Up to Here!

In this week's Camino a ÍtacaCamino a Ítaca a look at how a hard, rightwing shift in UK politics robbed me of a democratic right. Click over to read the original version published in Spanish in HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

It was a proto neofascist that took away my right to vote tomorrow. It was an opportunistic self-serving buffoon, a charlatan, a fraudster, a Perses of politics whose rhetoric eventually robbed me of the right to democratically express myself in the place that I live…and strangely enough it wasn’t the fellow clown and recently convicted felon, Donald Trump, who deprived me of that.

As a dual UK/Canadian citizen, I once was able to vote in the European elections here in Spain. But that was before the little island fell off the continent and was swept into the rightwing populist sea. That was a time before Nigel Farange and the far right populism of UKIP wormed their way into the heart of traditional British conservatism. Once there, they yanked the party so far to the right that they eventually pushed the country off the precipice in the absurd and senseless harikari known as Brexit.

The country now lies shattered, a mere shadow of what it used to be. Every single lie that was promised has proven to be untrue. The far right’s dream of divesting itself from Europe and its health regulations has led to disasters like unrestricted water companies dumping thousands of tons of raw sewage in the waters around Britain’s most popular beaches. After following the siren song of the far right, the country is now literally surrounded in shit.

Unlike the far right in the United Kingdom, ultra parties on the continent know that openly stating they plan to leave the European Union would be very unpopular among voters, especially in a very pro-Europe Spain. They also regret that the coup d’états staged by their forebearers are now unfashionable.

Their new strategy is more insidious. Like a cancer eating its host, they now plan to destroy the system from inside. And if polls can be trusted, it looks like a large percentage of voters are willing to give them their chance to do so.

These polls have also come as a surprise to the more center right parties like the PP. As they see their support hemorrhaging away to the right, like the Tories in the UK, they have chosen to harden their message and adopt some of the hardline rhetoric of the fascists. We hear more and more about the dangers of the ‘other’, ecolocuras, giving precedence to national law over European law and traditional families and less and less about solidarity, economic union and workers’ rights.

The wolf is at the door and Feijoo has even gone so far as to say that he would be open to forming alliances with Meloni’s group in the EU parliament, as she somehow isn’t like the other far right parties. The president of the European Commission and head of the EPP, Ursula von der Leyen, has also retracted the red lines she once had about forming alliances with the far right.

The choice is stark but clear tomorrow. A decision between whether to dismantle Europe and those who will form alliances with them or more Europe. A vote for the latter means clean water, and for the former, like the British, we’ll be up to our necks in shit.