My final Brexit related post (for now): here's the most right-wing anti-Brexit argument I could come up with
The video above explains my “most right-wing argument for Brexit ever” in full. If you are interested, please watch. I’m not going to offer spoilers in this article. What I will do is give reader a sort of a farewell to Brexit speech below. I’m going to be writing about other stuff from now on, not really touching on Brexit at all.
I enjoyed writing about Brexit for several years. I had a lot to say about it. But I feel I ran out of things to say, as well as found myself gravely disappointed at where the anti-Brexit arguments and energy ended up. Anti-Brexit sentiment got added to the omnicause - pretty much the worst thing that could have happened to it. Wrap yourself in an EU flag, head to a pro-Palestine march and then maybe catch an Extinction Rebellion demo afterwards.
Meanwhile, the culture on the British right is as pro-Brexit as it has ever been. In fact, in an era where right-wing parties are finding it fashionable to take up very left-wing economic policies, being pro-Brexit is something of a rallying point for the British right. It is the one thing they think separates them from the woke left. Everything else is too messy.
I have long considered myself centre-right, but over the last several years almost no one has thought of me that way. Which is funny, because I have worked for organisations that are either obviously or nominally on the centre-right, I have written most prominently outside of this Substack for the Spectator and Spiked, mostly about how much I love capitalism and detest wokeness at that. Yet because I don’t like Brexit, I have been placed in a bin marked “left-wing”. If you pour over my writing for all outlets over the last five years, you would see that to describe them as left-wing would be hilariously absurd.
Such is the power of Brexit - still! - over the body politic in Britain. Anyhow, I don’t want to talk about the subject for a while after this. Thank you to everyone who has joined and stuck around to hear me talk about how Brexit gets reversed, but I’m done with it for now. I will be still writing about British politics here, of course, just not a lot about Brexit specifically.
Something has to happen - more than anything, a movement to rejoin has to come from the right. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So, for the era that will contain older hippies dancing to John Lennon’s “Power to the People” in front of the parliament building, I’m checking out. Thanks for the memories guys, and good luck.
You have done more than almost anyone to oppose Brexit but I am dismayed that you abandon the fight. As much as anything, it is the failure of the media to hold the right and Brexiters in particular to account. Is the issue that almost dare not speak its name. So those of us who are conscious of the disaster and the culpability of those who engineered must surely keep speaking the truth?
Another interesting video. Pleased that you addressed PR, albeit briefly!
I've argued previously (in defence of the Lib Dems' position) that the EU won't allow us to rejoin unless there is support across the left-right spectrum. I know the emphasis of your argument here is that unless the centre-right moves away from kneejerk anti-Europeanism it won't have a route back to power, but I think you're also saying that for the UK to rejoin the EU you are accepting that the right - or at least part of it - will need to support rejoining.
An alternative to the Conservatives growing their tent to include moderate pro-Europeans is of course for the Lib Dems to grow their tent to include more centre-right voters. I think the Lib Dems would find it a challenge to be a party that is heavily dominated by centre-right members/voters, but it may not be an insurmountable one.
Would I go so far as to predict that the Lib Dems will displace the Conservatives? No. But in a scenario that sees Reform overtaking the Conservatives - which you agree is plausible, even likely - it wouldn't be at all impossible that the Lib Dems could grow and evolve into a party that the moderate centre right felt at home in, even if perhaps only for a generation.