The Brexit Fiction

The Brexit Fiction

Politicians of both of the UK's main political parties are maintaining that Brexir must happen because they said that the result of the EU referendum would be definitive. That is indeed what they said, despite the fact that all the legislation around the referendum clearly stated that the result could be only advisory. Have you ever known politicians change their mind, their stance on an issue? Who hasn't? So why not change their minds on Brexit. They can't??????…...Empty phrases such as "the will of the people" are used by both sides to maintain this fiction, homage to Orwell. Yet the leaders of the main political parties remain clinging to this Brexit fiction despite overwhelming evidence that Brexit will significantly harm the UK, as indeed a large majority of those same politicians said before the referendum. So, the UK's political leaders are determined to harm the UK. Why?

In the case of Theresa May the situation is obvious: she is trying to hold together a political party that is split in two anyway and will quite surely sooner or later split asunder. She's looking for a temporary fix, as with the DUP alliance. Any withdrawal agreement with the EU will split her party asunder; a «no deal» Brexit will lose her party its traditional commercial and industrial support and possibly make it unelectable, given the consequences, for a generation. (That would of course depend on the opposition response). Anyway, she can't win; she's hanging on.

The case of Jeremy Corbyn is slightly more complex. Asked in a recent interview, six times, whether he thought the UK would be better off in the EU, he six times refused to answer the question. Conclusion? He knows the UK would be better off inside the EU but doesn't want that. So what does he want? No one seems to know but he is a Marxist dogmatist so presumably that has something to do with Marxist dogma. At the moment, he is in a position to potentially bury his political opposition for a generation (what political leader could ask for more?) but apparently doesn't want that. He wants to maintain the Brexit fiction.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us, I think, in a situation where the principal political leaders, for their own political reasons, want to ensure that the UK is damaged one way or another. Maintaining the Brexit fiction ensures this and suits both main political party leaders. But isn't democracy supposed to ensure the welfare of the majority of people; which apparently can't happen in this case. So whither democracy in the UK?