The long shadow of Brexit

I have more of a nuanced view of Brexit than most on the right. Ever since, the insurgent right has been preoccupied with the idea that Brexit was sabotaged by the deep state etc, but it it was a rare instance of the democratic process doing what it's supposed to do.

While the leave camp won the referendum, it won by a tiny margin. That mandate was to leave the treaties of the EU. It was not a carte blanche to sever all formal relations with the EU and embark upon a radical libertarian agenda. That required a mandate of its own.

While Theresa May uttered the words "Brexit means Brexit", never was there a more meaningless phrase in the history of British politics. So long as Britain ceased to be a signatory to the EU treaties, everything else was debatable.

Following the vote, a very small minority of MPs, mostly Thatcherite Tories, insisted Brexit meant abolishing all tariffs, and deleting all regulations of EU origin regardless of their actual function - be it building safety regulations or animal disease prevention. Nobody sane with a half decent grasp of the issues thought this was a good idea. This was Tory ideologues at their very worst.

Moreover, when it became apparent that Northern Ireland would be a problem (something they utterly failed to anticipate because they never really understood how EU borders work), they simply denied it was a problem at all, while taking Brexit friendly think tanks to come up with their own half-baked models of how the system should function, none of which could or would be accepted by Brussels.

As such, the model that Brexiteers were pushing for had the potential to bring everything to a standstill, wrecking strategic British industries, while potentially wrecking the Northern Ireland peace process. There is no good reason why the majority of MPs should have simply rolled over and allowed that to happen.

Most MPs, even at their worst, accepted that Britain had to leave the EU, and grudging voted in favour of the enabling legislation. They knew there would be hell to pay if the vote was defied outright. Everything else was about the shape of the future relationship, in which Brexiteers had no exclusive right to define.

That debate, though, was parliament at its all time worst. I lost count of the number of times MPs on all side of the house called for membership of the customs union without having a functioning definition of what the customs union is. Then, when it came to the indicative votes, I watched in dismay as parliament failed to give positive ascent to any of the options, simply because both sides were playing double or quits. Brexiteers essentially said our Brexit or no Brexit, which galvanised the rest of the house to oppose them on principle.

With neither side capable of arriving at a viable informed compromise, the Brexit we got was the only remaining option short of abandoning the entire enterprise, which would no doubt have triggered a serious constitutional crisis. While you'll get no argument from me that the withdrawal agreement was a dog's dinner, it went the only way it could have gone after all the alternatives were rejected. though I have to hand it to David Frost for finding the one way of making a bad deal worse - by turning the emergency backstop into a permanent front stop.

This was ultimately the result of Tory arrogance and ignorance, and the fact they did nothing with Brexit is largely down to their own refusal to craft a plan and a post-Brexit vision that wasn't based on a Thatcherite wet dream. There is nobody I blame more for the way Brexit turned out than the Brexiteers themselves.

It is precisely all of that which informs my less than upbeat assessment of Reform. We have more or less the same people coming back for a second bite of the cherry, with only a vague outline of what they want to do, having given no real thought to second order consequences - especially regarding ECHR withdrawal, and looking to embark on a fool's errand without a popular mandate. It is not even assured they'll have a working majority to do it with when so many of their candidates will be unvetted, ideologically indifferent novices.

It is for this reason I've been so monotonous in calling for policies and a plan, if only so that those who would embark upon such a transformation actually anticipate the ambushes this time. This is the benchmark by which I measure their seriousness - where again I find them to be woefully naïve and profoundly unserious, while displaying that exact same galactic arrogance. While I am broadly sympathetic to the agenda, it has to be done right or not at all. If the insurgent right comes back for a second crack of the whip, and screws it up for all the same reasons as last time, the right will be ousted in two years flat, and will never get near power again.