Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The vote on May’s deal is set for Tuesday. It represents a climatic moment in a story of political confusion arising from the biggest failure of governance in GB’s peacetime history. But it will not end there because if the vote is lost absolutely nobody anywhere knows what will happen next, taking uncertainty about this country’s future to an undreamed of level. And if the vote is won, it only means that we are leaving in an orderly fashion, i.e. with our bags packed and furniture neatly stacked in a van, but still no idea where we are eventually going to live because years of negotiations over just about everything still lie ahead.

A gobsmacked world looks on aghast as the one country with a default off orderly and decisive government, home of the Mother of Parliaments, product of over a thousand years of evolution of a unique and flexible constitution adaptable to the times, has imploded into ungovernable confusion over the major political choice it democratically made. This is made worse by the spectacle of the EU, which GB has chosen to leave, made up of not one country but twenty seven, standing resolute and united upon its response to the national self-harm unfolding on its borders in its neighbour.  A neighbour who time and again has answered the call of duty to rescue Europe from its own quarrels and fights and played a major role in shaping the very Union it has now decided to abandon.

At the heart of this disaster is one political party, the Tories, split on Europe for decades, which called a referendum without understanding what Brexit actually entailed, lost it, continued in government after a change of leader, who called an election and lost that, but carried on to deliver the current turmoil, which even even in the febrile politics of Greece or Italy would be too embarrassing to allow.

Yet here it just goes on and on.