On Saturday 700,000 people marched in London in support of a people’s vote on Brexit, basically demanding a do-over on the stupid referendum that brought the UK to its current terrible pass. This makes the march comparable in size to the march against the Iraq war in 2003, and reading about it I was struck by the similarities between what is happening now and the events that led up to that disgusting decision. The Brexit referendum was a rash decision by a formerly very popular politician that was driven forward by a campaign of lies and deceit, full of transparent falsehoods like the 350 million pound NHS lies. Now, just like then, the media have openly supported Brexit or offered only lukewarm opposition, and many in the Tory media have used accusations of treachery and cowardice against their opponents. Last year the Daily Mail had its “enemies of the people” headline, and in 2002 Paul Kelly, editor of the Australian, was touring the country calling anyone who opposed the Iraq War a coward and a traitor. Then, as now, we had shady foreign power involvement in Britain’s political decisions – in 2003 it was clear that Blair had already signed up to the war regardless of public opinion, and in 2018 we’re discovering that the Brexit campaign was funded by shady overseas money, probably Russian, and almost certainly is driven by Tory politicians’ desire to protect their rich backers’ tax havens and money laundering activities from next year’s EU legal changes. In 2018 just as in 2002 we see politicians and media personalities heaping scorn on experts – in 2002 this led to the shady death of a WMD expert, and the BBC being forced into a humiliating apology for reporting it fairly, while in 2018 we see politicians openly dismissing any and every attempt to give a proper warning of what is coming. This leads to this horrible feeling – in 2018 just as in 2003 – that you know exactly what is going to happen, you can predict all the terrible things that are going to come of it, and yet still the political class is choosing to drive their train straight into the crash that everyone is warning them about. Just as in 2003, this rally will show the politicians clearly that that they are on the wrong path, but they will ignore it and make this terrible mistake regardless.

So it’s worth looking at the consequences of the Iraq war for the British labour party, because the party is still shackled to that mistake. The Iraq war sunk Blair as a politician, and within 5 years he was out. It completely ruined Labour’s reputation and forced them into years of introspection and chaos. Blair took the country to war in order to please a constituency – liberal interventionists, neo-cons, and “sensible centrists” – that had very little respect from Labour’s traditional backers, and as a result he created years of friction within the party apparatus. This ultimately led to the changes in the relationship between leadership and membership that brought Corbyn to power. For years after their election loss, senior figures in Labour were being pilloried by the membership for their mistakes, and opposition to the war was one of the central tools by which Corbyn was able to win the leadership – everyone else was tainted by their support, and as the catastrophe of ISIS unfolded in the Levant, Corbyn was able to stand tall as the only member of the Labour party with any principles. I have no doubt (although no evidence) that Blair’s decision to throw traditional Labour constituencies like the peace movement, supporters of Palestine, disarmament activists, and non-interventionists, under the bus in order to please an ultimately incredibly unpopular American republican caused many of them to abandon the party in disgust. I think this is part of the reason that Labour lost Scotland, a big part of the reason for the growth of Lib Dem support, and also part of the reason that Labour struggled to fight off UKIP in the mid 2010s. Nobody weds themselves to a party with 100% commitment, and it is possible for a party to abuse the trust that its constituencies give it. Labour’s loss in 2010 and the subsequent ruin of the UK economy at the hands of a bunch of pig-fucking Tory economic wreckers is at least partly due to the decision to screw their own constituencies in this way. Even today, traditional supporters of Labour on the left are much more circumspect in their support of it than they used to be, and although some centrist wankers will try to claim that this is because Corbyn turns people off, it is certainly also to do with the way those traditional supporters were alienated in the rush to murder a million Iraqis.

The same will happen to the Tories after Brexit. The entire fiasco came about because Cameron wanted to please a bunch of UKIP-voting idiots who were not core Tory constituents, and came at the expense of his core supporters in the home counties and business. Senior Tories disparaged the kind of conservative, careful experts in and outside government who warned them what disaster was coming, and have regularly and repeatedly acted in a way that alienates their business backers. The original vote was barely democratic, it’s now clear that it was gamed by foreign money to benefit a small claque of extremely rich money launderers, and it is almost impossible to find a sizable group of people in the UK who will benefit from it. Yet the Tories push on to disaster, and I bet that today even as this 700,000 people gather to remind them of their democratic responsibilities, senior Tories will dismiss them as unrepresentative. Next year Brexit will happen, the UK’s economy will crash, everything will go to hell, and suddenly everyone will remember that this was a uniquely Tory disaster. The next election will see them tossed out on their ear, and for a decade the only question asked of any aspirant to power in that party will be “did you vote for this shit?” The Tory reputation on trade and international diplomacy will be wrecked. The only question remains – what kind of insurgent will rise up through the party to replace the idiots who wrought this disaster on the British people? Will it be a traditional Tory equivalent of Corbyn, harking back to the original roots of the party and disdaining the modernising and populist elements that crashed it? Or will it be something darker and more sinister, a nativist or fascist tough-love authoritarian? In theory this coming disaster should put an end to nativism in British politics, as everyone who voted for UKIP and Brexit comes to terms with the economic ruin they left their children. But will this be what happens?

Because there is one big difference between what happened after the Iraq war, and now. Labour has always faced a hostile press who are willing to blame them for every problem Britain faces, while the Tories have an easy run from every arm of the media. After they bring the country to ruin, will the media’s love of pretending that their intellectually bankrupt economic ideas are “sound management” finally end? Will the media recognize the Tories for the traitors and economic wreckers they really are? Or will they simply put in double shifts to blame the entire fiasco on Labour and foreigners, and work extra hard to launder the Tories’ reputation? And in doing so, what new horrors will bubble up from the dark and sinister hinterlands of British conservatism, to replace the architects of this foolish and stupid policy? By rights Brexit and its fallout should be the end of the Tories, just as the Iraq war was the end of Blairism and the rich-appeasing faux leftism of 1990s Labour. If there is any justice these people will be cast into the political wilderness and their party reduced to a foolish rump. But with the support of liars and scandal-mongers like the Daily Mail, perhaps the Tories will be able to reinvent themselves in an even uglier, more perverted form.

Let us hope not, for the good of what will be left of Britain after 2019.