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The European Union as a Sewer.

The Brexiters ran with the slogan “take back control”. It’s brilliant, utterly unfalsifiable, and optimistic. It appeals to a sense that ‘the people’ have had their independence taken away from them by faceless institutions, of which Brussels is the most distant, and the most distrusted. It’s also a carefully curated lie. Of what are we taking back control?

But the Brexiters are also right. The people have indeed had their freedoms taken away. The movement that eventually delivered Brexit, got off the ground with the smoking ban, which became law 2006. People had their freedom to enjoy a cigarette with their pint removed, and as a result of the accelerated pub closures this legislation brought about, the freedom to enjoy a pint in a pub at all was lost to many. I understand these people. Until 2016, many of them were my friends. Without the wet-led pub, many communities lost an important social venue. It wasn’t the EU that did this to them. It was Westminster, of course. But having been sensitised to intrusive public health measures, the daily news contains stories about sugar taxes, fat shaming and compulsory exercise reinforce the message that “the elites” despise the working class and want to remove or tax any remaining pleasures. That none of these public health measures have really come into law doesn’t change the mood music. They’re being discussed in the news, daily and the direction of travel is clear. If you enjoy it, it will be banned.

There’s the old certainties too, which are being ripped away at a confusing pace. Gay marriage kick-started the country towards brexit by causing the surge in the UKIP vote. UKIP was flatlining around 10% throughout the early 2010s, but won the 2014 European election with 27%. Gay Marriage, which became law in 2014 caused a lot of Tory associations to lose councillors and activists to UKIP, because Gay marriage felt like an assault on the traditional way of life, to people who’d already experienced dislocation as a result of immigration. This feeling was amplified by the noisy and to most, utterly mystifying transatlantic public debate about transgenderism. UKIP abandoned any residual libertarianism and fully embraced the socially conservative, nativist populism then rising across Europe and the broader democratic world. The Tory party lost MPs to UKIP, who thought they had found the key to unlock mass support, and a party became the brexit movement. David Cameron then was panicked into offering the referendum, and the rest is history.

In this environment, where working class communities, suffering from wage compression and struggling with insecure work, low pay, poor prospects, increased housing costs, and weaker social networks were told that the EU allowed in the migrants who are competing with the natives for work in construction and manufacturing, and so they sought to ‘take back control’ of a country they no longer understood, and which they felt had abandoned them. It didn’t matter that the immigrants who most upset them didn’t come from the EU, UKIP was talking the right language to appeal to the white working class. The European migrant crisis of 2015 added a further deep cultural fear of racial and ethnic change to an already febrile atmosphere, which Farage expertly exploited, staying mostly the right side of the line of outright racism, but ‘dogwhistling’ hard over the line. They were aided in this by Russia, which (probably) bankrolled the party, and (probably) leave.EU too; and poured dank memes and targeted adverts behind the Brexit movement. They also bombed the snot out of Syria, to make more migrants.

The freedom of movement that I feel is the single best thing about the EU became its Achilles heel. What is the freedom to move to Paris to someone on the minimum wage, who has no desire or inclination to learn to speak French, and who resents his Polish neighbours, whom he blames (the number of people for whom this is a correct impression is very, very small) for his low wages and poor prospects? None of my arguments get through this wall. It cannot be breached. The harder I try, the more certain the Pub smoker is that Brexit is a well-aimed kick right in the middle class’s bollocks. It doesn’t matter that none of the things above are the fault of the EU, nor that the EU is an important part of dealing with the wave of people pouring out of the Middle East and Africa. It matters not that the UK could, if it chose to, have sought to limit migrants from the Visegrád Group, and could limit freedom of movement right now, should parliament so wish. We’re dealing with a mood. The EU became a cypher for everything confusing and problematic about the modern age.

The working class is pissed off. Old farts are pissed off. The people who didn’t pay attention in school are pissed off. And they’re pissed off with an effete, pampered, university-educated, overwhelmingly urban group of people whom they see as feckless, privileged and arrogant; who in turn see their opponents as stupid, ignorant, lazy, bigoted and just plain wrong. The two tribes of society despise each other, and we’re getting further apart. In previous centuries, someone would have raised a flag, and the two sides would slaughter each other with a viciousness reserved only for civil wars. Thankfully, I don’t think this is possible these days.

How many people see the European Union

But I don’t know how to make positive rational arguments in favour of the EU that won’t simply dash themselves against this wall of hate, ignorance and anger. I expect any appeal to a European identity will be vomited out by a sceptical British people, not least by me. I am British. “Europe” is to many people where we send our young men for an away fixture against the French and Germans (Flanders fields, Football pitches or Spanish beaches, it doesn’t matter). Nor can I make emotional arguments in favour of the EU, which is a mighty hard organisation to love. It’s like loving your bank, or the sewage system. Instead, we must take the heat out of the argument. The EU is just necessary plumbing to make European trade work, albeit a sewer with tediously grandiose rhetoric and ambitions. You don’t want to live without sewers any more do you? If you will indulge my extended metaphor, the Brexit movement is people who can’t get their head round indoor plumbing, believing stories about rats, snakes and crocodiles living just round the U-bend, ready to snap at your dangly bits. We need to remove the fear of the EU. Perhaps, if the EU can stop talking about the crocodiles – ever closer union – then the resistance to doing one’s business inside it will evaporate.

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All Over Bar The Shouting?

Article 50 can be unilaterally revoked by parliament. Ironic that a European court can make the British Parliament sovereign again.

