A brief history of Brexit

PM Cameron called a referendum, on foot of two successes and an election promise made to placate a fringe element of his own party.

The ensuing campaign was on the Leave side the most mendacious and on the Remain side the most feeble I have ever seen. Subsequently, it emerged it had been substantially suborned by external money and influence

In the ensuing “leadership” change, Mrs May was “the last man standing” after a Mexican standoff/circular firing party saw the front runners knock each other out.

Deftly appointing leading Brexiteers to positions where they ought to have been responsible for delivering on their hapless promises, she absolved them of that responsibility and encouraged their feckless posturing by actually running the negotiations from within No10.

She reduced her negotiating time by signing Art50 before absolutely necessary and thereby starting the 2 year countdown to the most complex political reorganisation ever attempted.

In the middle of this tight schedule, Mrs May had a brainstorm while hillwalking and called an election she had strenuously asserted she wouldn’t and gave the world a lesson in how not to campaign.

In order to secure her tenure in No10, she did a hasty deal with the Devil… er, um, the DUP thereby demonstrating a lack of understanding of the Northern Irish/Irish political quagmire that has come back to haunt her.

She suggested and signed the “backstop” so as to try to move the EU on to post withdrawal relationships without understanding that she had placed a land mine at her back while at the same time facing an EU27 whose only common cause was a pressing need not to give the UK a nice deal.

While every promise and premise of this “advisory” referendum was eviscerated by the outcomes of the negotiations and the work of the 4th estate, the Brexiteers insisted that the “will of the people” was sacrosanct.

At the same time, they decried all legitimate efforts to properly explore the full legal landscape of the process.

As the road ran out and the tide turned, Mrs May resorted to unParliamentary manipulations including blackmailing the Commons with an implicit threat of a “by default” hard Brexit in order to force acceptance of a deal that looks nothing like that promised in the referendum.

When defeat seemed certain in December this culminated in an abrupt and improper pulling of a vote in mid debate which meant both Governmant and Parliament lost a quarter of the time remaining to secure a rational outcome.

Yet when Parliament responds by asserting its prerogatives the Brexiteers cry foul and say that democracy in the UK is being imperilled.

In this one point Mrs May is correct even though her reasoning is false. The threat to democracy does not come from the fringes. The threat to the Mother of Parliaments (& I do not believe it is significant) has come about from Mr Blair’s rotten war, Mr Brown’s imprudent crisis, Mr Cameron’s useless austerity and Mrs May’s utter failure of leadership substituted by administrative diligence. Shall I list the numerous scandals that have embellished these catastrophes?

Two decades of feckless hypocrisy and incompetence across the whole political spectrum are what have damaged the compact between governed and governors and it is small wonder the people are sick of it.

The world is changing more rapidly than a bureaucratic alliance of nations can respond to, especially given that the alliance is foundering internally.

This archipelago needs to have a constitutional debate about its own unresolved tensions and about the meaning and nature of free speech in the Information Age.

So, I remain a “Leaver” but do not insist that the UK should harm itself with this rotten version of it.

Yvette Cooper said, in an elegant phrase, on the night of the referendum, that “the people have voted for a departure but NOT for a destination”.

Now that their Government’s best shot at a possible destination has come clearly into view, surely it is for them to decide what is best.

But if there is to be a second referendum then we all must be aware that the constitution of the UK will have been changed irrevocably by the people having, at last, asserted their sovereignty and competence over that of Parliament, Government and Monarch.