the shopping and redecorating to do.
Update (11/11/19): The new party - previously called Ein Gwlad but now known as Gwlad, Gwlad for legal reasons following a pettifogging ruling by the Ukanian Electoral Commission - has now announced its intention of fielding a candidate in three of the four constituencies abandoned by Ddy Parti Of (Sym Of) Wêls: Bro Morgannwg, Caerdydd Canolog and Trefaldwyn. That way, at least the electors of those areas can have a full and proper choice.
