Living in Scotland, I inevitably know plenty of people who voted remain in 2016 (and who believed every story against Boris – “He has the attention span of a gnat” and suchlike). Working in the media, Rod Liddle likewise has an extensive remain-supporting acquaintance (and I daresay many had similar opinions of Boris)
Recently, I’ve noticed a change. “It’s no longer the issue – it’s the principle of the thing”, is said by remainers who think the Scottish court ruling absurd and feel we have to have an election and have to have Brexit – not because they all now think it’s a great idea (though I sense “Project Fear”-exhaustion in them) but because they see what we all see: parliament is destroying its credibility – and its legitimacy.
I was already planning this post when I noticed Rod Liddle’s article in the Sunday Times today. Two-thirds of his remainer friends now just want Brexit to happen.
So the remoaning political class is talking only to itself – and only talking at us. Except that the issue is stopping Brexit, not one of its other pet projects, what’s new, you might say? What is new is: even remainers are noticing. And it seems there’s a difference between remainers and remoaners; winning isn’t everything to some remainers I know – or, it would seem, some Rod Liddle knows.
Two swallows don’t make a summer. What do you see and hear?
A few are beginning to crack…. Maybe even enough.
They don’t have to vote, just stay home in droves.
A handful of Remainer family, friends and acquaintances are peering into the distance and asking, if article 50 is revoked, what could happen and how might it be worse than staying….
Undoubtedly there is war weariness. Lots of people are tired of the mess, and just want the matter settled. Brexit and be done with it, whether or not they think separation is a good idea.
However, it would be foolish for Brexiteers to mis-interpret this change as conversion to the Leave side. Apart from the minority of 6 million or so who got off the couch long enough to cast a vote for The Brexit Party in the Euro-election, most Brits don’t want to gather round a maypole and sing “There’ll Always Be An England”.
The Day After Brexit approaches. And while the worst assertions of Project Fear will probably not be realized, there will inevitably be some disruptions and inconveniences. The majority of the people will be looking at those doughty Brexiteers and asking, quite reasonably — Now What?
The apparent flaw in Brexit is that uncontested authority gets handed back to Parliament in London — which has demonstrated cosmic-scale incompetence. The two tired old main political parties have also demonstrated they are worthless. And Brexiteers are apparently bereft of any realistic ideas about how to take advantage of the UK’s new-found freedom.
Any serious Brexiteer has to be sweating bullets right now. Because they will have a rather limited time window in which to prove themselves to a divided disgruntled population with no confidence in the solons of Westminster. It will take real skill for the UK to avoid a major outbreak of post-Brexit Buyer’s Regret.
On a train last week, two middle aged business executives, probably in a software company and rugby fans, neither apparently political, one agreed with the other when they mentioned ‘Brexit’ and efforts to stop it, said ‘How many times can you keep regurgitating it?’ and clearly wanted it done and dusted. That struck me as a fair question to which only Remoaners would react with horror, rather than as a fair point.
The majority of people being Brexiteers, they’ll be saying, quite reasonably — you’ve had three years since you lost the referendum and knew we were leaving the EU, so if you haven’t made plans for it (or worse yet have been trying to disrupt plans to leave) then don’t come crying to us. We aren’t wiping your bottoms for you either.
If the majority of people are Brexiteers, why did only 6 million people (about 1 out of 8 citizens) bother to vote for The Brexit Party in the recent Euro-elections?
In the Referendum 3 years ago, only 37% of UK citizens cast votes for Leave. The majority of UK citizens are not committed Brexiteers, although a majority will probably be glad to see the UK separate from the EU just to get the whole thing over.
Brexit will happen — there is no doubt about that. And that is when the hard work really begins. Get ready!
OK . . . let’s make Gavin’s amendments and see how it looks:
Behind Enemy Lines — Don’t let your enthusiasm for Brexit lead you into misunderstanding what other people say.
The point is that Brexit will happen — but in a divided country in which only a minority really want separation from the EU and a larger number are willing to go along, but without much commitment or enthusiasm.
On the Day After Brexit, the majority of Brits are going to be looking at the minority of committed Brexiteers for their plan on what to do now that the UK is out of the EU. So far, committed Brexiteers have apparently focused only on getting to Brexit, and have no coherent plans for what to do once separation is achieved.
For anyone who wants Brexit to be a success in this divided country, it is time to start looking down the road, planning, and working hard.
Gavin, the time for looking down the road, planning, and working hard actually began the day after the results came in. Remainers could have accepted the decision of the people and then helped make plans to ensure a smooth transition to new arrangements.
