Keeping it local

As the crew of good ship Boris settle into cabinet by waving wads of notes at the rest of us through the portholes, it slowly dawns that a fully blown coup has just occurred while most to the nation was looking for ice creams. Possibly even the crew and captain have not yet realised the ship is owned by Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Arron Banks, who are firmly in charge of the sat nav.

The trail of obscenity that got us to this place looks like this: Around a quarter of available voters make the decision to leave Europe; even fewer give us a minority government propped up by a Northern Irish minority party who’s views make Rees Mogg look modern; and finally less than half of one percent give us Boris.Yet we seem totally and utterly powerless to do anything, even to protest! The next acts will surely be to destroy any remaining relationship with Europe, alienate most of parliament, then hold an election in which all the Brexit Party deserters can return home.

My personal response has also been in part to return home: to the local. Now no longer a Town Councillor, I’ve enjoyed even more freedom to champion DIY community politics at places like the STIR to Action Festival and Happiness in a Time of Crisis. The former brought an impressive array of sensible ways to do economics to a field near Frome for three days and the latter focussed around the thinking of Helena Norberg-Hodge, whose new book Local is our Future I’m now enjoying.

In promoting the reclaiming of politics at a local level, I also constantly have in mind the essential benefits this will bring us of a resilient joined up community. Something we will definitely need as the shit-storm of a no-deal Brexit acts as a rehearsal for the much more existential impact of climate change, that (to end where I started), the crew of good ship Boris still think is a jolly good weaze. Enjoy your ice-cream.