Here we go …
Former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has a lot to answer for and will go down in history for it.
No doubt if he could have the chance to re-run the day he thought of instigating the 2016 EU Referendum – and indeed every party whip, and every MP in the House of Commons at the time of the vote that sanctioned holding it could do likewise – he and they would do things differently.
But they didn’t – and they won’t (get the chance, I mean).
The genie is out of the bottle and will never go back in.
Never mind the fact we are where we are … the lunatics on both sides of the Brexit argument feel free to run amok and the rest of us can do nothing about it.
Today I alighted upon the website of the Remain-supporting UK newspaper The Independent, which has been running a campaign demanding what is called ‘A Final Say’ (alternatively ‘A People’s Vote’) upon the deal – any deal – that Mrs May and her hapless Tory government manages to cobble together and bring back to the British electorate in the style of Neville Chamberlain after his 1938 Munich summit with Adolf Hitler claiming that it is the best deal that can be done.
Or possibly that should be ‘what Mrs May is going claim is the only deal that can be done in the time available that avoids the UK suffering a falling-off-a-cliff edge “no deal” …’
Said Indie campaign has been running for over six months now, claims to have nearly a million signatures supporting it, and was instrumental in organising the recent ‘Final Say’ march through London which attracted 700,000 people or thereabouts.
Anyway.
On said website I was immediately confronted with a ‘front-and-centre’ featured article penned by arch-Final Sayer ‘businesswoman’ Gina Miller – see here – THE INDEPENDENT
To my mind it neatly exposes (with bells on) not only the naked dishonesty of the extreme proponents on both sides of the Brexit debate – i.e. hardcore Brexiteers and Remainers – but also the real nub of the problem, viz. the Referendum Monster that bedevils the very notion and principle of Western democracy.
[Bear with me – I’m trying to stay impartial on the key issue of Brexit and concentrate instead purely upon the complex implications of referenda, both as a concept and a method of deciding how a nation should be government and run.]
The conceit and fallacy that Gina Miller drips with in her one-eyed polemic is that – being someone who refuses to accept the result of the EU Referendum – she is determined to thwart it because she (representing the UK’s Establishment) knows better than those thick idiots who didn’t understand what they were voting for, or its implications, when they voted ‘the wrong way’ in 2016.
Never mind the infinite complexities of what any such second Referendum – most particularly what it would present to the electorate – e.g. a multi-choice set of options (and what would they be?) or instead a binary one upon Mrs May’s eventual deal that would potentially leave a Cheddar Gorge-sized gap of nothingness if it was rejected, let me put it this way:
If – forgetting all of the above – there was to occur a sudden blinding flash of light that left someone with supreme authority in the matter (say, for example, me) appearing tomorrow on the BBC One O’Clock News bulletin and decreeing thus:
“Okay, I’ll tell you what: if on Wednesday 19th December 2018, between the hours of 0800 and 1200, at least two million people crawl the length of The Mall on their hands and knees stark naked, each with a dildo stuffed up their back passage and also sporting both standard-issue giant plastic Mickey Mouse ears and the words “I’m a twat” painted in indelible red paint across their backs – then the 2016 EU Referendum result will be struck from the record and the UK will stay in the EU forever …”
… then I’m sure that by 4.00pm tomorrow Ms Miller and her ilk would be out there campaigning tirelessly to organise said rally event.
And by 6.00pm the EU would have allocated at least 500 million euros from some secret slush-fund bank account (to which the UK has contributed its required share) towards it.
My purpose here is not to ridicule Mrs Miller or indeed anyone in the Remainer camp unnecessarily.
Rather it is to comment that no doubt some determined members of the UK Establishment have consulted Parliamentary lawyers, constitutional analysts, politicians of all persuasions and probably actuaries, PR gurus [add a list relevant experts ad infinitum …] and come to the conclusion that the best (‘most all-round acceptable’) way of kyboshing the effect of the 2016 UK Referendum is to have another one … and then hope to God that, by the date it takes place, the electorate – having either come to its senses and/or been browbeaten sufficiently well by the full might of The Establishment’s forces – would this time vote ‘the right way’.
My sole point today is “Supposing they didn’t …?”