Here’s what I think will happen. May’s deal has about as much chance of passing as Elvis’s last dump. Five days of debate will not change the fact that over 100 Tory MPs, who’ve mostly thought about nothing other than leaving the EU for 30 years, have said they will vote against this “vassalage”. The DUP will likewise vote against, citing the ‘border in the Irish sea’ backstop. Labour, barring a few rebels,  will vote against. Labour will then seize the opportunity to call for a vote of confidence, which Theresa May will win, mainly because no-one wants her Job. There may or may not be an interim step of looking at the “Norway/Iceland” EEA solution, but this too will fall on the question of the Irish Border. May will then offer a second referendum. She is getting some early campaigning around the country now, rather than wasting time in Parliament. The Question: Her Deal or Remain. Brexiters will cry foul, and consider boycotting the poll to make the poll illegitimate. The videos of Both Nigel Farage and Jacob Reece-Mogg calling for a 2nd referendum will circulate. The poll will go ahead. Without Russian money, and enervated by 2 years of thinking they’d won, selling a deal they’d already rejected once will be tough. Brexiters’ only argument is “see it through” and shouting “Britain” or “Democracy” at people very loudly.

On the other side, Brexit created a strong, energetic and highly motivated pro EU movement in the UK, something that was utterly absent last time. This time, the remain camp will have more-or-less anyone with any talent in the UK, who will this time be prepared to put their heads above the parapet. Leave will, at best, have Geoffrey Boycott, Ginger Spice, and a daytime TV estate agent standing alongside Nigel Farage. The rest of UKIP will be goose-stepping around Kent with Tommy Robinson, shouting RAUS! at immigrants, which isn’t a good look.

Remain will win at a canter. (And I said that last time, I know). And if it doesn’t, then ‘the deal’ or better yet, the EEA will be fine, because the Brexiters get nothing out of it. ‘The deal’ is Brexit in Name Only (BRINO). Nothing will change. We will rejoin the club after a decent interval, as no influence over laws we’ll have to accept will be intolerable. The Brexiters have already lost.

Brexiters failed to persuade anyone who didn’t already hate the EU, that leaving presented worthwhile opportunities to be grasped. They failed to articulate a vision of what leaving the EU would achieve, and their promises of “control” to be “taken back” were absolutely rubbished by reality. Every single Brexiter, when tasked with delivering their project, about which they that had dreamed for 30 years, ended up resigning in a huff. The German car industry did not ride to the rescue. The Australians, Canadians and New Zealanders, friendly and decent that they are, were not falling over themselves to do a “trade deal” with their former colonial power, seeing greater opportunities to be close to the EU’s much bigger market. Indeed some of these took issue with our schedule of tariffs and commitments on the UK regaining its seat at the WTO!

Brexiters failed to understand Britain’s place in the world was not intrinsic to itself; our power and influence lay in being at the centre of Western, liberal, democratic and free countries, and occupying leadership positions in the UN Security Council, the G7, NATO, 5-eyes and the EU. We are the glue that binds the USA and the 5-eyes to Europe, and the hinge on which the Western Alliance turns. There is no value to the expensive “independence” snake oil that the leave campaign was selling.

We weren’t “alone” in 1940, there’s no need to be alone now.

International trade deals, of which the EU is a deep, comprehensive and unusually democratic example, always involves a “surrender of sovereignty”, but I prefer to think of it as a pooled sovereignty in return for British influence. Brexiters failed to understand the reality of trade: that geography matters and the UK needs a close relationship with the EU. Brexiters failed to see that the UK accepting the EU’s rules was inevitable, their weight sees to that, and yet denied the UK had any influence at all while we in the EU, ignoring the opt-outs, and the policies driven through by the UK. The single market, for example is a creation of Margaret Thatcher. One brief look at the US rule book (the other option on the table should we leave, Chlorinated chicken etc…), and the Brexiters quietly shut up about that particular “opportunity” soon after the election of Trump. We can write “our own rules”? No. We can’t, not if we want to trade successfully. The UK is not really big enough.

The Brexiters saw the EU as an Empire. It isn’t. It’s something different. Where NATO won the cold war, it was the EU which won the peace, successfully integrating the former soviet satellites into a liberal, western looking, democratic and peaceful free trade block.  They are not going back.  The EU doesn’t “need us more than we need them”. The EU, rather than fighting to keep a wayward province in line, shrugged and said “here are your options, pick one, and good luck”, and trusted in their rules and respect for other countries’ sovereignty. That will be noted by formerly subject peoples, both in the EU, and to the east.

The British parliament remained sovereign throughout our membership of the European Union; We can leave, any time Parliament decides. It’s just none of the options for leaving are any good, and all of them costly, exactly as predicted by the Remain campaign. We are surrendering influence over rules that will affect us. There are no benefits to leaving, no opportunities. There’s not even extra sovereignty out there.

Ultimately the Brexiters misunderstood the country, the European Union, and the world.

Brexiters failed to understand “democracy” too. Winning the vote was the start, not the end of the process, but few if any Brexiters had given a moment’s thought to what happens on the 24th June 2016. Referendums are blunt tools. A decision can either be irreversible or democratic; it cannot be both. Democracy is a process, and not an event. A referendum is most emphatically not an enabling law for twats. Ultimately, even if individuals haven’t, the electorate has indeed changed its mind since 2016. Two cohorts of younger, pro-EU voters coming in, and a couple of years of older leave voters dying will see to that. In failing to compromise at all with the EU, or remain Britain, Brexiters may well have sealed their movement’s fate. By failing to offer the reasonable options, Norway, Iceland, on which they had campaigned, preferring to go for the hardest, most headbanging Brexit they could conceive, they have betrayed their infantile dream of leaving the EU.

