It’s All Over Now

“You haven’t said much about Brexit lately, have you?” people aren’t saying to me. ‘You’ve always been a gobby remoaner, why aren’t you going on about it?”  To which I reply, or rather I would reply if they asked me, what’s the point? We left the European Union on 31st January 2020 and the transition period ends on 31st December 2020. The electorate handed a landslide majority to Boris Johnson’s ‘vote leave’ Conservative party and there is literally nothing I nor anyone else can do about it. Whatever will be, will be.

The stories in the gutter press are just noise. Johnson’s chief negotiator ‘Lord’ Frost threatens Europe to say Britain is happy to leave without a deal and the newspapers accuse the EU of being inflexible and of refusing to compromise. There is little to say about that, other than we already know Johnson’s government wants to leave Europe without a deal and we know that the EU is not being inflexible or refusing to compromise. We are leaving their club: they are not leaving ours. None of this matters. I know how I feel, personally, about leaving with or without a deal but the matter, for voters, is dead. We can just sit and watch as Britain loses control of its destiny.

There are still opinion polls doing the rounds. Most people now wish we’d stayed in Europe. All I can say is that it’s a bit late for that, now. The Daily Express polled its elderly readers, 95% of whom support leaving the transition period on World Trade Organisation terms. At least they’re likely to get their wishes come true, even though most of them will probably not live long enough to experience its effects. Sarcasm aside, it barely matters what anyone thinks. It’s all over.

Do I think Brexit will be of any benefit to Britain? Of course not. For the illiberal elite money-men who funded the leave campaigns, it was always about getting out of the EU before their dodgy tax avoiding and indeed evading schemes were clamped down on. For many voters, it was all about stopping Europeans coming to work here. Happily, for Brexiters, both have come true. The tax dodgers can celebrate, as can the anti-Europeans now that the vast majority of migration comes from outside Europe, such as from Commonwealth countries.

Of course, there are political aspects to what’s happening. The Labour Party, which under the wretched ‘leadership’ of Jeremy Corbyn was all but ambivalent about Brexit (Corbyn has always been a Eurosceptic) is now under new management, the strongly pro-European Keir Starmer. But the first thing Starmer said once Johnson won his majority was that the debate was now over. There would be no second referendum, Brexit would get done, as Dominic Cummings put it. And it did. The political aspect now is that the Brexiters need to own what’s coming.

A no deal crash out, at a time of economic carnage, amid a deathly pandemic, will benefit no one. But the point is that only Dominic Cummings, our de facto prime minister, and his puppet Boris Johnson, will be responsible for everything that happens. If it’s bad news, it will be their bad news. If it is good news, they’ve got it made. All that’s left for those of us who would have preferred a close relationship with Europe is to hope Cummings gets it right.

So, I have written about Brexit again. Only to say that it’s all over now and there is no chance of us rejoining, in all likelihood, during my lifetime. And maybe that’s just as well. I’m not sure I would want to once more go through the most damaging and divisive period of our lifetimes, where some acquaintances have become strained to breaking point, though happily not friendships. Whatever I think of the liars, chancers and spivs who helped bring about Brexit, it’s over. It’s what happens next that matters and only Dominic Cummings can decide that.