By a kind of osmosis, a sinister new phrase has insinuated itself into public discourse on Brexit. Amid the myriad weasel words used by politicians and commentators to obfuscate the realities of the Brexit debate – “hard”, “soft”, “backstop”, “extension” – over the past eight months a new concept has been intruded into the discussion that was previously unthought-of, because unthinkable.
MPs and the public are increasingly being urged to accept whatever gross travesty of Brexit is currently being peddled, under the threat that the alternative is “no Brexit at all”. How can that possibly be? How could a course of action mandated by 17.4 million voters in the largest democratic exercise in British history fail to be implemented? Why would Brexit not happen? Who has the authority to prevent it?
The originator of this phrase was the very person with the immediate responsibility to deliver Brexit, as instructed by the 2016 referendum: Theresa May, the Prime Minister. She first used the phrase “or no Brexit at all” last July; she repeated it in November and again in January. She was at it again today in her speech delivered in Grimsby. On the lips of the individual whose duty it is to implement a departure from the European Union in the unequivocal manner mandated by the 2016 referendum, such a threat is outrageous. It betrays a monstrous contempt for the electorate and the democratic process.
Predictably, the term has been taken up across the Remainer establishment and is now unselfconsciously, even blithely, parroted by the enemies of Brexit. To anyone with respect for the formally expressed wishes of the electorate the notion is anathema. Have those who use the term paused to consider its significance? How can an outcome that has been so clearly voted for by the electorate fail to be implemented?
If Brexit were suppressed this nation would no longer be a parliamentary democracy. What confidence would anyone have that a political party gaining an overall majority at a general election would be allowed to assume government? If, on the Brexit analogy, the new party supported by Nigel Farage were to win an election, would the elites obstruct it from taking office? We are in uncharted and very dark waters here.
The sense of entitlement of the liberal globalist establishment is so strong, having flourished unchallenged for so long, the Entitled Ones lack the imagination to contemplate a scenario in which they are no longer in charge. On the continent, almost every outing to the ballot box sees the legacy parties progressively dislodged from power. Guy Verhofstadt, the feral attack dog of the Brussels oligarchy, is warning in increasingly hysterical terms of impending disaster for the old order at the EU elections in May.
In Britain it is surely only a matter of time before the legacy parties implode electorally and a radically reformist administration takes office. Then it will be time to remodel Parliament, to end the ability of MPs to renege shamelessly on manifesto commitments and to indulge their personal prejudices in defiance of the electorate. There will have to be a binding new accountability and a reappraisal of the party system as a vehicle of representation. Over the past decade the credibility of parliamentary government has evaporated in two stages.
The first stage was the MPs’ expenses scandal which opened the eyes of an over-deferential public to the kind of scoundrels that were representing them. From that moment, respect for politicians, with a few rare exceptions, ended. That disillusionment has proved permanent. Still, however, the Westminster charade was tolerated, out of vestigial respect for the institutions of government. For many Britons, the Brexit debacle has ended that delusion.
Much of the public now has neither respect for nor confidence in Parliament or parliamentarians. To see MPs openly debating how best to derail a referendum result, as if the electorate were not watching and listening, with the insulting implication that it doesn’t matter if they are, is to witness a political system committing hara-kiri. When the leader of the government voices the threat “Or no Brexit at all”, taken up by the pack of the entitled at her heels, the provocation is intense.
To treat the electorate as naughty children, threatening them with the cancellation of a promised treat, betrays the infatuated extent to which the sense of entitlement of the political class has blinded it to reality. “There is no majority for no deal Brexit,” politicians assert, meaning there is no majority in the House of Commons. What about the rest of the country? “Parliament is taking control…” That worked well in 1642.
Behind all the pseudo-technicalities, the buzzwords and backstops, the simple reality is that 500 MPs in thrall to a foreign power based in Brussels and arrogantly confident that they know better than the public, are attempting to demolish the outcome mandated by 17.4 million British voters. Even making the attempt, regardless of whether or not it succeeds, exhibits total contempt for the democratic process.
If MPs have the slightest instinct of self-preservation – not only of their own careers but of the system on which they have fattened – they will again vote down Theresa May’s insulting travesty of Brexit, then prepare vigorously for exit from the European Union on WTO terms. There is no deal to be had in Brussels, there is no goodwill on the part of the EU.
It is time for the Remainer fanatics to surrender. If they do not, but extend Article 50 instead, they will set in motion a chain of consequences which future historians will chronicle as a revolutionary transformation of British governance. Every revolution has its fatal catch phrase: on this occasion, for “Let them eat cake” substitute “Or no Brexit at all.”
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.