An Astrological Case for Brexit

UK Chart

The UK is divided down the middle on the subject of the EU referendum. Before I continue, I'll declare my interest: I'm moderately in favour of leaving the EU. This is because I think that the individual has more voice in small political units. Economically, I think we'll be OK either way. That said, I will now attempt to be disinterested.

This piece began with a consideration of what the basic motives of each side might be. I think there is a fear on each side. The Brexits fear loss of identity in a larger whole. The Bremains fear the unknown, the insecurity of being on our own. I'm not saying these are the only motivations, but I think they may be more dominant than we perhaps think.

The Cancer-Capricorn axis is basic to the UK chart. The Sun-IC is around 10 Capricorn, opposite the Moon-MC at 19-9 Cancer respectively. That is the basic divide in the nation, and it is exacerbated by Uranus the splitter, conjunct the ASC and square the Sun and MC-IC. So it comes naturally to us, if you like, to be divided. But Uranus makes it painful. Our best hope is that Scotland leaves and we have a new chart that is not divided (but that new chart will have its own difficulties.) Pluto is starting to oppose the UK Moon (homeland), which says to me that Scotland is likely to leave in the next 2 to 3 years.

So what is the nature of a divide along Cancer-Capricorn lines, exacerbated by Uranus? Maybe even caused by Uranus, because opposing signs don't have to be opposed, the ideal is that they complement.

Cancer emphasises the home and the security of what is known. Capricorn emphasises finding one's place in the world. The Bremains are Cancer, the Brexits are Capricorn. Usually these things can be read both ways, but I find it hard to see how Capricorn would be a natural Bremainer.

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We have Saturn in the 11th House of group involvement.This shows an initial fear, but also an ability to make a long-term contribution. BUT Saturn is square to Neptune: that is our fear of loss of identity in larger groupings. (As well as Sun-IC in Capricorn).

The UK North Node is in 7th House Aries, square to Sun, Moon and MC-IC. Now there's a package. It draws together and shows, through the Node,  how to resolve the fundamentals of the UK Chart. We need strong relations with foreign countries (7th House Node). But we need to feel we have the initiative (Aries). This is difficult in the EU, because Germany has become so dominant. Aries finds joint ventures difficult anyway, a fortiori when one partner is dominant.

This says to me that Britain is better out than in - more at ease with itself, and more able to fulfil its destiny. Honest, I only reached this conclusion through the astrology, and as I wrote it! I'm not saying that we will vote to leave - I don't think we will. But that won't stop the Tory party fighting amongst themselves while  Labour remains unelectable (though I do like Jeremy Corbyn).

Boris and Dave

The astrological reason I don't think we'll leave is that the transiting square from Pluto to David Cameron's Sun at 15.26 Libra, which is keeping him in power, will not be over for a year or two. Only then will he leave office. If we vote to leave the EU, he won't last 5 minutes. Moreover, if we leave, then Boris' star will rise. Boris' star has already risen to it's maximum height (due to Pluto opposing his MC at 13 Cancer) and he has no major outer planet transits coming up. Therefore we will remain.

Whichever way it goes, in the Progressed UK chart the Moon is in an applying conjunction with the Prog Asc in Gemini: the people (Moon) will be having their say (Gemini).

One way or another, we should be more at ease with ourselves in a couple of years, once the long series of Pluto transits to the Sun, Moon, Node and Angles is over.

David Cameron's Defining Moment

David Cameron has promised a referendum on UK membership of the EU before the end of 2017. I think this will be his defining moment, his encounter with destiny, if you like, as PM, and that soon afterwards he will go.

[This next section is an intentional rant; skip if you’re not in the mood]

Because I speak in those terms does not mean I am a Tory voter. A lot of people find this hard to understand: that if I do not speak in terms that are condemnatory of a political party or its leader, therefore I must favour that party. This is because so many people seem to think tribally when it comes to politics. The people I know or who are friends with me on Facebook often tend to be left/liberal, sometimes tribally so. Political statements are sometimes made by them in a way that assumes you agree with them, because no right thinking person could possibly agree with the Tories on any issue – if the issue is hard to argue with, well then it is the stinky motives behind it, the ‘real’ agenda.

