Brexit is dreadful, Swinson is right – but it looks like big beast Boris will win
As the various rough beasts slouching towards Downing Street sound their war trumpets, it is time for the rest of us to take stock of where we are and how we got here.
It all harks back to the referendum, of course. That’s where it all began.
Back in the spring of 2016, David Cameron, as Tory prime minister, assured us that Britain was far better off as a member of the European Union than it would be as an independent state. He was right, and if he’d left it there, all would have been over, bar the shouting. But no. In response to the Eurosceptics in his own party, and with UKIP stoking a moral panic over immigration, he decided it was right to ask the British people whether they wanted to stay or go. It was a stupid question, fraught with risk. But he went with it anyway, ignoring the old barrister’s axiom, never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer.
Cameron’s assumption was that UKIP, led by Nigel Farage, was a boil that had to be lanced if it was not to fester and grow. It then festered and grew. Farage, a time-traveller from the 1930s, went on to set the agenda for the Leave campaign, forcing the latest Conservative PM Boris Johnson to double-down on a set of beliefs that he never took seriously in the first place.
Tory leavers couldn’t believe their luck. Ghastly old posers like Sir Bill Cash and Peter Bone – Europaths masquerading as sceptics – suddenly found that, after years of spouting nonsense from the fringes, they were suddenly at the cutting edge of the Great Debate. At the same time, previously sensible Tories, including Michael Gove and Liam Fox, began to talk drivel.
“The day we vote to leave we hold all the cards and can choose the path we want”, said Gove. Reaching a free trade agreement with the EU would be “the easiest negotiation in human history,” said Fox. “It’s like threading a needle, said David Davis. “If you have a good eye and a steady hand, it’s easy enough”. Not even the Irish border would prove a problem, we were told. “There’s no reason why the UK’s only land border should be any less open after Brexit than it is today,” said Theresa Villiers, the then Northern Ireland Secretary. Nor, apparently, would the idea of Scottish independence gain from Brexit. As Gove (himself a Scot) put it: “If we vote to leave then I think the Union will be stronger.”
Seriously, what were they doing negotiating a settlement wiht Brussels?
On and on they went – blowhards. Has there ever been a government that knew less about the nature of the crisis they were creating or the means of resolving it? Cameron, Theresa May, now Boris Johnson. These were the Tories’ presiding geniuses. And now they tell us that handing the keys of Number 10 to Jeremy Corbyn would be a risk no sane person would take. I don’t need to ask if they could run a whelk stall because I already know the answer.
Central to the whole debacle, but lost in the fog of unknowing, is the question of what in God’s name it was all about in the first place. After 43 years of EU membership, Britain was the world’s fifth-largest economic power. It had full employment and the best growth prospects of any western country. We were recognised as one of the three most powerful European states, along with Germany and France. As for those parts of the EU that we didn’t like – the single currency, open borders and a burdensome budget contribution – Brussels had given us an out in every case. We were the most privileged and indulged of the twenty-eight. Cameron had even been assured that Britain did not have to go along with any future moves towards Ever Closer Union. But all of that paled against the Ukip claim that Britain – actually England – was being invaded by an army of benefit-scroungers from Eastern Europe.
And so we are where we are. We have gone so far down the Brexit road without ever reaching the end that we don’t even know anymore in which direction we are headed, or why. The result is Boris Johnson still fending off an increasingly deranged Nigel Farage while Jeremy Corbyn snaps at his heels like an ageing Jack Russell with incontinence issues.
However improbably, the only politician who has got it right is the Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson, who says that Article 50 should be revoked and Brexit dumped into the rubbish bin of history. How many of us, moderate Brexiteers included, must wish that could be the case, so that the whole of the last three years, so far as politics are concerned, could be wiped clean. But this is, to quote the redoubtable Michel Barnier, magical thinking, and the fact that Swinson believes it could yet happen, with her as prime minister, shows that she, too, has lost all grip on reality.
All of which takes us to the election on December 12.
Can Labour pull it off? Will Corbyn be the first prime minister since Churchill to wear a boiler suit to breakfast? Who knows? As it happens, I am in favour of several of his key proposals. I think the UK should remain in the EU Customs Union. I think the railways should be renationalised (and handed over to a state body that expects to run them at a loss). I think the seriously rich and large corporations should pay more tax. But I don’t think Corbyn understands any of the complexities involved. He is a headline politician, not a details man. John McDonnell, meanwhile, always reminds me of the Pasha Strelnikov character played by Tom Courtenay in the film version of Dr Zhivago. I can picture him studying the names of the many thousands of enemies of the state whom he must regretfully terminate.
Yes, but if not Labour, who? I suppose it is arithmetically possible that the People’s Party could end up in coalition with the Lib Dems, supported by the SNP. That might even work (for me, that is), but would risk ending up as a disjointed jigsaw put together with pieces from three different boxes. McDonnell would mentally be adding Swinson & Co, plus the Nats, to his enemies list and the whole thing would fall apart quicker than you could say Bulgarian Umbrella.
Which only leaves the incumbent, with his “brilliant” withdrawal deal, breathless delivery and dubious distinction as the world leader closest to Donald Trump. Surely his second coming is at hand. As has been observed elsewhere, Boris Johnson is a winner. He may lack all conviction, but he is no slouch and he knows how to win votes. And at the end of the day, with Downing Street once more beckoning, he might just be the biggest beast of all.