Yesterday, not for the first time, I found myself ‘victim’ to a twitter pile-on. I say victim which is a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s still a but disturbing when it happens. The weirdest thing about it was that the subject in question was Brexit and the perpetrator of the pile-on was someone with whom I have spent many years agreeing.
Femi Oluwole, known as Femi Sorry on twitter, has had a significant presence on social media, strongly arguing for remain in the not-very-recent EU referendum. He was also prominent during the campaign to hold a second referendum on EU membership, as I haven’t generally been. I agree with everything he says about the pernicious and damaging effects of Brexit, for which I see for Britain brings not a single benefit. Other than twatting on about ‘sovereignty’ neither can most Brexiters. Brexit is A BAD THING. But where Femi and I have parted ways is to go on and on about it, still calling for us to rejoin the EU. I’ve given up on that, certainly for the short and medium term, because I don’t think the public mood has changed that much and anyway hardly anyone would welcome yet another Brexit debate.
I believe that Britain should now be looking to secure a better Brexit agreement with the EU, one which gives us access to the Single Market and the Customs Union. This is not me trying to encourage rejoining the EU by stealth: all the liars who led the Brexit campaign, including the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, told us we would never leave the Single Market, until the day came when we narrowly voted to leave Europe and they changed their minds. So, hardly controversial. A closer working relationship, rather like Norway’s. Any agreement with another country involves losing a bit of sovereignty so what’s the big deal? Trade gets easier, and less costly, people have more freedom to move within Europe. What I think would be madness is directing all one’s efforts into rejoining the EU.
Femi knows how to influence his followers, so soon my notifications section and inbox was full of comments from them. It’s what people like him do and what the likes of the hard left activist and former journalist Owen Jones does when he wants to intimidate those with another view. Femi is not as bad a person as Jones – I don’t think Femi is a bad person at all – but he is blinkered.
At one point, I was confronted by an anonymous twitter person (or bot) who said the question of rejoining was “a matter of principle” and that perhaps I didn’t have any by accepting that, for worse and not better, Brexit the issue was over. My position was more nuanced than that. Although I occasionally wobbled on the question of holding a second referendum, I didn’t die in a ditch for one. It wasn’t that I took a pragmatic view either, although it might appear that way. I strongly believe that the British people were lied to during the Brexit vote, as I believe they were lied to by Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election campaign. But I can’t bang on forever saying the people were wrong and I, with my one O level, was right. That’s why I support Keir Starmer when he says the issue now is to make Brexit work. No Brexit will ever be better for the country than EU membership, but a less bad deal has to be better than a terrible one, which is what we currently have.
The remaining hardline Remainers are free to carry on campaigning. I think it’s a waste of time because it’s my feeling that the only chance we will have of going back into Europe will be if enough hardline leavers express buyer’s regret, that they have come to believe that the promises from Johnson and Farage were nothing more than lies and that the real reason for Brexit is to advance the opportunities for the illiberal elite who seek to make vast sums from deregulation, a low tax small state economy where people can fend for themselves and, for example, pay for their own medical care. That time is not now.
I’m not even sure the majority of the public want to carry on going on about Europe. The Brexit years from 2016 to date have worn everyone down. Surely we don’t want to argue about it anymore? Surely we can come to some equitable arrangement with Europe that puts to bed the constant conflict of the Johnson era and allows us to move on, a kind of halfway house that leaves us outside the political structures but closer to the economic ones?
Johnson lied when he told us he would ‘Get Brexit done’. The terrible agreement signed by him means that the dire effects of Brexit, especially the never ending insecurities and conflict, will dog us and it’s not an accident because Johnson uses this stuff as a political weapon. Attacking Johnny Foreigner attracts good headlines in the right wing gutter press. It’s not a strategy for a more prosperous and secure Britain but it’s smart politics in the short term. That’s why I think we need to make Brexit work in the best way it can.