Once, this was the world’s most dangerous border

The Iron Curtain is now a cycle path. Tell me the world hasn’t got better thanks to the EU. What can the Brexiters credibly promise this time?

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On Class, Culture and the New Politics

The two tribes of politics, broadly the Tory and Labour parties divided over the 20th Century principally on the matter of economics. Simplifying: Tories preferred market solutions to state planning, and preferred lower taxes and less generous state spending.
The Labour party, which when it abandoned clause IV, surrendered on the economic question, not coincidentally a few years after the Berlin wall came down.
As a result, the great battles since then have been essentially cultural. Gay rights, racial integration etc. The confusion stems from there being no consensus within the Tory or Labour tribes on these issues. Plenty of Tories are happily socially liberal, many of the Labour tribe are socially conservative, especially when you look at voters rather than representatives.
Which brings us to the tribal division of Britain: class. The middle class: liberal, internationalist, universalists; vs a working class: authoritarian, insular and particular world view. The former is comfortable with diversity and immigration. The latter isn’t. The former’s kids live a long way from home, and move for work, the latters kids live in the same town and expect the work to come to them. The former don’t speak to their neighbours, the latter care what their neighbours do and think. These labels are correlated roughly with, but independent of, economic status. It’s possible to be middle class, in a local-authority home living on benefits, and working class, earning seven figures and living in a manor house. (Though it’s likely these people’s kids will change tribes)
There are elements of these cultures in all major parties in the UK, but the rest of us rarely communicate with people from the other tribe. The people you have round for dinner will most probably be from your tribe. Half the country holds its knife like a pen, yet none have sat round my table. When the two tribes meet, it’s awkward. Those difficult bottom-sniffing conversations seeking common ground are easy to conclude when two members of the same tribe meet, and difficult when you meet the other half.
There have always been working class Tories, because much of the working class is as comfortable with the certainties of heirarchy as a shire Tory, and doesn’t much care for this freedom and opportunity nonsense, preferring a better boss instead. And it’s interesting to watch the Tories dangle the protectionism and insularity the working class has long demanded. Middle class labour fabians and the working class methodists have always sat uncomfortably together. Brexit has shattered that coalition, the labour party has been handed to the idiot socialists and will die, unless somehow moderates can oust corbyn before 2020.
Which brings us to the Tory coalition. The high-Tory have promised the old certainties back to the white working class. Meanwhile, middle-class liberals who make up most of the parliamentary party are distinctly uncomfortable with much of what is being done in Brexit’s name, but will stick with the Tories, because they offer the promise of power, and however dreadful Brexit is, Jeremy Corbyn is worse. A new coalition is being forged between the Tory squirearchy, and the Working class based on nationalism, social conservatism and heirarchy, directly taking Labour’s core vote. This is why UKIP, a working class movement that thinks it *is* the conservative party, apes the style of a country gent. The working class have always got on well with the Gentry, sharing sociailly conservative values. Both despise the middle class.
Brexit split the country down a line more on class values, split the country and handed it to the socially authoritarian party. Whether this is the new politics, with the Tories moving from being the middle-class party to the working class party, as the Republicans did after the war in the USA, or whether the middle-class will wrest back control over both parties in time waits to be seen.
I suspect unless May softens her tone, and thows some bones to the liberals, her coalition will only survive until there’s a credible opposition. A more appropriate division of politics would be a ConservaKIP’ish alliance of WWC and high-tory squires, vs LibLabCon middle-class liberals. Therea May seems to be actively seeking it.
Over the Channel, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen exemplify this split. The candidates of the parties of left, Socialists; and right, RPR are likely to be eliminated in the first round. Macron is likely to win comfortably. His movement ‘En Marche!’ was only formed a year ago. There’s a lesson for British liberals there.
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Tories have profoundly damaged the UK. You Should Join the Tories.

