Thread by @MattCarr55

Alcoholics only begin the road to recovery when they recognise they are ill. Politically-speaking, we are an ill country, engaging in self-harm. We have succumbed to exceptionalism, fanaticism, delusional thinking. Chosen worthless politicians whose incompetence we disregarded

Until it was too late. We have pointlessly alienated and antagonised countries that used to be our friends and neighbors, some of which tried to warn us that they we were damaging ourselves as well as damaging them. We have refused to look at the actual nuts and bolts

Of our connections to Europe and the wider world. We have consistently placed what we want or think we want over what is actually possible. We have ignored the risks and the dangers and failed to prepare adequately for them. We elected, with a huge majority, a government

That embodied our sickness, our immaturity, and our vices. And now, thanks to that government, we have comprehensively fucked ourselves, in the midst of a terrible pandemic that does not respect exceptionalism or ‘greatness’, that exploits every weakness, delay, bad decision

A government that still, even with the prospect of food supplies collapsing, even with the insane gridlock in Kent, refuses to extend the transition period, egged on by fanatics who literally seem prepared to burn their own country to the ground in order to get Brexit ‘done’.

And they are being egged on by Farage and co, who are blaming the EU, China and refugees in boats for the calamity that they helped inflict on us, that we brought on ourselves. So let’s not compound our folly by following them down this route. The blame is ours, entirely ours

We are a country like any other, with a capacity for decency and indecency, good and bad, selfishness and great generosity, common sense and crass, muleheaded idiocy, and in the last four years we have succumbed to our worst instincts. And until we recognise that

The better angels of our nature will remain - political speaking - paralysed and dormant, we will remain trapped in the death grip of a radicalised Tory Party, and we will have no chance of becoming the country millions of us deserve.