We’ve probably all heard of The Perfect Storm. Apart from anything else, it’s a good film based on true events.

It seems the current political situation in the UK might be considered to be a perfect storm. Hmm.

A perfect storm is a naturally-occurring rare combination of circumstances which will aggravate a situation drastically. Classically, there are three elements:

• hotter air – there’s certainly plenty of that;
• cooler air – plenty of that too, although most seems to be abroad;
• humidity – there’s hardly a dry seat in the house;

Can the UK’s current political situation be considered natural? I don’t think so. It’s the product of cynical manipulation by various self-seeking factions, all of which rate their own ends far more highly than the best interest of the UK.

But there are certainly three very important elements in it which have now come together, whether by accident or by design:

• Brexit;
• The government’s attempted grab of “Henry VIII powers”;
• The flagrant disregard of human rights issues inherent in the Brexit situation.

The government is apparently determined to deliver Brexit on “her” own terms, because “the people have spoken”.

The type of Brexit was not part of the question that people were asked in the referendum, so the referendum result can’t be claimed to be a mandate to exit the EU with or without a deal of whatever kind.

The ramifications of leaving the EU are still far from clear, either to us or to the politicians, who are the only ones naïve enough to have allowed themselves to be left with this poisoned chalice.

The government tried to bulldoze its way through to triggering Article 50, but the UK people and the UK courts reined it in. It is now attempting to grab “Henry VIII powers” which would allow it to act without further reference to Parliament. Again, it must be reined in, and the people of the UK must show Parliament that it has their support to act in the best interest of the country.

This particularly involves MPs abiding by the oath they swore before taking their seats, and not being browbeaten by their party establishment into acting against the interests of their country, their constituents and/or their personal beliefs.

In the EU, many citizens have chosen to move to another EU country, whether temporarily or permanently, to live and work. Some have, perhaps for career reasons, moved round a lot.

All have relied on their status as not only a national of their own country, but also as an EU citizen, to do this with minimal difficulty. This has been the norm for over 40 years. Their rights to have their situation protected (as a “result” of a referendum in which many of them were refused the right to vote) are being given very little attention.

UK citizens resident in the UK with little desire to go elsewhere except on holiday are also affected…

The UK is heavily reliant on EU citizens to work in UK healthcare, and to harvest, process and serve food in the UK. As I have said elsewhere, UK citizens need other EU citizens to feed them, and to care for them when they’re being born, ill or dying, and it doesn’t get more fundamental than that. Freedom of movement is just the tip of the iceberg…

So, is this the perfect storm?

More like the perfectly dreadful storm! Setting the UK back half a century in its pursuit of a more modern and civilised way to co-exist and work together.

In fact, it’s probably a self-inflicted nuclear winter, where social, political and economic “progress” have all gone into reverse.

A perfect storm is a naturally occurring phenomenon. We can do little or nothing about it.

The current situation in the UK is far from that.

We can influence what happens, we can stop bigotry and idiocy driving us towards a very bad outcome for the UK, especially if this crazy “no deal is better than a bad deal” idea persists.

Nothing, nothing about the current situation is absolutely inevitable. We can change things for the better if we work together.

Current weather news shows us how bad storm damage can be. We also see that storms don’t always come one at a time, one hurricane may hide another… or several.