2016 happened because decent people don’t join political parties, leaving the business of Government to socially inadequate, physically repellent gits with an axe to grind*. In normal circumstances, this makes politics easier for genuinely impressive people to progress through the flotsam of monomaniacs. To be a Grown-up in the Tory Party 1997-2010 was to be able to consider an issue beyond the EU. For Labour it’s all about not dreaming of Strike Action by “the workers”. Thus the Liberal Centre consolidated a hold on the country, but became complacent to the poison seeping into parties even as the Smug centrist consensus made everyone fat and rich.
There has been a steady, and persistent hollowing out of the political parties. Labour used to be allied to a Trades Union movement that delivered services – health insurance, education and so forth to its members. The Trades Unions of Pre-War Britain where an overwhelming force for good. Atlee’s welfare state nationalised all the good the Trades Unions used to do, and so corrupted both the principle of welfare (now far, far from Beveridge’s original vision of low, universal payments like Child benefit, topped up with contributory elements) and the Trades unions which became a mere tub-thumper for more state spending. This left the Labour party with the sole purpose of defending a welfare settlement that is not under threat, and a Trades Union movement whose purpose had been nationalised so simply became resistant to all and any reform which might make the system as is function better; unions a mere vested interest of public-sector workers. This isn’t a place where people capable of holding more than one idea at a time feel comfortable, and so the Labour party was colonised by people who think not shaving is a political act.
This malodorous and poorly groomed cancer has destroyed the Labour party. It’s over, there’s no point being in Labour unless you’re a Identity politics obsessed Corbynite who laments the end of the Soviet Union. 
Labour, 2010-Present
The Tories at least had the sense to try to vomit the most toxic of their nutters into a bucket marked UKIP, a bucket the dog is unfortunately returning to. The Conservative party my Grandfather joined (from CPGB, as it happens, Labour even back then were cliquey dick-heads) used to be a forum for the upper middle class (and anyone who aspired to join them) to meet, mate and do business. But the horrible young Tories of the ’80s, and the Euro-nutters of the ’90s meant that by 1997, the Tories were only really suitable for people who were prepared to discuss “Europe” endlessly in ever-more foaming tones, persuading themselves that the EU is a historic enemy like Napoleon, the Kaisar, Hitler or the USSR. To their credit, the Tory Leadership has long known what to do. All David Cameron ever asked of his party was to “stop banging on about Europe”. They couldn’t stop picking at the scab, and the result is a catastrophe that has already crashed the Pound, weakened the UK (perhaps fatally) and may yet cause a political crisis in Europe and embolden Putin to start rebuilding the USSR.
Tories, 1997-2010
The more say over policy and leadership given to the membership, the more the membership has dwindled (unless, like Labour, the membership criteria are designed to invite entryism for the purposes of choosing a leader – by people who’ve been quietly loyal to the Bennite project for decades). Giving members a say in who leads the party is absurd. Who the prime minister is, should be a matter for MPs, and MPs alone. It is they who must give the Prime Minister a majority and internal party democracy risks, well, exactly what has happened to Labour. 
However, that Rubicon has been crossed. Party members now expect a vote on the Leader. The question is what to do about this, and the answer is to choose to be a member of a party at all times, hold your nose if necessary. Do NOT identify with the party, but consider which is best placed to advance your objectives. At the moment, the foul bigots, monomaniacs and morons of UKIP are being re-absorbed from a position where they can do little harm beyond foaming at the mouth and masturbating to Daily Express editorials, to one where they can choose the next prime minister, and Mrs May isn’t a healthy specimen. The ex-‘KIPpers chance may come to choose their PM sooner than expected.
I’m often asked “How come you’re still a Tory?”  
Were the Liberal Democrats stronger, I’d be considering them, but I don’t trust them on electoral reform (about which they’re as silly as Tories are about Europe). But as the Lib-Dems are so far from power, I don’t see the tactical benefit of leaving the Tories in a huff, and I broadly agree with the Tories on everything except Brexit. What I’m worried about is the ‘KIPpers who’re returning to the fold. Unless you want a foul, divisive and ignorant Brexit headbanger to replace May in 2023 or so (Gove for example), Join the Tories, because thanks to Labour’s meltdown, Tories and Tories alone will choose the next PM. All not joining a party does is strengthen those (*we) weirdos who still do. Labour moderates, disgusted by Corbyn should cross the floor to the Tories or Liberal democrats, instead of flouncing off to the V&A and opening the way for UKIPish Brexit-o-twats to fight and win a by-elections under Tory colours. Were Tristram hunt now a Tory, not only we could soften this brexit idiocy but also signal just how broad a church the Tories are. 40% of Tory members voted Remain. The tribe that needs to understand the value of a bit of entryism is the liberal centre, who need to abandon any loyalty to their Parties and go to where the power is. The Liberal Centre is complacent because they have for so long occupied the ground sought by all parties, they’ve not really had to compromise. 
At the moment the business of Government is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a Tory-only affair. That need not look like Nigel Farage, but it will, if Remainers abandon the Tories entirely.
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On Populism: What do we do? vs Who do we blame?

If you ask the wrong question, the answers will not work.

“Populism” is, like pornography, hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Wikipedia defines it thus

“a political ideology that holds that virtuous citizens are mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. Populism depicts elites as trampling on the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people”

It’s clear Farage’s lauding of a victory for “mediocre ordinary, decent scum people” he was speaking in this vein. But I don’t think this captures the essence of populism. Mainstream politicians “Managerialists” in the Populists’ vernacular ask “how do we solve this problem”. You can be a capitalist, or a socialist, believing in different answers, but at least you agree on the question. Populists aren’t asking this question, but instead “who do we blame?”. The answer given by Momentum and UKIP may differ: Bosses vs Immigrants, Capitalists vs the EU but the question is the same.

There’s also the populists view that MPs rather than being representatives paid to exercise judgement, are delegates paid to vote on someone else’s behalf. In this, Paul Mason and Douglas Carswell are in agreement. But this is simply mob rule and behind it is a fear that legislators may Go Native, if they’re allowed thanks to the corrosive influence of “[insert boogeyman]” in their long-running campaign to keep the “real” people down. But perhaps legislators know best; they have exposure and access to what passes for facts in this field, and are paid to study it, maybe there’s something in the idea of representative democracy after all.

It’s always easier to imagine you’re the victim of an elite conspiracy, subject to “discrimination” on the grounds of class or race, or at risk from being “flooded” by immigrants, than it is to answer the question “what to I do?”. Whether you’re running your own life, or that of a nation, what to do is hard, and one of the stresses of modern life is the extent to which people are free, which means they have to make choices. No longer can you just follow dad into the Factory. Because many suffer from crippling loss aversion, these choices are scary, which is why stupid people yearn to be led. They look for leaders who offer answers which fit their prior prejudices and make sense of a complicated world. Corbyn and Farage have made careers finding and stroking a tribe’s prejudices, soothing their people’s indignation against a world they feel is against them.

