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The truth is that most Labour and Conservative MPs want the same Brexit - with the UK in a permanent customs union. But neither side wants to say so and thereby lose most of their voters.
It's almost impossible for the two parties to make a deal. If they did I cannot see it passing the House of Commons.
In the very unlikely case that it did pass the UK would leave the EU, stay in a customs union and forego the power to make trade freely with the world, but the rest of our relationship with the EU would still take years to work out. It will in any event.
I ask myself if this Brexit - with the UK bound into a customs union - is better than no Brexit. I am not well informed enough to be sure but I tend to think I'd prefer staying in and making trouble till they let us leave with a better deal - or leaving with no deal and taking our chance on what follows.
But staying in would need another referendum, which Leave would probably win again.
And if Remain won it Leave would not go away any more than Remainers did after they lost the 2016 referendum. And they would be right - they would have witnessed the democratic decision of the people ignored.
If no deal can be made with Labour the Prime Minister's Plan B is for the House of Commons to hold a series of votes to decide which possible option has most support. That would include the Norway option, which I could live with at least for a while, but a permanent customs union almost passed last time. So we return to that.
Except we don't because this time the Labour Party will refuse to co-operate with such votes.
David Cameron, if you remember, called the referendum to put an end to the fighting over the EU for good. I thought his lasting achievement would be cementing our membership of the EU forever or rather until it collapsed from the weight of its internal contradictions.
Any way you look at it the Brexit fight has many years left in it.
Something has to go and that something is clearly Theresa May. But who should replace her?
Obviously not Amber Rudd who would be another Theresa May, only prettier and of a higher social class. Obviously not anyone who campaigned for Remain.
I say this not because I am in favour of Brexit but because only a Brexiteer can hope to make the country believe in Brexit and since the Tories have to implement Brexit or die they have to do so with conviction. They are now the Brexit party avant la lettre.
Not even Michael Gove, who is at least as eloquent as Boris, will probably do because he has reluctantly signed up to Theresa May's deal.
Dominic Raab might do but the best hope for the Tories now, and it is a slim hope, is Boris Johnson. I am reminded of WH Auden in 1940, safe from bombs in the USA, saying that "the old bastard" Churchill was what we needed now.
It's almost impossible for the two parties to make a deal. If they did I cannot see it passing the House of Commons.
In the very unlikely case that it did pass the UK would leave the EU, stay in a customs union and forego the power to make trade freely with the world, but the rest of our relationship with the EU would still take years to work out. It will in any event.
I ask myself if this Brexit - with the UK bound into a customs union - is better than no Brexit. I am not well informed enough to be sure but I tend to think I'd prefer staying in and making trouble till they let us leave with a better deal - or leaving with no deal and taking our chance on what follows.
But staying in would need another referendum, which Leave would probably win again.
And if Remain won it Leave would not go away any more than Remainers did after they lost the 2016 referendum. And they would be right - they would have witnessed the democratic decision of the people ignored.
If no deal can be made with Labour the Prime Minister's Plan B is for the House of Commons to hold a series of votes to decide which possible option has most support. That would include the Norway option, which I could live with at least for a while, but a permanent customs union almost passed last time. So we return to that.
Except we don't because this time the Labour Party will refuse to co-operate with such votes.
David Cameron, if you remember, called the referendum to put an end to the fighting over the EU for good. I thought his lasting achievement would be cementing our membership of the EU forever or rather until it collapsed from the weight of its internal contradictions.
Any way you look at it the Brexit fight has many years left in it.
Something has to go and that something is clearly Theresa May. But who should replace her?
Obviously not Amber Rudd who would be another Theresa May, only prettier and of a higher social class. Obviously not anyone who campaigned for Remain.
I say this not because I am in favour of Brexit but because only a Brexiteer can hope to make the country believe in Brexit and since the Tories have to implement Brexit or die they have to do so with conviction. They are now the Brexit party avant la lettre.