Instead, Remainers chose divisiveness and obstruction. They did their best to overturn the people’s referendum and to sabotage Brexit. One key tactic has been to make it impossible to leave by poisoning all hopes of a smooth departure. So it is most disingenuous to then lament the outcome Remainers have successfully pursued, and blame it on the Brexiteers who (along with the uncommitted middle) would otherwise have spent the last several years focused on making this work.
It is also tendentious to pretend that the most decisive referendum in Britain’s history is actually a cruel imposition on an unenthusiastic people by a wilful minority. If the decision had gone the other way, we’d be hearing about the authority of the people’s voice, and the need for unity.
The sad-faced, told-you-so chorus now coming from Remainers looks to me like political positioning aimed at dodging the electoral punishment they so richly deserve.
Whether your ‘majority of Brits’ fall for all of this, I can’t say – but I have a pretty strong hunch they won’t. I don’t think they’ll have forgotten it by the next election, either.
Guess we’ll see.
Gavin, the Queen’s speech is due on the 14th. It will certainly be aiming to sound like a coherent plan for the day after Brexit. Rather than complaining it hasn’t been leaked beforehand, I suggest waiting till then and critiquing it as and if appropriate.
Niall K: “Rather than complaining it hasn’t been leaked beforehand …”
Leaked? Leaked?? Admittedly I was not paying much attention in the pre-Referendum days, but logically a big part of discussion back then should have related to what the UK would be able to do post-separation that it could not do while part of the EU. Control immigration, protect fisheries, buy bananas from anywhere, etc. But if such discussions took place, they do not seem to have left much trace.
I once listened to an expatriate British lady wax lyrical about the “Lucky Potatoes” of her youth. These were apparently candies with a variety of small plastic geegaws in the middle. Sometimes she would find a delightful little toy inside which made her happy. Other times, she would be disappointed and sad. But it was always exciting to bite into a “Lucky Potato” to see what she would find.
Surely Brexit was not intended to be a “Lucky Potato”?
Gavin,
Bemoan the lack of a Master Plan For Brexit all you will, but please stop insinuating that it’s because of a bumbling bevy of Brexiteers, rather than Remainers acting in wilful bad faith to block all progress.
I continue replying because I know from your posts over many years on other friendly sites that you’re a decent and sensible fellow. Yet you seem immune to argument on the present point. All of the issues you mention were discussed at endless length in countless forums. They have never stopped being discussed. But they weren’t presented in a neatly structured policy package before the referendum, because – remember, now – the government of the day was AGAINST Brexit.
Therefore the yes/no referendum was presented (after a government-backed fear campaign) as a decision in principle about whether to restore the UK’s independence vs the EU, with details to follow.
Since then, there’s been no neatly structured ‘details to follow’ policy package because Remainers in and out of government have done everything they could to obstruct and frustrate the people’s decision to leave.
Granted, in earlier days Remainers of goodwill could quite reasonably hope to improve the terms of the departure, and fair enough too. But that stage ended when PM May brought back her version of the Treaty Of Versailles. By that point, the wreckers had taken full control of the Remainer side. It became clear that they weren’t really seeking a better deal; they were pretending to seek a better deal in hope of obstructing Brexit for long enough to weasel out of it entirely.
In the face of this sort of intransigence, we will either end up with whatever sort of Brexit we can force through and whatever aftermath that brings, or else we will trash the constitution and betray representative democracy. The latter happens by default if we wait until there’s a plan that’s acceptable to Remainers, because their behaviour reveals that no plan for a real Brexit will ever be acceptable to them.
So planning be ****ed. Brexit now, return to WIPO terms, hold the election, get on with it.
Meanwhile, responsible organisations like banks and so forth already have their systems in place, ready to go. Watch and see: Brexit will have the same disastrous sky-is-falling outcomes as Y2K, and for all the same reasons.
Gavin Longmuir, I have to agree with Behind Enemy Lines (18th September 2019 at 5:15 am) that
Instead of writing the same comment over and over again, why not write a comment indicating at least the basic elements of what you would think was “a coherent plan for Brexit”. Name a few things that you think Boris and/or the Brexit party should be talking about – should be proposing right now, even before the election campaign starts. We, who are in the UK, could then discuss whether they have been espoused and/or indicated in other ways, whether they are wise for Boris to mention at this moment or not, whether they are in general good ideas or bad, and whether they are likely consequences of Brexit whether proclaimed or not.