The reason populism is so toxic to political discourse is that in apportioning blame, they create a slipway for the launching of vastly damaging ideas. “It’s all the EU’s fault” leads to Brexit*. “It’s all the Fat Cats’ fault” and you have a country that looks like Venezuela. If you start blaming immigrants or minorities, well we saw where that went in the last century. It’s also why the Brexiteers ran from office at the moment of victory. Delivery isn’t in the populists’ skillset. The permanent masturbatory pleasures of opposition are what they crave, always losing so they can keep telling their people the game’s rigged against them. If they win, then all those inadequate people will have to start making choices and they feel completely lost again. Much easier to simmer in resentment against an immovable object which allows you to blame it, rather than yourself for your failings.

*This isn’t a place for a debate on the merits or otherwise of Brexit. Any comments on that subject will be deleted.

One of the reasons for the Populist’s success (please note the “one of” at the start of this sentence) is Russia on the internet. The internet allows people to form much denser ideological defences against reality. And into the internet, there is a wounded superpower, pouring poison, poison which people use as ammunition in the defence of their ideological redoubt. Putin’s toxic little propaganda swamps like RT and Sputnik are manufacturing and promoting stories which appeal to the populist mindset. Notice how Racists will share RT stories about Immigrants raping white women while members of the Green party will share horror stories about fracking from the same source. Some of these stories will be true. But many are manufactured, exaggerated and twisted specifically to support any party or idea that causes problems to the democratic governments of the west. This is not a random process. It is directed and controlled by the intelligence agency which has captured Russia. Maskirovka raised to a governing principle.

One of the reasons for the UK’s relative success as a nation is that up until now, we have been mostly immune from the allure of the populist demagogue. We simply don’t have it in us to put too much belief in one man, whether as protagonist or antagonist. Let’s hope Brexit is a flash in the pan, and not part of a widespread descent of mature democracies into populist demagoguery. We’ll know in 12 months whether democracy can survive or whether, thanks to Trump, Farage and Le Pen, we’re going back to pogroms and a summer “campaigning season”.

Please let’s stop listening to Putin’ useful idiots pedalling fallacious simplicity, and start listening to fallible and all-too-human experts again. At least the experts are asking the right question.

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Brexit: Four scenarios.

There has been a significant rally in markets, if not yet in business sentiment since the Brexit referendum. Much of this rally is down to currency, as the UK local (stocks with >60% UK earnings) remains down, especially if you measure it in $ terms. But there has been significant relief that the chaos of the first few days didn’t last. A remainer with a safe pair of hands promised to deliver. “Brexit is Brexit” became the mantra of the prime-minister after she won in a contest which reinforced the Conservatives’ reputation for ruthless efficiency. I doubt May wants to go down in history as the PM who ended the UK by triggering article 50 and precipitating Scottish independence, but nor does she want to go down in history as the PM who “stabbed UK in the back” and split the Tory party for good by refusing to deliver on the referendum result. So she’s done, skillfully, what all good politicians do in a tricky spot: Act like a Rugby full-back: take a sidestep and boot the ball into touch.

To this end, David Davis and Liam Fox, two prominent campaigners for Brexit have been given their own Brexit playpens to try and thrash out what they want. They are, of course learning on the job. Brexiteers are the dog that caught the bus: they don’t know what to do with it and many of them, like Michael Gove are being scraped out of the tyre treads as we speak. It’s clear neither Davis nor Fox have any clear idea what “trade deals” can deliver, or what the single market is, or why it’s valuable. But they’ve been barking their half understood points now for so long, that when asked by grown-ups “what do you mean?” they blink stupidly and repeat the same turgid tropes as if that will solve the many manifest problems that were pointed out at such length two months ago.

Brexit is, remains and was always going to be a terrible idea. This will slowly dawn on the people charged with delivering it. It’s going to be very very hard, will require the total commitment of the entire UK state to deliver a good outcome, as well as skilful diplomacy and the goodwill of our European partners. The Brexit Referendum was not binding, it was explicitly advisory. The apparatus of the UK state has little enthusiasm for Brexit: not the civil service, not the PM, not the diplomatic corps and there’s little goodwill towards the UK in European capitals. There are a great many who will try to overturn the result. And there is more than an outside chance they (we) will be able to do so. “Brexit” may mean Brexit for now, but no-one’s defined Brexit or our post-brexit relationship with the EU. Because “no relationship” isn’t an option. 

Several things are already clear: Article 50 is not adequate for the task. Greenland (population: several polar bears) had one issue, fish, and leaving the EU took three years. Do you think the world’s 5th largest economy can successfully extricate itself in two after 40 years in the club? No. Article 50 was inserted into the lisbon treaty in order to appease UK brexiteers, and was never intended to be used. (The moral of the story: never try to appease the unappeasable),

Every month, the triggering of article 50 gets pushed back, from “by the end of the year” when May came to power to “some time in 2017”. As 2017 draws nearer, and the UK is still no closer to working out what it wants from Brexit, people will realise that the French and German elections will enable the UK to *start* pre-article 50 negotiations with the new Governments in late 2017. This pushes article 50 back to 2018 at the earliest. This is the Head-Banger position: “Article 50, come what may and to hell with the cost”.

But once you get into 2018, the UK general election is hoving into view. As should be clear, Triggering article 50 is likely to provoke a recession, and if you want a discretionary recession, it’s probably best to get it out of the way early in the parliament. Few parliamentarians want to lose their seats because of an angry electorate being given what they asked for. The electorate’s memory is short, and you can take credit for the recovery afterwards. So it is more likely that the Conservatives will go into the 2020 election (which they will probably win comfortably) with a manifesto commitment to trigger article 50 (or leave in some other way) in that parliament. Ironic really, because the person who made the party electable after 13 years in the wilderness asked one thing of his party: to “stop banging on about Europe”. His legacy: a decade of talking about nothing but.