Normally we like to think of ourselves as intelligent and civilised, because after all we probably went to university and are progressive and probably green in our thinking, but when it comes to the Tories an exception can be made, and we can call them dirty narrow-minded upper class bastards without an ounce of compassion, and vent all the hatred we build up by pretending to be liberal the rest of the time. (Politics is full of inverted snobbery – the working class is the new upper class, the upper classes are now the ‘lower’ class.) I’m not looking forward to the next 5 years of Tory hating on Facebook. And no, I didn’t vote for them. And no, I don't like the harsh, even inhuman way some of the cuts have been implemented, nor do I like the growing gap between rich and poor or tax loopholes for the rich or the way CEOs are paid vast amounts!

Having covered that point (!!), it’s time for some astrology. David Cameron has Sun conjunct Venus in Libra, with Asc on the cusp of Virgo-Libra; and Pluto and Uranus conjoin his Asc from the 12th, giving him a strong connection with, and influence on, the collective.

So he has an ideal chart for a mediator, a negotiator, someone who can work with both sides. When he became PM, he found himself at the head of a coalition government, the first for about 80 years (when the UK had its last Uranus opposition Uranus, you could say an identity crisis.)

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Cameron became leader of his party as Pluto squared his Asc, he became PM as Pluto squared his Venus, and now he has been given a majority in Parliament (just about – about ½ the size of John Major’s) as Pluto squares his Sun. When this transit is over, in a couple of years’ time, that will probably be it.

There are 2 major issues: Scotland and the EU. Scotland, momentous as it is, will probably take care of itself: the fact that the SNP didn’t mention the ‘I’ word during their campaign proves the point that independence is their top priority. It is no longer a happy marriage, one partner wants to leave, and the sooner it can happen, the better. The present situation is artificial and surreal.

So Cameron the negotiator is having his negotiating Sun challenged and empowered by Pluto in the run up to this crucial referendum in 2017. That is why I called it his meeting with destiny, because the planets suggest it.

Churchill’s meeting with destiny (he’d always had a notion that he’d be called upon one day to save the nation) took place under Neptune, redemption – both of himself and the UK. Neptune began squaring his Sagittarian Sun in the mid 30s (and as Pluto conjoined the UK Moon) as he started warning the nation about German rearmament, and his time in power finished as Neptune finished conjoining his Asc and the nation had been saved.

We are now at another critical point, though our survival is not at stake. But we no longer know who we are, as Scotland starts to break away from us and we start to break away from Europe, and as we emerge from a crushing economic downturn. And I think that is why the Tories were returned with a majority: at times of crisis, nations swing to the right, to the past, to what seems to represent safety and security in an unusually uncertain world.

(In her book Watching the English, Kate Fox makes the point that the English like to moan, and that Labour voters tend to moan about the past, about how terrible conditions used to be under the Victorian capitalists etc, and the Tories like to moan about the future, about how the country is going to the dogs.)

What about transits to mundane charts? We joined the EU, oddly enough, at 11pm on 31 Dec 1972 (that is when the flag went up in Brussels – it was midnight for them.) And the Sun was at 10 Cap in a stellium with the Node and Jupiter at 17/18 Capricorn. The Sun was square to Pluto, the Node and Jupiter were square to Uranus. There is plenty to unpack here.

And eeyorish, insular, Capricornian Britain was expanded through engagement with foreign nations (Jupiter in Cap) and this was important for its evolution (Node). The UK is Uranian (in the 1801 chart, conj natal Asc, square natal Sun) and that awkward, ill-at-ease Uranian-ness has been carried into the EU through Jupiter-Node sq Uranus. We even had a referendum about staying in or breaking away (Uranus) 2 years after we joined, in 1975.

The 1975 referendum took place on 8^th June with Uranus at 28.44 Libra – Uranus will be almost exactly opposite this point in 2017. Which is almost what you’d expect. And last time it was half the cabinet (which were Labour) and the Trade Unions (again Labour) who wanted to leave the EU, whereas the Tory party wanted to stay in. This time, if anything, it seems to be the other way round. But that is Uranus for you.

