Post Mortem

They killed Brexit. It had a brief life, full of hope and optimism, but it was cut down and flushed into the sewer of history by the massed ranks of the establishment, doing what they could never seem to manage in ‘peacetime’. Unable to formulate successful domestic and foreign policy; unable to broker an amicable settlement between disparate classes; unable to navigate educate, understand or implement the simple desires of the electorate, they were nevertheless able to cobble together a hotch-potch of resistance to something they didn’t want. There is nothing positive in any of this.

Oh, how David Cameron’s inaccurate calculus will come to be despised but they will never make the same mistake again; referenda in EU region NW235, sub-section 6, department B1 (formerly known as the UK)  will henceforth be made illegal, that ban coming into EU-wide application with or without a majority vote. First, quell the Briton and the rest will fall into line. Not only have we been taken for fools, we have shown how easily we chose to adopt that mantle as the largely uncoordinated rabble we are. Simple fools, we wanted a simple enough dream, to leave the cage. But they allowed us briefly to imagine an open door only to then slam it shut in our faces.

Treason May (and treason is not too strong a word) has carefully expunged from political discourse any mention of no-deal (otherwise known as Brexit). The choices have gone from ‘no-deal is better than a bad deal’ to ‘it is my deal or remain’. The political sheep have swallowed it; even former Brexit advocates have actually fallen for Project Fear and just as our former glory as an empire is now derided as the root of all evil in the world, Brexit has become little more than the nasty ambition of ‘far-right’ zealots. The simple and harmless notion of leaving the EU has overnight become so toxic that even the always opportunistic Boris Johnson has vanished from the scene.

Liam Fox has already jumped aboard the May train, Boris will soon follow and we will know the jig is truly up when Jacob Rees-Mogg declares for the government and assists the Withdrawal Agreement over the finishing line. And what a finish it will be. It will be the end of the United Kingdom, which will have handed over all decision-making, all control and all legislature to the new empire of evil, the unaccountable European Union. The enemy. The island of Great Britain, far from being the cradle of democracy and freedom, will be a vassal state and Britons, very much, will be slaves to a foreign master.

It is a glum appraisal, I know, but I am not alone in making it. An opportunity lost, a people betrayed and for what? Ordinarily I am averse to conspiracy theories, preferring to deploy Occam’s Razor and accept that incompetence is a far more likely driver of human outcomes, but this beggars belief. The question was straightforward, the decision was made and all that needed to be done was to part on friendly terms; a genuinely simple split was always not only possible but desirable.

But from the start the establishment – as much as it could rarely agree on anything productive whatsoever – was against it. No effort was expended in seeking to see the positives as their face was already set against it. Little by little the gloss was rubbed away, the excitement dampened and the vision blurred. Day by day they wore down the few allies we had in positions of power. Bit by bit our sovereignty was ceded, no matter what fine words were blasted from makeshift pulpits up and down the land.

Sometimes, the simplest solution...

When it comes to politics, politicians and their disparate beliefs, sworn enemies on either side of the divide can never agree. Logical, useful policies are regularly defeated by the simple intransigence of opposition. Progress is impeded because these warring factions can never work together in the best interests of them all. But when it comes to the worst interests it seems collusion can be made. When it comes to denying democracy it seems a form of unity can be achieved. In trying to understand all of this I once again turn to the faithful, never-fail Occam’s Razor and what do I discover? Usually, complex plotting is beyond the wit of the supposed conspirators, but this time the simplest solution to the conundrum may just be conspiracy after all.