And by this point the rest of Europe will really rather want us to shit, or get off the pot rather than having Brexit clog up the machinery of EU governance for another decade. Anger at the UK for having the temerity to leave will have faded, and cooler heads who see a mutually beneficial solution will be best all round, will prevail. Already Germany is making friendly noises about a special UK deal. Martin Roth:

‘Given Britain’s size, significance and its long membership of the European Union, there will probably be a special status which only bears limited comparison to that of countries that have never belonged to the European Union’

This seems reasonable. But it won’t be delivered quickly, nor will it be easy to deliver it via article 50. More likely it will be delivered via a new treaty with the EU some time in the next parliament.

By which time the deal we’re likely to get is taking shape. And It’s looking likely that the best deal on offer was the one we already enjoyed, perhaps with some bone thrown to the UK on freedom of movement. But remember we’re talking about a situation in which a New Parliament, unbound by any constitutional obligation to trigger article 50 beyond the manifesto, has negotiated a new deal within the EU. The 2016 Referendum would be ancient history, and there will be calls for the new deal to be put to a referendum because “a mandate is needed”. And the madness stalking democracy will have passed. And so if there is a second referendum, this time, remain will probably win. But that happy outcome remains an outside chance.

Article 50 delivered some time this parliament: 20% (& falling)
Article 50 triggered early next parliament: 30%
Leaving the EU, but not by article 50, possibly following 2nd ref on “the deal”: 20%
Second referendum on “the deal”, remain wins: Article 50 not triggered at all: 30% (and rising).

The longer we wait for article 50, the less likely it will be triggered, the less likely we leave, and the greater the likelihood, if we do leave of a good deal, mutually beneficial to all concerned. Those clamouring for “Hard Brexit”, now are mainly Turnip Taliban, obsessed by immigration and unconcerned by the economy. Thankfully, May seems to be in no hurry, the Chancellor said Brexit would take 6 years, and most of the Brexit hardliners have already vomited themselves into an increasingly irrelevant bucket called UKIP. Either way, in or out of the EU we’re probably watching the slow-motion betrayal of the most fervent Brexit voters. Their howling at the EU was nothing more than resentment of the modern world, and so they are unappeasable. So there is no point trying to please people who simply voted to smash something people they resent, valued.

This is as it should be. No country which aspires to greatness can for any length of time have its agenda set by ill-educated, elderly losers, waiting to die in depressing hell-holes at the end of the line. Thankfully, with sensible people back in charge, the outlook is improving in inverse proportion to liklihood of Brexit.

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The Mary Whitehouse Experience

The “Bastards” who see the British membership of the European Union as the central question of politics are not only petty-minded nationalists. They are also mostly small-minded, authoritarian christian bigots. They aren’t just coming for free movement, they’re against gay marriage too. They’re against most of the modern world. It’s true, I do agree with them on the economic questions of the 20th century, but that no longer matters, the economic liberals’ victory is pretty comprehensive.

Leadsom represents the conservatism of Mary Whitehouse, not Margaret Thatcher. This is why Leadsom has such enthusiastic support from UKIP. She is the culture war, as well as the brexit candidate. This isn’t about Europe. It’s not about economics. It’s not left and right. It’s open vs closed society. 
They don’t just want to reverse the European Union, but roll back the “permissive society” of the 1960s. These are the purse-lipped miserablists who write into local papers complaining about “filth” on TV or “hooligans” in the street, who in reality are just boys playing football. This is the racist aunt, who now feels confident to say she doesn’t like Mrs Patel in no.34 because she smells funny. This is the Daily Mail (Paper, not website) made flesh, obsessed by what other people do in the bedroom, and absolutely terrified someone, somewhere might be having fun.
This is where we are, when Theresa May is the standard bearer for the liberal cause. What a time to be alive.
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Referendum Prediction: On Polling Day. And After.

You know my views on this, and it looks like sanity will prevail over the dread forces of nativist populism.

I think a few Tories who threw their lot in with Leave will wake up relieved, as if from a fever, that their frenzy didn’t result in too much damage. There hasn’t been all that much Blue on Blue action whatever the papers say. I think Gove will not be welcomed back. His hyperbole was too great. But Gove aside, the Tories will find it easier to put the party back together than pundits suggest.

Farage will try to do to England what Nicola Sturgeon did to Scotland. He will tour the country whipping up anti-establishment feeling in all the worst places. Mostly, he will fail, but It remains to be seen whether UKIP can supplant the Labour party in its abandoned heartlands. The habit of voting and activism may have been regained amongst the working class. This is a cure to the ennui they feel, in and of itself. They do matter, and can change things. After all, whatever happens, they just have.

As for Labour, who went AWOL under their laughable leader: well quite a few of the grown-ups will have been working with the saner Tories, and these tribes may find they don’t hate each other quite as much as they hate the more extreme elements of their own parties. This is the new divide in politics: Cosmopolitans vs Nativists, Mangerialists vs Idealogues, those asking “what do we do” vs those asking “whom do we blame”. This fun new culture war doesn’t tie down nicely along party lines. It spreads across groups more used to voting on economic solutions, not matters of identity.

This yawp of dissatisfaction, mainly by people which Labour elite once thought they could rely upon, without having to listen, represented a great wail of anguish at the modern world, which settled upon the EU as a scapegoat, may well sweep the Labour party away.