Not even Michael Gove, who is at least as eloquent as Boris, will probably do because he has reluctantly signed up to Theresa May's deal.
Dominic Raab might do but the best hope for the Tories now, and it is a slim hope, is Boris Johnson. I am reminded of WH Auden in 1940, safe from bombs in the USA, saying that "the old bastard" Churchill was what we needed now.
@Paul
ReplyDelete"David Cameron, if you remember, called the referendum to put an end to the fighting over the EU for good."
I have never met Mr Cameron and discussed his reasons for calling the referendum. But my understanding is that he called it as a knee jerk reaction to the then popularity of UKIP and his fear of losing seats to them.
David Cameron, the worst PM in my 66 year long lifetime.
His actions in power almost saw the end of one union and split the country and caused a constitutional crisis over another.
And of course, his cowardly resignation and failure to carry out the result of the referendum have resulted in Mrs May and the current farago.
An old Etonian plonker of the first order ;).
He almost destroyed the Union and has created a disastrous precedent. This is unforgivable. I am not sure we can refuse the Scots another referendum easily. I am pleased we had a referendum and had he not promised one he would not have won in 2015 - to his astonishment - but it is absolutely unforgivable that he refused to let the civil servants make plans for Brexit.
ReplyDeleteHe promised to stay and implement Brexit and then resigned saying 'why should I do the heavy s-t?"
ReplyDeleteSome good men went to Eton including Pitt the Elder and Salisbury.
ReplyDeleteDo you know the Etonian poet, Praed?
In Parliament I fill my seat,
With many other noodles;
And lay my head in Jermyn Street,
And sip my hock at Boodles.
But often, when the cares of life
Have set my temples aching,
When visions haunt me of a wife,
When duns await my waking ...
I wish that I could run away
From House, and Court, and Levee,
Where bearded men appear today
Just Eton boys, grown heavy;
That I could bask in childhood’s sun,
And dance o’er childhood’s roses,
And find huge wealth in one pound one,
Vast wit in broken noses;
And play Sir Giles at Datchet Lane,
And call the milk-maids Houris;
That I could be a boy again,
A happy boy, at Drury’s.
Praed - recognisable sentiments that bring to mind Charles Foster Kanes last words:
ReplyDelete"Rosebud"
Here is an link to an informative article about Eton old boys:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/etons-old-boy-network-518455.html
I particularly enjoyed the joke below:
"The 19 former prime ministers produced by Eton include Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, Gladstone, Sir Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Sir Alex Douglas-Home, not to mention countless ministers, top civil servants and diplomats. The apotheosis appears to have come during the Macmillan/Home years when, according to Nick Fraser, author of The Importance of Being Eton (published by Short Books next year), the joke was that a sign could be hung on the gates saying "Cabinet Makers to Her Majesty the Queen"."
The 19 former prime ministers produced by Eton include Robert Walpole, William Pitt the Elder, Gladstone, Sir Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Sir Alex Douglas-Home, not to mention countless ministers, top civil servants and diplomats. The apotheosis appears to have come during the Macmillan/Home years when, according to Nick Fraser, author of The Importance of Being Eton (published by Short Books next year), the joke was that a sign could be hung on the gates saying "Cabinet Makers to Her Majesty the Queen"
Macmillan said, "there were three Etonians in Mr Attlee's cabinet and six in mine. Everything's twice as good under the Conservatives." That remark was typical of him but not actually very funny. He also complained that there were more Estonians than Etonians in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet - which was funny though snobbish - but in fact it wasn't true. There were always several in her cabinet.
ReplyDeleteBetween Salisbury and Balfour who went to Eton and the Chamberlain brothers who went to Rugby and Baldwin and Churchill who went to Harrow, the Tories were led for ten years by Bonar Law who went to school in Canada and then to Glasgow High School which he left aged 16. He spoke with a Scottish accent with a Canadian twang.
ReplyDelete