Prepare for Britain’s chaotic civil war

Brexit has Britain roaring with quarrels but here’s the strange part. They’re not with the EU. They are within Britain itself, as if the nation were having a drug intervention with Theresa May after that bellowing Commons catastrophe. “Welcome to the Blunderdome,” wrote journalist Marina Hyde.

As is usual with interventions, it brought up childhood resentments as yet un-mined by therapists, boarding school memories no longer covered by a stiff upper lip, Tory toffs head-butting each other as they scuffled for May’s job, May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn assiduously not seeing each other, and Corbyn’s sinister deputy John McDonnell in the shadows laughing like Steve Bannon, the man who loved chaos.

Brits really don’t like each other right now. As Guardian columnist Fintan O’Toole writes, “Brexit is much less about Britain’s relationship with the EU than it is about Britain’s relationship with itself.”

And then centuries of torrid history are vomited out. Class has always been the national preoccupation and it remains so. Remainers and Brexiteers were seen as posh (because they’ll be all right whatever happens) while poor Brexiteers were viewed as sad cases, full of formless anger, unwilling to work, and hating the EU citizens who raced over to do the jobs they wouldn’t do.

Many of the Remainers are Labour. This far-left Corbyn, man of the Sixties, backs Brexit and wants his country to become a smoking ash heap — and the City of London to look like Grenfell Tower — out of which a socialist wonderland will rise.

O’Toole explains the factors in Britain’s slow collapse: the ugly rise of English nationalism, regional inequalities in England (at one point, Thatcher wanted to abandon the economic no-fly zone that is the blighted Midlands and the grim North); the olds vs. the youngs; the end of the welfare state and its bright star, the National Health Service; the Tories’ extreme austerity that was making Britain look a bit Yemen-ish; the sensationally rich being sensationally stupid; and the horror of chinless Bullingdon Club frat boys like David Cameron and Boris Johnson ruining the country for fun.

Brexit lanced that British boil. Detestable fluids shot out, including the realization that the British political system is insufficient unto the day, democracy is drying up, that the gap between rich and poor is unsustainably large, and that Britain may have extreme violence in its future from the far-right, the most hateful of its citizens. A new form of democracy will have to be devised.

On March 29, Britain is out unless a cluster of things happen, many of them unlikely, says Guardian journalist Jon Henley. No British government will revoke Article 50, which began the two years of negotiation. If there were an EU-extension, it would only be until July, when the European Commission will meet, possibly without its most difficult problem child in the room. With deadlines, there’s no longer time for a second referendum.

If a no-deal Brexit happens — it cannot be chosen, it simply lies in wait — nothing much matters beyond putting out economic fires for the next decade, as Britain realizes it has no fruits and vegetables, wheat, vacuum cleaners, meat, or guest room pillows, with insufficient nuclear power.

Civil war will ensue. I see Corbyn as the new Oliver Cromwell. Punitive and funless, he will title himself Individual 1.

Modern Britons will learn to share shoes and hop to work. Eggs will be a distant dream, or stolen. British families will share lukewarm baths and learn to layer. Britons will cut up old tires to make cheap squeaky sandals. Britain will run out of old tires.

Batteries will be more expensive than printer ink by 2022 when neither are available. There will be a curfew because there aren’t enough police to guard the streets so only women can go out. Everyone will knit their own underpants and have sex with anyone who has wool. All will grow attractively thin.

Britons will stuff their mattresses with anything, roadkill, baby shoes, car seats, lard. Computers will be made mostly of canvas.

Look, Britain has too much history for its small island. It’s been around so long that the odds of messing up were insistent. It has come to pass.