There are too many working parts, tribal loyalties run too deep. Personalities too difficult to see from afar. UKIP, Tory right and Labour left are not a comfortable coalition. Tory and Labour centrists? Or maybe there will be a new Social Democratic party. Or maybe Labour’s centrists may attempt a takeover of the Liberal Democrats….

As for the EU, the panjandrums know deep down, they narrowly dodged an existential crisis, brought about by arrogance, hubris and a tin-ear. They would do well to read this.

But sanity prevails. The broad west can now get on with being the shining light on the hill, the example to other societies for riches, productivity and freedom, to which huddled masses not lucky enough to be born in one of our countries will struggle and risk death to get to. Immigration will remain a fact of life, for as long as the UK is a better, freer, happier place to live, offering more opportunity than elsewhere. All we need is the French to reject Le Pen, and the Americans to reject the Trump. Luckily both look like they will do so comfortably.

Nothing’s perfect. Here’s my Rallying cry:

WHAT DO WE WANT?
GRADUAL IMPROVEMENT!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
WHENEVER ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ALLOW.

Not one to get the masses to the barricades, but it’s delivered more wealth, happiness and prosperity than any other.

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A Former UKIP Branch Chairman Backs REMAIN

Cards on the table. Many moons ago I was a member of Young Independence and established the

Bolton Branch of UKIP. I was a member when UKIP was in favour of a flat tax, slashing the size and

scope of government and was at least pretending to be libertarian. I left when I saw the writing on the

wall; that UKIP was turning in a 1960’s Labour tribute band of social conservatism and big

government paternalism (my two least favourite things).

I was and still am anti EU. I think it’s officious, bureaucratic, inefficient, meddlesome, nannying,

bloated and expensive. But guess what – so are all governments. Long before the EU we were bribed

and coerced by unelected faceless British civil servants, so I don’t buy the argument that Brexit would

result in some miraculous purging of pedantic officialdom.

But that’s not my main reason for opting

for Remain, rather history, the economy, and British values seem to point that way.

Brexit advocates seem to want to fight the tide of history. The story of humanity’s political entities has

been one, dare I say it, of ever closer union – groups of gathers came together to form small tribes,

which came together to form communities, which in turn grouped together to become towns, which

became cities, which united to become small kingdoms, which in finally came together to form the

nation states we know today. Europe is now trying to forge the next step – that of bringing nation

states into something larger. Being the first attempt it seems new and scary, just as there would have

been those in the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex who resisted this new-fangled ‘England’, with its

distant rulers and burdensome taxes and laws. It’s going to happen, so we can try and influence that

as it’s evolves, or we can re-join in a few decades time as a junior member on much worse terms than

we have now.

By far my biggest concern is that of the economy. Markets can deal with democracies and dictators,

they can handle with Tories or Labour, but what they don’t like is instability and uncertainty, and Brexit

negotiations are uncertainty incarnate. Nobody knows how long negotiations will take. Nobody has

any idea as to what sort of deal we’ll get. Nobody knows what EU rules we’ll have to abide by and

which we’ll be able to ignore. Nobody knows if we’ll repeal existing EU legislation and if so how much.

All this is an anathema to business deciding where to sink investment. The best and brightest of the

world flock to Britain because their skills and talents have an unrivalled platform and outlets through

our links to Europe, the Commonwealth and North America. Brexit and the subsequent reservations

about visas and free movement would throw this into doubt.

“But it’s in the EU’s interests to give Britain a good deal, we do too much trade for them to jeopardise

it”. This message has been the crux of the Leave camps economic case, but it’s tragically naive for it

rests on the assumption that EU leaders act rationally. They don’t. The history of the EU is one of

making political decisions that go against economic sense. The Euro, the madness of monetary union

without fiscal union, was a political project, not economic. The CAP is a political settlement that runs

against all but the most projectionist economic rationale.

If Britain opted to leave left the EU Brussels

would have to make an example of us. Negotiations would be tortuous, dragged out for years with

every line of the settlement debated and revised and amended purely out of spite. Just look at

Greece. Every sensible economist pleaded for some form of debt write-off, but no. Greece had to be

made an example of, especially after the defiance of the anti-austerity referendum. The vanity and

pride of those behind ‘The Project’ cannot be over stated, and EU chiefs really will go out of their way

to cause an independent Britain as much trauma as possible if it meant deterring other would be

separatists.

This is partly why the EU needs Britain. An EU without Britain would mean all the worst aspects of the

bureaucracy would be let loose, with little or no restraint. Those members who tend to side with us,

like the Nordic nations, would find themselves without a large ally, and would be cowed and bullied

into meek compliance. A Britain-less EU would also be a more insular, inward looking beast.

During

the 1990s it was Britain that led to the push to see the ten Eastern European states of the former

Warsaw Pact brought into the EU, much to the annoyance of the French who argued attention should

be focused on deepening integration among the existing members. But Britain triumphed, correctly

insisting that without EU membership anchoring these new democracies to the West, they’d succumb

to a gradual economic, then political slide back into the Russian orbit. And this is the rule rather than

the exception – for Britain gets its way a lot in Europe, especially on the big issues. The very fact the

EU is a free trade area is largely down to us. The European Court of Human Rights, though not part

of the EU, was created almost at the British behest. That we don’t have an EU Army is down to Britain

thwarting the idea every time it rears its head.

