This week in Brexitland, November 23, 2023
We are in the period of “Middle Brexit”, a sort of national purgatory. How do we escape it?
“The French 90-day visa should never have existed,” moaned the Daily Telegraph this week. And they dare to call Remainers “Remoaners”. Like most of the right of centre press that backed Brexit (and back it still, surely against common sense), they moan about the effects of the Brexit they wanted, like it was something imposed upon Britain instead of something we foolish chose to do of our own volition.
I picked this headline out because it is highly indicative of this current phase of Brexit, something I call “Middle Brexit”. This is because Brexit as a project is in the middle of its lifespan, flabby around the waist and heavily questioning its life choices as well as its youthful recklessness. No one other than the most devoted Brexiter and/or Tory (and the latter only because of the Conservative Party’s relationship with Brexit) talks about Brexit as having been a good idea any longer, much less something that will “come good” and improve the lot of the nation at some point. The polling is pretty definitive in terms of people seeing it as having been a bad idea.
And yet. Brexit carries with it a lot of baggage. What people are scared of is re-opening such a contentious question. The whole thing is very charmingly British when you think about it: yes, Brexit was a bad idea, but it’s done now, so let’s make the best of it. Chin up, lads and lasses, we’ll get through it all somehow.
That’s where Middle Brexit enters the picture. We are in a period, who knows how long, where more and more people realise Brexit was a catastrophic historical error and yet there is no genuine political movement to undo that mistake. We float along, waiting for the penny to drop. It might take a couple of years. It might take a decade. It might take two decades.
How will we know when Middle Brexit is coming to a close? What will be the signs?
The biggest signifier that we are entering late period Brexit will be when there is a significant anti-Brexit movement on the centre-right and within the Conservative party itself. At the moment, if you are addressing a room full of Tories, you can be sure they will fall into one of two categories: 1). decidedly pro-Brexit 2). not keen on Brexit but not keen to talk in the negative about it either. Once there is a genuine, out in the open split on this within Tory circles again, that will be a good sign that Brexit is breaking apart in a practical sense.
Another sign will be when the political press finally get it. They are unusually slow to pick up on political trends, so when they do, you know something has changed. We’ll hear a lot more about the possibilities of portions of Brexit being reversed - about the actual mechanics of it, both practical and political. The whole manner and tone used by the political press to discuss Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe will be completely different, once we get to the end of Middle Brexit.
Again, how this takes to play out is anyone’s guess. There are reasons to feel hopeful about it and unfortunately, reasons to feel pessimistic. But if I had to guess, I believe the transition from Middle Brexit to late period Brexit will happen sooner than most people watching British politics believe. How prime minister Keir Starmer handles that will be interesting to watch over the latter half of the 2020s.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed already, please do so. And I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.
Who led Brexit?: Lying incompetent populists, xenophobes and vulture capitalists and De Peffel Johnson was at the heart of it. He penned hundreds of lies and distortions about the mad and anti British EEC while Telegraph correspondent in Brussels, which were re-published down the food chain through Mail, Express, Star, NOTW and Sun. In total 6000 lies on the EEC/EU have been collected and debunked. Without those and with an informed public, there would have been no clambering to leave the EU, not a chance.
It is just not good enough that the catastrophic De Peffel is found out and objectively ruined after he's done the wrecking in the Leave campaign and in Number 10. We need checks, balances and preventative measures in place to stop such incompetence which he mixed with an easy trashing of the country with the EU Trade agreement, while displaying the power grabbing abilities of a developing dictator. We need a codified written constitution to stand in the way of the next populist tin pot world king.
Parliament needs to stand on it's own feet to run more of the show, instead of being used as rubber stamp for our incompetent executive, who under Johnson just wished to self aggrandise and to surround himself with chancer supporters who couldn't run a Christmas club, let a lone a country. The Trade Agreements that have become the meat and drink of brexit have been taken away from debate in Parliament, because that would have shown them up as the hollow products of charlatans that they were. So much for Taking Back Control.
Also we need PR voting, which in it's more proportional versions would never have allowed De Peffel his overall majority based on 43% of the vote. Brexit would never have happened and possibly not the Iraq War.
Nick, you frame the whole thing so well. Politicians refuse to talk about Brexit because that means talking about a catastrophic mistake they are responsible for. It means admitting they didn’t know anything about the country, the EU, how to organise a responsible vote, safeguard the nation, and look after our rights, our economy, and massively delicate agreements like the GFA. It means admitting they have absolutely no business being a politician and need to eff off and get another job.