Are we asking too much of brexit? | thearticle

As we wait with un-bated breath for the return of the media circus on College Green opposite the Houses of Parliament, each hour seems to bring a new version of Brexit for our approval. The

liberal aristocrat and Cambridge professor, David Runciman, writes wearily in the London Review of Books that there is no point in fighting Brexit because it is the British political system

that has failed the politicians and the intelligentsia. It is better, he writes, to “recognise that we have exhausted our options than to believe that there is a version of our present

politics that allows our preferred option to prevail. Better, in other words, a miserable compromise and then get on with reforming the democracy we have, so that the next compromise is a

better one.” The nation’s top Labour watcher, the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, gravely informs the readers of the Times that Jeremy Corbyn also accepts Brexit must happen. This conforms to

his 40 years of hostility to the EEC, EC and now EU. Once we are out of Europe – while Professor Viscount Runciman gets on with a new constitution – Mr Corbyn will build socialism in a

country unchecked by boring EU rules about competition and frontiers open to trade. Meanwhile, in the Mail on Sunday, the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, lets us know that Brexit means

Singapore. Once free of the EU Treaty, Britain can be Singapore on the Thames. The founding genius of Singapore was Lee Kuan Yew. At Cambridge, Lee was secretary of the Cambridge Fabian

Society. If you want to see Fabianism on earth go to Singapore, which has twice the level of industrial manufacturing output in its GDP as Britain, where the trade unions run the taxi

service, where the media conform to the dream of every British prime minister, and where what is not forbidden is compulsory. The other tenors of Brexit and non-Brexit are quieter in their

vision. The poor prime minister who, though never a Brexiteer, couldn’t find a single positive word to say about Europe during her tenure as an MP (and certainly not once she became Home

Secretary) and was charged by David Cameron to make Britain as far as possible Europäerfrei, is stuck chanting her mantra that her deal is better than a no deal. It is a slick inversion of

her slogan of early Brexit, that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal.’ > _“The people said No. But to what – European workers in Britain? > Jean-Claude Juncker? Lavishly expensed MEPs? 

No-one seems quite > clear which part of the Europe they don’t want.”_ For at least 117 Conservative MP, Brexit is the moment to ditch their second woman party leader and prime minister.

They will have been WhatApping like crazy over the holidays, but for the first time since the vote in June 2016, there has been relative radio silence, and the Sunday papers have not had

their breathless excited briefings from Tory MPs on what Brexit means and how it will help the Tory Party change Britain. The anti-Brexiters pin all their hopes on a second referendum. For

those who do not relish the proposed amputation from Europe, this seems the best option. But so far there are only about 50-60 Labour MPs and not yet a dozen Tory MPs opting for a new vote.

The first out of the traps on a new vote were the Lib Dems, and to be fair the Lib Dems have always seen a referendum as the answer to any British political question. But no one, so far, has

sketched out what happens after a vote, presumably very narrow, to stay in. Still less is there an answer to the question of what to do if a 2019 referendum confirms the decision of 2016.

The Brexit vote in June 2016 asked a question but did not deliver an answer. The people said No. But to what – European workers in Britain? Jean-Claude Juncker? Lavishly expensed MEPs?

No-one seems quite clear which part of the Europe they don’t want. Business other than an owner of a chain of vulgar pubs – the return of the “Beerage” as a force in English politics – is

silent, hiding under the duvet since July 2016 rather than take sides in the Brexit debate. The CBI, major firms and industrial federations all did as they were told by Whitehall and paraded

their enthusiasm for Mrs May’s Deal only to find she did not have the enthusiasm to risk putting it to a vote in December. They were made to look foolish and it seems the millions the CBI

and the City have spent on consultants and LLPs since 2016 has been a waste of money. Economic Britain has not had any influence on either Mrs May’s approach to talking to Brussels, nor on

the contents of the Withdrawal Agreement and linked Political Declaration. So Brexit will soon be upon us. No-one can work out what it means. Everyone has his or her own idea of Brexit.

No-one persuades anyone else. It is surely the most surreal politics ever in the history of Britain?