I could then better understand why you have been writing (it seems) this self-same comment for (it feels like) years, seemingly uninfluenced by replies – and you might understand from our replies why you have not managed to convey your concern.
Obviously you have (I trust) read the part of Dominic Cummings’ spectator article beginning “What would have been the point of that!” (emphasis in original), mocking the idea that Brexit referendum campaign should have presented a detailed plan for the UK-EU trade relationship.
Yes, it does seem as if we are speaking different languages. Here is my attempt to explain the difference; alternative views gladly accepted:
I am an outsider. I have no emotional investment in UK separation from the EU. Consequently, I have to look at Brexit rationally, and from a rational perspective, it seems obvious that the smart approach for Brexiteers would be to focus on what they plan to do on the Day After Brexit. First, because that is their main selling point within an obviously divided nation. Second, because the Day After Brexit will arrive, and they will hopefully then be able to implement all these good ideas which were impossible because of membership in the EU.
On the other side, insiders have a very heavy emotional commitment to separation. From that emotional perspective, what happens on the Day After Brexit matters much less than the act of separation itself.
Let’s hope it all works out for the best.
Gavin, the two things they explicitly hammered on in the campaign were:
a) £350m/NHS: both the money the EU just gets from us and keeps, and the money it nominally spends on us but in ridiculous ways, was instead to be spent on “our priorities” with some of it – £100m/week was the figure Boris said when he thought he’d become PM right after Brexit – on the NHS. Dominic Cummings’ theory is that while major reform of NHS admin is important (and I expect he’s as able as you and I to see the case for deep reform of how the UK handles health beyond that), winning trust is an essential first step.
So I expect the plan is that keeping that promise will be used to justify making deep admin reforms in the NHS (just fixing the harm Blair did would be a start – and by definition doable), with any deep reform of the NHS (as opposed to of how it is run) explicitly postponed till after the next election some years hence – after trust has been gained.
b) Immigration: taking back control of immigration was a major promise. Dominic’s recommendation is: use an Australian points system, end welfare tourism of low-skill migrants from terror centres, concentrate on high-skills immigrants, make UK education a world centre for Maths and Science.
Another part of what Boris offers is his mocking of PC speech police – saying women in burkas look like letter boxes and suchlike. The PM violating the hate speech laws (as interpreted by the PC) implies at least restraint in enforcing them. We will see if the 14th promises more. I would regret – but not be astounded – if the cautious strategy were followed of Boris saying things – that get a “How dare you” from the PC and a “how funny (and true)” from his voters – while not explicitly promising a total restoration of free speech. I like to think immediate total restore of free speech could be a winner – but there is no doubt that the media and chattering class (who’ll be hostile anyway) will scream very loud at that one, where a “we’ll be sane about it” approach will more easily separate the mockable from others. The question is, will they play the media pundits, or head-on break past them to appeal to the people who don’t think like SW1. We’ll see.
Plans to lower taxes and make Britain more entrepreneur-friendly are part of the package. This tweet suggests that the EU negotiators anticipate and fear this.
That’s a start for now. Others can comment other likely points, and we’ll know more on the 14th.
Niall — Thanks for that explanation. Good luck!
For the avoidance of doubt, I am really on your side. I believe that we have too much government in this world. Brexit potentially could become one of very few real-world examples of rolling back government. If Brexit is a rip-roaring success, then people in many countries will point to the UK as an example of the wisdom & benefits of reducing government. If Brexit turns out to be a damp squib, it will become a mighty weapon in the hands of the authoritarians around the world who want more & more government.
Please don’t screw it up! Brexiteers need to act smarter.
Looking in from the outside, one of the most cogent arguments people have made against the status quo is that the British people were never given a choice about joining the EU in the first place. True! And now the Brexit plan is apparently to hand back authority over the British people to the same remote metropolitan Oxbridge crew who signed you up for the EU without even asking? The same Westminster parliamentarians who have proven over the last 3 years that they can’t be trusted?
Surely an important aim of Brexiteers should be — Never Again! A key action on the Day After Brexit should be to initiate changes in the governance of the UK which put limits on what a government can do without the wholehearted support of the British people.
That is precisely why people here are getting more and more focussed on the process of getting Brexit itself – because it is becoming more obvious that that process is part of doing that – and of motivating our leaders to do more (as I may have said before). I suspect Boris feels motivated to revoke the fixed parliament act – and attend to some other things. Some purging of Tories has occurred and we may hope for more (internal or external). As for cleaning up the civil service, at least both motive and the ability to see who has been foot-dragging or worse have been given by Brexit to a degree unique in my lifetime.