Will Continuity Remain ever give up on trying to stop Brexit?

One of UKIP’s sensible persons (that narrows it down) is Patrick O’Flynn. Patrick was a real loss to journalism when he abandoned Fleet Street for the lure of Brussels and life as an MEP. In a parallel universe he is now a Conservative MP and a rising minister implementing Brexit. Alas, he is stuck for now, only for now, within the tattered remnants of the Faragist movement which was one of the most successful forces in modern British history. It forced the referendum on the squabbling Tories by terrifying them. Now UKIP’s work is mostly done, what with Brexit happening.

Or is it?

The reason I ask that question is that no matter how close Brexit in March 2019 gets, with  the clock ticking on Article 50, Continuity Remain refuses to give up on stopping Brexit. Oh, of course they always preface their remarks on this subject with a declaration that they accept the result of the referendum, before going on to explain how it might be overturned or watered down to such an extent that Brexit is so soft we might as well make Jean Claude Juncker Prime Minister of the UK for life. All this adds fuels confusion among the EU 27, where some still seem to think the UK might change its mind. This is a Nick Clegg fantasy, via Tony Blair and the tormented imaginings of assorted other Remain grandees offended that their worldview has just been flushed down the toilet of history by 52% of the British voters.

In that Remainery vein, the cover of the esteemed New Statesman magazine this week promotes its account of “The plot to stop Brexit.” An unlikely alliance is forming the resistance, it says. A red bus, emblazoned with promises of largesse for the NHS, teeters atop the white cliffs of Dover, a reference to the final scene of the 1960s cinema classic the Italian Job and, I suppose, Vera Lynn and the War. The most determined pro-EU ultra-remainers are always banging on about the Second World War. Get over it. Germany is peaceful and our friend. We are leaving the EU, not Europe, and remain a member of Nato and the main power in Europe on security and intelligence.

Anyway, as Patrick O’Flynn put it today in reference to that New Statesman cover:

“Tomorrow’s New Statesman leads on the plot to block Brexit – while this nonsense is still being seriously tried there is no possibility of any form of reconciliation. Remain ultras are pushing politics to breaking point.”

He’s right. Those moderate Brexiteers who hoped in vain for an alliance between moderate remainers (who accept the result) and moderate leavers (who accept there should be compromises, and want some form of national reconciliation) see this stuff and conclude that they are wasting their time. Pick your side for the great national punch-up which will get more intense next year if things carry on like this.

Fine, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. But what’s the point?

One of my favourite journalists greeted me recently at Westminster in the following fashion, only half in jest. “Look at the Jacobites! They didn’t give up! They fought on for decades! We’re like the Jacobites.”

While it is true that the Jacobites were remarkably persistent in their efforts to ensure the restoration to the throne of a succession of pro-Rome, anti-Protestant figures, to ensure Britain sat once again within the continental system, they did lose, quite badly, in the end. From 1688 they battled away, but in 1745 at Culloden defeat came and Bonnie Prince Charlie fled. For his troops, it all came to a brutal end amid appalling slaughter.

The Jacobite movement and its six decades of struggle is a questionable role model to pick, I would have thought.  Instead, in Brexit Britain can’t we all just get along? No, you’re right. Of course we can’t.