It is not at all surprising that those who were telling us little more than a year ago just how great Brexit was going to be for our country have gone very quiet and those of us who predicted disaster are trying to avoid saying “I told you so”. It is also not surprising that politicians of all colours have shown to be so utterly inept and devoid of any idea of what to do next.
I am certainly not surprised by the position of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn and his friends on the hard left have always opposed the EU because, put simply, membership of it is incompatible with their aim of building socialism in one country by way of a socialist command economy. It’s the old argument Anthony Wedgewood Benn always came out when he was doing his bit to wreck Labour in the 1980s: the EU, went the argument, was a rich man’s club. Labour went into the election saying virtually nothing about the EU and were never pressed on the subject by either the media or the worst functioning Tory election campaign ever. Indeed. Corbyn managed to attract the votes of many young people who were led to believe that Labour was a forward-thinking progressive pro EU party that would fight May’s hard Brexit. It turns out that Labour is as far to the right as the Tories and even Ukip when it comes to the EU and migration. I don’t recall Corbyn mentioning that bit when he spoke to his adoring middle class cult following at Glastonbury.
Labour’s position has become increasingly dishonest too, calling for a “jobs first Brexit” whilst at the same time calling for a departure from both the single market and the customs union, both of which will have the opposite effect on jobs. I very much regret voting Labour in June and will never again vote for Labour whilst it has the same policies on the EU as Nigel Farage. It is strange how the extremes of right and left somehow meet up eventually.
If Labour is reduced to empty slogans and rhetoric – that is, after all, the Corbyn way – then what of the Tories? Theresa May’s self-imolation as prime minister occurred because the public realised early on she was completely without substance, a robotic presence capable only of trotting out soundbites. Her comments like “Brexit means Brexit” and “no deal is better than a bad deal” were exposed for what they were, which was nothing at all. The Mail and the Sun lapped it all up, but not all the public were quite so convinced. My favourite Maybot cliche is the one where she talks about getting the “best possible deal for Britain”. Why no one picks her up on this I will never know. Let us be absolutely clear about this: the best possible deal will not be anywhere as good as the one we have now.
To say that government ministers are sending out mixed messages is an understatement of seismic proportions. Brexit secretary David Davis says that negotiating a deal makes “the Nasa moonshot look simply” whilst the increasingly ludicrous Liam Fox, a man lest we forget with a well-paid non job in charge of overseas trade that can’t begin until we leave the EU, says getting a deal will be “one of the easiest in human history” to strike. When asked what would happen if Britain failed to secure a deal, he replied that the country would “survive”. So that is what 52% of the electorate voted for: survival. You couldn’t make it up, except that he did.
The most astonishing aspect is that the argument in favour of a transitional deal has already been won. The majority of people in the House of Commons, and I hope the country, realise that we cannot allow the country to go off the edge of a cliff. We will need to put things in place to keep things as they are until we come up with an agreement with the EU that makes things worse. Yes, that is exactly what it means. Even comedy figures like Johnson and Gove have grasped the reality that EU membership covers a great many things, such as airline paths, environmental protections and even the safe transportation of nuclear waste. In fact, we will need to unpick virtually everything in order to come up with future arrangements and it will take many years, maybe even decades to conclude. I don’t remember Farage mentioning this bit but he didn’t feel the need to. As a man of the hard right, he wants Britain out of the EU regardless of any implications for the country, regardless of the disastrous effects on our living standards.
The country has resumed two party politics following the catastrophic Tory government from 2010 to 2015 in which some Lib Dems had jobs. This explains why Corbyn did so unexpectedly well in the general election. The worst thing is that within a two party system, both main parties hold the same position on Brexit, which is to say one of complete confusion, no plans, no aims; just a commitment to a hard Brexit. No other party matters.
At the time of the last election, I was still a Labour member, yet I felt I was lending my vote to the party. I wanted to see my useless local Tory MP Jack “Shagger” Lopresti booted out of parliament and I ended up voting for a Corbynista who promptly lost. Now that the hard Brexit Labour position has been fully exposed, will enough people give Corbyn’s Labour their support next time? I doubt it and in any event the Tories will never run another a terrible election campaign with such a terrible leader.
The truth is that the Tories have looked into the abyss and they don’t like what they see. Many headbangers in the Tory Party still insist on the hard Brexit that they think will return the country to the days when we had an Empire and the hard left in Labour wants a hard Brexit to bring about a socialist revolution in one country, neither are particularly appealing prospects for many of us. When the extremists on both sides both appear to accept the need for transition deals as we leave the EU before we can negotiate something much worse with the EU, you know we must be in trouble. And we are.
