This week in Brexitland, February 29, 2024
How the Liz Truss trip to America demonstrates that the beginning of the end for Brexit has now begun
One of the more interesting things about Brexit - which, as I commented on last week, is mostly a dull subject - is the degree to which it has been shaped by Remainers. And not in the way any of the Brexiters think, either. It was Theresa May in late 2016, scared of being exposed as a continuity Remainer, who pledged to take us out of the single market and the customs union, as well as end freedom of movement. Her doing so was what made the hard Brexit we got inevitable. If a Brexiter like Michael Gove had become PM instead in 2016, we might have ended up with a negotiating strategy that was far more sensible, and possibly stayed in the single market at the end of it all. In other words, a Brexiter PM might have led to the sort of consensus that Brexit has visibly failed to gain.
Now we see the beginning of the end for Brexit in the machinations of another former Remainer, Liz Truss. She has been speaking at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in National Harbor, Maryland, both to the delegates on stage and to people like Steve Bannon in one on one interviews. The direction of travel for CPAC perfectly mirrors the decline of the American right, and arguably, the western right as a whole into a vacuous, vicious, conspiracy theory addled mess. CPAC was not that long ago on the cutting edge of relatively liberal conservatism in America, being all about freedom and enterprise. For instance, they were at one point co-sponsored by a gay rights group for fiscally conservative people called GOProud (which tellingly, no longer exists).
Over the last few years, the conference has dissolved into a mad, bad acid trip of Trump-coloured vomit, the very worst tendencies of the US right being displayed and often shaped there. Covid hoax theories, iterations of Great Replacement theory, guff about the “deep state” - anything batshit crazy that has emerged from the western political right over the last decade, at some point, someone has taken up another notch at CPAC.
Truss’ appearance there is logical in one sense. She is a completely busted flush in the UK, notoriously unpopular, mostly known for not outlasting a lettuce. Like many before her and surely many to come, she must have thought some version of, “I can go to America! No one will even know who I am there! The American market for kooky hard right crap is massive! I could make a goddamn fortune!” And so, she found herself being interviewed by Steve Bannon, who went for her mercilessly, railroading the former prime minister into a situation in which Bannon was calling Tommy Robinson a hero, all while Truss tried to stick to her weak script about how the deep state prematurely ended her premiership.
If you watched this interview, you were witnessing the beginning of the end of Brexit. For it was the greatest expression I’ve seen yet of the Brexit narrative failing to escape from the mire of the new right swamp and into a nationwide consensus. It showed how the Brexiters won the war but have definitively failed to win the peace, instead associating their precious project with the tendencies of an American right that has visibly lost its marbles. They have smothered Brexit in an ideology that is dying in front of us and will become loathed even by right-wingers in the near future - in fact, they will hate it even more than anyone else will as they come to grips with how much it is about to keep them out of power for what may turn out to be quite some time.
They are allowing Brexit to become passé and embarrassing, its association with Trump killing it, and through Trump, an association with a great deal of things that smell distinctly unBritish. In other words, the Brexiters are doing the rejoiners work for us. We just have to sit back and watch them dismantle Brexit themselves, brick by brick, one Steve Bannon interview at a time.
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To see how silly it will get............the one success of Brexit, in the eyes of the Brexiters, was our Vaccine roll out. But in the eyes of this batshit group Covid was a hoax.....where do they go from there ?
As the Tory & Republic Right becomes progressively more and more extreme on both sides of the pond, these extreme free market types are taking on more of the authoritarian anti migrant agenda of the fascist right. It's getting harder to differentiate them. Who would have thought that Bannon would have even heard of of the UK's repeated law breaking, corrupt and nasty little rabble rouser that is Tommy Robinson ( aka Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon ). This leader of skin head thugs has a poncey middle class , double barrelled name and is listed as being worth £2m , mainly from donations from the duped, with house held in the name of his partner. Again, he has that in common with Steve Bannon who was fingered for spending the "Build the wall" money on yachts, fancy watches and high living. They have that in common with Putin and his inner circle, all very predictable.
Of course, Truss didn't raise so much as a grimace when Bannon mentioned Yaxley Lennon as a hero? She knows what side her focaccia is olive oiled on and it's a bunch of right wing yanks who have barely heard of her, but have money to splurge on promoting their ideas the world over.
Yaxley-Lennon is the inheritor of the remains of the National Front that imploded and formed the British Movement, which also imploded and left the EDL. It's largely the same people and reminds me of leaving Grammar School in the 70's, to walk home through a National Front stronghold of east enders resettled in Debden, Essex on the Central Line. Sometimes having to dodge bricks thrown by skinheads, which were never dealt with. Are there any lower people that exist in this world? I doubt it.