Mamma Mia! Here we go again (the Brexit version)
Even by the ever-plunging standards of current affairs/politics in the 21st Century, my overnight browsing of the main UK newspaper websites made for sobering reading.
What with Mrs May’s attempt to sell her Chequers Agreement version of Brexit in Northern Ireland going off at half-cock, EU negotiator Michel Barnier savaging the same in his first public reaction and numerous reports of vicious in-fighting amongst the various Remain and Leave supporting Tory MPs and continuing disarray within Labour’s ranks – never mind the widespread predictions of future disaster, plague and pestilence from businessmen, think-tanks and pundits of all persuasions, irrespective of what deal (if any) transpires – one could be forgiven for just turning one’s head to the wall and switching the lights out.
The only thing that all sides seem to agree upon is that – with but weeks left to make significant progress in negotiating the UK’s departure deal and just seven months until Brexit officially happens – where we’ve currently reached (or possibly not reached, if you get my drift) is about as far from ideal as it is possible to imagine.
I’m like a stuck record on this point – and hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course – but David Cameron has much to answer for in ever setting up an EU Referendum, albeit the entire British political establishment is also deeply complicit and culpable, having had the arrogant stupidity to go along with it because not a man (or woman) jack of them ever seriously addressed the possibility that the Referendum result would ‘go the wrong way’.
Reflecting upon this generally I suddenly began considering what might have happened had the 2016 Referendum result been to Remain.
Firstly, the potentially positive version.
The bulk of losing Leavers would have accepted the result of the democratic vote. A small proportion might have continued to complain about the unfairness of the contest and/or the unequal playing field in terms of resources between the two sides of the argument.
Either way, there’s no doubt that the victorious Remainers would have wasted no opportunity to refer to the outcome and lecture the losers about the unworthiness (never mind futility) of continuing to harp on ad nauseam about the iniquities, corruption and lack of democratic accountability of the EU super-state (that is, if anyone was ever minded to do this at any point in the future).
[I’m leaving aside the thorny issue of just what theoretical degree of EU corruption and/or state-controlled, undemocratic force-feeding of rules, laws and edicts to its subjects that it would take for the Remainers to accept – grudgingly or otherwise – that the UK might ever be better off out of the EU than in. I state that I’m leaving it aside merely because I strongly suspect that the answer is “None”.]
Secondly, the alternative, i.e. a negative version of what might have happened if Remain had prevailed at the 2016 Referendum.
The Leavers, bad losers of course, would have continued both belly-aching about the lack of level playing field between the respective campaigns and pointing out every example of ridiculous “the world’s gone mad” latest EU regulations regarding the shape of bananas and/or cauliflowers and then the inevitable and ever-growing bureaucracy, corruption and waste of taxpayers’ money of the unaccountable super-state juggernaut.
At the next UK General Election there might well then have been a huge rise in the number of Leave-supporting votes, even possibly a resurgence of UKIP and/or some alliance grouping of parties in favour of Leave … all this on the back of a general reaction against, and revulsion towards, the political establishment which might, just conceivably, even have resulted in a change of Government and a Leave coalition coming to power.
What then?
It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?
I began my overnight stint at the computer broadly of the view that things couldn’t get any worse. As I sign off today I’m not so sure …