 And it’s not just our friends and allies in Europe that want us to stay. The Commonwealth nations, to

whom Brexiteers point as an alternative trading bloc to the EU, want us to remain. Our closest ally,

the United States, wants us to stay. Both recognise that our membership of the EU is the unique

bridge that binds the Anglosphere and the continent of Europe together. Our place in the EU reminds

Brussels that there’s a world outside Fortress Europe and that globalisation is an opportunity, not a

threat.

It’s no coincidence that the only world leader who supports Brexit is Vladmir Putin, a man

itching to divide and weaken a united West that’s hemmed in and punished his geopolitical trolling.

I get the frustration with the EU, I really do. I too hear the siren song of Brexit, the temptation to stick

two fingers up at Brussels and reclaim sovereignty. But every year nation states get less and less

relevant. True sovereignty hasn’t existed for any state since the Second World War. If we took the

Norwegian option we’d still have to follow EU rules, but we’d have no say in how they’re made.

Leaving would be to ignore the pleads of our oldest friends. Brexit would be an economic roll of the

dice that really don’t need. Much like the Scottish Nationalists, the economic case for Brexit rests on

hopeful scenarios and keeping our fingers crossed – I’m sorry but the world’s sixth largest economy is

too important to gamble on a wing and a prayer.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. The EU machine is infuriating, but Britain, the West, and the

world is a better place through our membership.

A guest contribution by Lee T Jenkins

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I dislike the EU intensely. I’m voting to Remain in.

I get it. You hate the EU, and Jean Claude Juncker’s a twat. I get it, the desire to kick Guy Verhofstadt in the bollocks. I understand on a deep and visceral level the desire to headbut Martin Shultz and wedgie Neil bloody Kinnock and hang him on a clothes peg by his underpants until they rip. I want pour itching powder into all their underwear drawers. Jaques Delors especially. But for better or worse, in the EU or out, we have to work with these bloody people, and the tin-pot countries they come from which show precious little gratitude for the British blood poured into their soil over the centuries for the privilege they still enjoy to not speak German (or French or Spanish). Instead they must speak English…

I get the desire to send RAF Typhoons on punitive strikes against the wasteful and absurd Strasbourg Parliament building, with or without the MEPs still inside. I understand the desire to have HMS Dragon, the most modern air-defence destroyer on the sea to be deployed against Spanish fishermen. I get the desire to set fire to French sheep (mainly because you’d get in less trouble than you would setting fire to French farmers). I too deplore the wasteful CAP. Above all, I want the entire commission, parliament and bureacuracy of the EU lined up and bogwashed by the smelliest upper-sixth prefect, one after the other while they practice their English irregular verbs. All right-thinking people agree.

I’m still voting to ‘Remain’.

The most likely scenario should the UK leave the EU, is that not a lot would change. There will of course be some disruption before people realise this, probably leading to a small recession. But upon UK leaving the EU, slipping into the EEA will feel like a more comfortable shirt. Long-run, we may even be better off and happier. This will likely suit our historic national desire for “the open sea” over the continent. But  UKIPpers will still be grunting about immigrants, and deplore the fact we still have to obey EU rules. But as we will no longer have any formal means to influence them all that much, they’ll have to lump it. Thankfully without their MEPs (and EU money) they’ll fade away.

We’ll be free to trade with the world (as if we aren’t already…)? Well here’s the Economist suggesting it’s nowhere near as easy as Brexiteers pretend to negotiate new trade agreements.  This EEA scenario holds no fear for me. But it’s by no means a given, and nor does it achieve much beyond ‘not being in the EU’.
If we aren’t staying in the EEA, then negotiating a new arrangement with Europe will likewise be nowhere near as simple as Brexiteers will have you believe – and it will be negotiated in an atmosphere of bad blood. There will be a recession, and probably a long and deep one. We will in the short to medium term almost certainly be worse off.

However there is a broad strand of ‘Leave’ thought that wants the UK to be the catalyst for the collapse of the entire EU project. The problem is with Brexit, a systemic collapse is far from just being a ‘KIPper’s mastubatory fantasy, it could happen, and there exist outside forces, who’ve already got influence, that will be urging it on. This systemic collapse WILL cause a massive recession, both here and even worse, in the EU, and lead to all the geostrategic points that I’ve been raising in all my previous essays on the subject. Vladimir Putin would be delighted. World trade – heretofore liberalising albeit at a glacial pace would go back by 30 years.
You can’t have it both ways: glory in the imminent collapse of the EU AND paint the downsides of that scenario as ‘Project Fear’ when it’s absolutely what most brexiteers desire, when the mask slips.
You can EITHER control EU immigration OR keep all the trade benefits of the EEA, but not both. Leaving the EU can either be low-risk OR you can control EU immigration and “get our country back”. Not both. 
Even the best case scenario of EEA membership, (which I suspect most Brexiteers only favour to have any chance at all of securing a ‘Leave’ vote at all) will leave the UK not much better off, with significant risks all on the downside, should any more damaging scenarios play out.
Leaving this bloody stupid organisation our idiot neighbours built simply isn’t a good gamble. Stay in, and keep the more excitable Federast knobbers under control as best we can is in the best interests of the UK, and that of our friends and allies on the continent. Basically that means staying in, to work with the Germans to prevent the French screwing everything up. Again.
If leaving was government policy, and I knew therefore which of the options I’d be voting for, and the risks and benefits were clear in advance (and we were opting for EEA…), I’d probably go for it. But it isn’t, they’re not and so I won’t. I’m not taking a risk with my prosperity, just to please idiot ‘KIPpers. That’s that. 
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