But the biggest transit of all in 2017 will be Pluto opposing the UK Moon. The Moon is the people, it is in the 10^th House, so it is about us deciding our place in the world. And it will be the culminating transit of a series that will have been taking place since about 2010, as Pluto and Uranus have successively hard-aspected our Angles, Sun and then Moon. It will be the end of a prolonged national crisis and renewal. Once that decision is taken and has been acted upon (along with the seemingly inevitable Scottish breakaway), we will be able to move forward again, with a clearer sense of who we are.

Cameron’s Sun at 15 Libra is square the UK Moon and Sun. So he is both deeply engaged yet at odds, challenging even, and challenged by, the British sense of who we are. The easy option would be to campaign for us to leave. But that is not what Cameron wants. He wants a different relationship to the EU, and many in Britain also want that. The Tory Party has been torn apart for a long time over Europe, and many want out of the EU. They will probably not be satisfied by a renegotiated relationship, but Cameron probably hopes that a referendum against them will silence them – just as it silenced some of the Labour critics, like Tony Benn, in 1975.

So Cameron has an entrenched section of his party to try to negotiate with, and entrenched members of the EU who do not want any treaty re-negotiations just for one member. And UKIP won more votes than the SNP, so there are big sections of the British public that need winning over. This will be his main challenge over the next 2 years, and it is a big one. If he manages to win the referendum, with a renegotiated relationship with Europe, and a Tory party that is less bitterly divided, then he will have achieved his aim.

David Cameron became PM as the Great Recession bit, and he will have continued as PM as the UK passed through its series of Uranus-Pluto transits, the biggest that any of us will see in our lifetimes. So he will be seen as the PM who led us through that time of transition and crisis and into a new sense of who we are, with the referendum on the EU, which I think will go his way, being his biggest achievement. But that doesn't mean I voted for him!

WHY DAVID CAMERON WILL BE THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER

David Cameron

In May 2011, a year after the last general election, I wrote that David Cameron’s Pluto transits “come to an end about a couple of years after the start of the second term, and he will not win a 3rd term, if he is still leader by then, which looks problematic. (By the way, I was about 6 months out with Blair when I made this sort of prediction in 2003. In his case, it was Neptune transits coming to an end.)”

I’ll come back to the astrology in a minute, after the non-astrological observation that it always seems to be the person with the most popular appeal who wins an election. It seems to be as simple as that, and usually makes outcomes quite predictable. That was why in the US, Bill Clinton beat George Bush senior, and why George W Bush beat Al Gore, hanging chads notwithstanding. It was why David Cameron beat Gordon Brown at the last UK election, and why he will now beat Ed Miliband.

Ed Miliband

Until the election started to loom, there were always rumblings within the Labour Party about Ed Miliband’s leadership, and his not being able to connect with people. There have never been such rumblings about Cameron. Whatever the polls say, people don’t seem to elect someone where there is this sort of question over them, unless his opponent has even less appeal.

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This ability to appeal to people does not, unfortunately, imply any moral quality or ability to govern effectively, and it is one of the major drawbacks of democracy. And it is also why the backing of the Sun newspaper is so important, because it is that level of appeal that wins elections. The Sun hasn't yet revealed who it's backing this time, but in its heart of hearts it would probably like to see UKIP in power. I suspect it will back the Tories.

So David Cameron will be the next PM. I think we have had worse Prime Ministers. I’d argue that purely as a leader he is the best we have had for decades, in that he does not polarise the country in the way that ‘strong’ leaders like Blair and Thatcher did, and nor are there ongoing questions over his leadership, as we had with Gordon Brown and John Major.

That said, I think the country now needs a Labour government, so I am arguing against my own political views. I think we needed the Tories to start to sort out the economic mess that Labour left behind them. But now what is needed is the perception of compassion in the government, and you don’t really get that with the Tories. I say the perception of compassion, because I think Labour would be unlikely to reverse many of the welfare cuts imposed by the Tories. The 2 parties rarely undo what the other has done, however vociferously they may oppose the other’s policies at the time.

