This week in Brexitland February 1, 2024

What my run in with Jacob Rees-Mogg taught me about the emptiness of current Brexitism

Before last night, I had some lingering respect for Rees-Mogg’s debating skills. However much I disagreed with the haunted pencil, the Right Honourable Member for the 18th century, I had thought him a decent retail politician, someone who it would be an honour to debate. After last night, I no longer hold this opinion.

I was contacted by a producer at GB News yesterday afternoon to come onto Rees-Mogg’s show and and talk about Brexit with him. I was told the discussion would be 15 minutes in length. I had some idea that he’d had people onto his show before with whom he had sharp disagreements, like Marina Purkiss, and that although the debate had been heated, you can’t railroad someone for 15 minutes - it’s too long a period of time to shut out everything you don’t want to hear. I agreed to do it. I have wanted to have a proper debate with someone like Rees-Mogg for ages and this sounded like as good an arena as I was going to get.

I prepared an argument built around much of what I talk about here, with a particular focus on the centre-right aspects of my argument. Sadly, the whole thing was hilariously far from what I was told. I suppose in retrospect, I should have known better and I won’t be doing a GB News slot like that again in future, having had last night’s experience.

Rees-Mogg’s show began at 8 pm sharp with me beside him, to his right. He read some headlines, including some guff about how great Brexit has been that was delusional. After an ad break, he interviewed a farmer down the line, someone joining from his home. I think Rees-Mogg assumed the farmer would a be a pro-Brexit voice; it turned out the farmer hated Brexit and wasn’t shy in saying so. Rees-Mogg attempted to shout the man down - the presenter’s point seeming to be that he knew more about farming than this man who actually is a farmer - which I suppose I should have seen as a harbinger of things to come.

Rees-Mogg was clearly unsettled by this encounter and turned to me in an irritated mood. My “debate” with Rees-Mogg on Brexit then began.

As soon as I started to make a centre-right flavoured anti-Brexit argument, Rees-Mogg went into panic mode. He began talking over me, essentially trying to shut me up, not letting me speak. I stuck with it, the thought in my mind being, he couldn’t keep this up for 15 minutes. He brought up all of the bullshit about how we couldn’t have helped Ukraine if we’d been in the EU, and I swatted this away, again, thinking I just had to get through this early period, stay with him, and we’d get to the actual substance of the debate.

Instead, he turned toward the camera after about three minutes and closed down the interview. You could make the argument that the two of us talking over each other for three minutes made for terrible television, and I couldn’t agree more, but it’s also worth pointing out that this was entirely the fault of the host, someone who valued stopping his guest making rarely heard anti-Brexit points over having his own show be watchable.

What the whole experience taught me was how empty Brexitism has become. I mean, I knew it in the abstract, of course, but being confronted with one of its high priests and finding out how vapid the whole thing is, face to face, was an experience. They really have nothing at all now. They have to fall back on things like the idea that we wouldn’t have had a foreign policy if we’d stayed in the EU. They have to do this because there are no substantive arguments left for why leaving the EU was not a terrible thing after all.

I would like to challenge Jacob Rees-Mogg to a proper debate on Brexit, one in which each side is able to make their points clearly, and neither of us are able to shut the whole thing down after three minutes. I do this knowing it will never happen, but I’d like to lay down the gauntlet anyhow. For there are no pro-Brexit talking points left that have any substance to them and I suppose, at least I can take away finding that out as last night’s one positive feature.

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed already, please do so, and I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.