Max Adams

A speedy U turn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37600566 . I think what party conference season has revealed is that NONE of the UKIP, Labour or Tory conferences know what to do with the situation Brexit has caused. Cameron claimed it would solve the matter once and for all. At every level he has been proved so wrong. #HIGNFY chair on Friday Nick Clegg was the one man who could have saved his bacon and the electorate utterly humiilated him in 2015. He seemed in good form though. Yesterday Max Adams in Carlisle set the context as being a perpetual yin/yang relationship brought about by our rocky marginal status. He did contend that within our islands, regional identity is more meaningful than national. Being Welsh, British, Irish, English or Scottish means less than being Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, a Norfolkman, a Gallowvidian, an Ulsterman. I get that and I can claim at least the last three. But how do we go forward? It is not "all our fault". Europe has not helped itself or us. In the context Adams spoke off, the loss of control over borders has been a perpectual theme. The Anglo Saxons were appalled at how their relatively civilised order could be snuffed out by the Normans. I do warn against the spoken violence now widespread in British politics and hope it will not turn into physical violence. In a different age the murderer of Jo Cox would have received far swifter and decisive justice to have warned all that violence is abhorrent. But each of these points, Romans, Vikings, Normans, the Reformation, Napoleon, Nazis, the EU has had a different shading. Our moment comes when the power of social media, a new type of mob, is in the ascendent and whose effect we are experimenting with.