As for the astrology, I’ve observed that a leader usually gets elected under a major transit from either Neptune or Pluto, and stays in power until that and succeeding transits are complete. Thatcher was in power under a series of Pluto transits, Blair under Neptune, and their ‘reigns’ came to an end as the transits did. And their governing style was also characterised by the respective outer planet. Thatcher’s mission was to remove the dead wood, as she saw it, and bring about renewal and she was happy to destroy enemies in the process. Very Plutonian. Blair’s government was known for its popular touch (‘the people’s princess’), its ‘spin’ and ultimately for lies over Iraq. That is Neptune.

Cameron became leader of the Tory party as Pluto began to hard aspect his Angles in 2005, and he has led the country as Pluto has squared his Venus-Sun conjunction at 7-15 Libra. (Libra is a good sign, incidentally, for leading a coalition government.)

His time as PM has been necessarily Plutonic, with the economy in a mess, an unprecedented debt pile, and the need to make unpopular cuts to begin to balance the books. Pluto does not shy from unpopularity in the interest of what it deems to be necessary.

Pluto is the planet that put him in power, and the logic seems to be that he will remain in power as long as Pluto remains active in his chart. Pluto will make the last exact square to Cameron’s Sun in 2016, and will remain within range for a year or two after that. By 2018 he will be seriously losing the power that Pluto gives him. At this point Saturn will be crossing his Angles, bringing realism and resistance to the leader’s natural desire to stay in power.

All this fits with Cameron’s recent statement that he wouldn’t serve a 3^rd term. But I thought I’d better start with what I said in 2011, so that I wouldn’t be appearing wise after the event, which astrologers get accused of!

As for Ed Miliband, he too has had major Pluto transits in recent years – firstly to his Moon at 11 Cancer, and currently to his MC at 16 Capricorn, the sort of thing you’d expect to find in the leader of a party. Like Cameron, he is coming to the end of his transits, so like Cameron he is in the closing phase of his period ‘in power’. If he was about to become PM, I would expect to see some more major transits down the line, but they are not there.

Miliband may hang on as leader of Labour for a while after the election, because the transit to his MC is not yet over. But the MC is very time dependent, and his natal birth time has uncertainty around it. At exactly 2pm, it may well have been rounded up – if it was 5 or 10 mins earlier, then his time as leader of Labour is just about over.

Of Queens and Prime Ministers

The BBC has removed the source link from its news item that, according to David Cameron, the Queen “purred” when he told her that Scotland had voted against independence.

Well she would, she has Moon in Leo, the royal cat: her sense of Queenship is physical (Moon = embodiment), and it expresses itself accordingly.

David Cameron also has Moon in Leo, conjunct the Queen’s Moon. So they instinctively get on. Cameron’s Moon is also conjunct Jupiter and the UK Jupiter. He wants the UK to grow, not shrink. He roared his delight.

Remember “Calm down dear”, Cameron’s injunction to a female opposition MP in the Commons? It suggests a patronising attitude – sometimes at least – towards women. It occurred in late April 2011, while Mars-Jupiter in Aries was opposite his Libra Sun. This was the daring, yet macho, conjunction under which bin Laden was executed by US Navy Seals. And when Cameron told a female MP to “Calm down dear.”

So was he being patronising when he said the Queen “purred”? I think he was, but not as a weapon. The result of the Scottish referendum came out on 19^th Sept, when both he and the Queen experienced a Lunar return. They were both feeling happy in a Leo-like way. Mars in Sagittarius was trining Cameron’s Moon and out it came. It was affectionate, but it also suggested that it is he, not her, that rules the pride.

