Readers know this blog is opposed to Brexit on political grounds. I like the idea of a united Europe, I think it is the greatest political achievement since the fall of the Roman Empire, I am proud of my European citizenship and I love being able to come, go, buy, sell, live wherever and as I please. I think anybody who wants to change this is bonkers, but when of 17 million of my fellow Brits voted to leave, I accepted the outcome and hoped that everything would, as I expected it to, work out okay, even if not to my choice and the other 16 million plus who voted like me to stay.
What has followed is the biggest collapse of competence by any government in our rich history as a democracy. And it is not just the government at fault. The entire political class is now a seething cauldron of discord, sniping and abuse, with not a workable idea, nor a common thread between the lot of them, or if that is too harsh, most of them. Now there are just six months left to go. But as this blog has asked time and again, to what?
Here is a snippet. The cabinet met last Thursday to go over its latest no deal preparations. There were various briefings as well as the publication of the latest Notices or Advice Notes or whatever they are. The bits about driving licences, passports, roaming charges and general silly annoyances to a settled life routine that not a single leave voter had given one moment’s thought to, grabbed the headlines. But the real news was hidden.
Among the cabinet briefers was the governor of the Bank of England who was smuggled in and out through the back door, who laid out potential financial consequences at least in the short term, of a no deal Brexit. This reinforced other warnings from lawyers, scientists, medics and of course business and industry. The notion that house values would fall by a third or more was like a stake driven into the Tory heart. The reason that there was little said after the meeting was that the cabinet was then, and still is, in a state of shock. Finally it had tasted reality. Such was the acid flavour, Leavers and Remainers alike around that long table of blown up egos and bad tempered discord, were united in one overriding truth. Voters would never swallow it.
This may be a turning point. We must wait and see.