The Queen

The Queen’s chart is by and large fixed and conservative. That is not a criticism, for those qualities have their place. But she finds change difficult. The progressive point in her chart is her 1^st House Mars-Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius. Diana’s Moon conjoined the Queen’s Mars-Jupiter. So the way Diana instinctively was (Moon) provoked the Queen’s anger (Mars) but also ultimately forced the Queen to change, to come down from her remote, arrogant perch. When Diana died, Pluto and Neptune had recently finished crossing the Queen’s MC and Asc respectively. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. Events were beyond her control, and she was forced to stand down and fly the flag for Diana. And the transits suggest that it was more than a gesture, it was part of a deep change in attitude by the Queen. She was 72 at the time. There’s hope for all of us!

But she’s much happier carrying on as she has always done. According to my calculations, Elizabeth will equal Queen Victoria’s record of 63 yrs 7 months and 2 days on the throne on September 10^th 2015. (I calculated it by number of days on the throne, including leap days.)

Queen equals Victoria's Record

At that point Saturn in Scorpio will be about to leave the sign, having finally finished with the Queen’s Saturn-MC in Scorpio, a signature of career longevity if there ever was. It will be her 3^rd Saturn return, a transit of achievement and ripeness.

The day before she equals the record, the Moon will cross her Descendant and the UK Moon, so the people (the Moon) will be very aware of this event. And the day of the record the Moon will be in Leo, conjoining her natal Moon. She is likely to purr.

There are, of course, other features to the chart of that day: for example, the Moon Venus conjunction (that conjoins the Queen's Moon). Very nice feeling quality, rejoicing. And the North Node conjunct the Queen's Desc (and the UK Moon): an event of personal significance for the Queen as the 'mother' (Cancer) of the people (UK Moon). This astrology suggests that even if you are anti-monarchy, you will still benefit from the collective feeling quality of the day! 

(Personally, I think having a monarch takes a lot of pressure off the Prime Minister to be that him or herself - which didn't stop Blair or Thatcher trying to be - and means they can get on with their job. I think the USA suffers from this problem, and could do with a monarch. That perhaps why, in our celebrity age, the last 3 Presidents have all had Leo Sun or Asc. Maybe they could try as king a washed-up member of the Kennedy family who would do as he was told?)

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On that day (Sept 10th) I think David Cameron will still be Prime Minister, and probably also purring under his Lunar Return. Politicians usually rise to power under major transits, and fall from power once those transits are over. Margaret Thatcher reigned under Pluto, and Blair under Neptune.

David Cameron

Cameron has a wide stellium from Asc to Venus to the Sun. He became leader of the Conservative Party as Pluto squared his Asc, became Prime Minister as Pluto moved on to square his Venus, and next year (as well as in 2016) Pluto will exactly square his Sun. From then on his power is likely to wane, so I think he is likely to stand down 3 or so years into the next Parliament, in order to make way for an electable successor. A Pluto square Sun transit is pretty hefty, and it will be starting to conclude as the EU referendum of 2017, which he initiated, takes place.

David Cameron

Pluto’s simplest meaning is power, and Cameron will be faced with power issues of national importance from the start of the next Parliament: what powers to give to Scotland, and what powers to reclaim from the EU. These are likely to be his defining issues, at the conclusion of which it will be time for him to go.

Putting astrology aside, I’m not ruling out voting conservative at the next election. I don’t think there is much to choose between the parties. But Cameron is proving to be the first PM for decades who can both lead his party and not divide the country. Thatcher and Blair divided the country and created a lot of ill feeling. Brown and Major could not lead their own parties, let alone the country.

I don’t think of Cameron as a great man. He is, however, holding together not just his party but a coalition government, which is a difficult thing to do. And the country has climbed out of the worst recession in living memory (a recession which I think would also have occurred under a Tory government.) Cuts have been needed, though they have been applied in unfair ways at times. And I really don’t like the concentration of ex-public school in the government, it amounts to a new ruling class in a way we haven’t seen for a long time.

But as a leader, I think Cameron is doing better than any of his predecessors. If Labour had a leader who could lead, then I’d consider voting for them. But Ed Milliband doesn’t seem to have it.

Of course, given the chance I would vote for a party that would change the whole course of the world so that we could live sustainably and stop destroying the environment and where countries would stop trying to dominate each other in a competition for resources and the fanatical backlash that creates...