Has our ruling class ever been this out of touch?
Aweek is a long time in politics, or so Harold Wilson once claimed. Harold should try March 2019, when an hour contains at least five years of normal political activity and it takes three minutes to become tired of the phrase “indicative vote”. Parliament will be having an indicative vote on absolutely everything. Except the one thing the country voted for. That’s no longer on offer. Do you reckon they’ll have an indicative vote on Theresa May’s coat? “This House will finally support the terrible Withdrawal Agreement if the Prime Minister will just stop wearing that bloody blue coat.”
“The ayes to the right, SIX HUNDRED AND THREE!”
See, consensus on the unlucky and probably quite stained by now pale blue coat would be easy, compared to Brexit, which is supposed to be happening the day after tomorrow, but won’t because most MPS don’t want it to. Only they haven’t quite found a way of breaking that news to their constituents, many of whom voted to leave the EU and thought that might actually happen, what with, you know, democracy and everything.
If you look at a map of Brexit Britain, it’s actually quite astonishing. The vast sea of Leave constituencies in England and Wales with comparatively modest islands of Remain, almost all in the cities, and Scotland, which was wholly against Brexit. If I was an MP, I’d look at that map and fear for my job. If I was in the Government, I’d think 70 per cent of Conservative voters want to leave the European Union and they think we’ve screwed up, and they’re right. So, indicative votes. Loads of them. As many as possible! To, you know, indicate things. To pass the buck. To make theft look consensual, betrayal look honest. To make Parliament appear to be seeking an answer when, really, they have the answer already but don’t want to hear it.
“The Government ignores Parliament at its peril,” warned Dominic Grieve, that beaky French wading bird of condescension. How about ignoring the electorate, Dominic? How do you reckon that will work out – un peu perilous, non?
“Parliament has fought back!” crowed Sir Keir Starmer. Fought back against whom exactly? Ah, I see. The poor fools who pay for its trips to John Lewis to pick up a telly or a bath mat to use up that generous allowance for its second home. The Prime Minister made herself unpopular with MPS when she said it was the people versus Parliament now, but, for once, she was being brutally honest.
I don’t know about you, but I have moments when I understand all of those who have signed a petition to revoke Article 50. Even if fake bots were signing in Yemen and Ulan Bator, it’s still an awful lot of unhappy people. I told a Remainer friend yesterday that if somebody handed me a button and said: “Press this and you will wake
up in the morning and David Cameron will still be prime minister and things will be roughly OK, quite nice, actually, and all the rancid, seething hatred will be gone and your country will feel like itself and you won’t get into a futile bitter argument on Twitter with a doctor who posted that ‘If you’re probrexit, you’re anti-nhs’, and…”
Well, I would press that button.
Because whatever it was that I voted for, it wasn’t this farcical fudge, this outrageous traducing of decent, ordinary people who were granted a referendum and who, just this once, thought it was worth a shot, thought it might make a difference.
But, then, our politicians are superbly cushioned against life as many voters know it in that Sea of Leave. Michael Buerk, the former news anchor and presenter of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze, tells this week’s Radio Times that, at the BBC, a “quite remarkable proportion of people working on both sides of the microphone” have been privately educated.
Obsessed with diversity and gender balance, the BBC manages to be wildly unrepresentative of the nation it serves. Buerk is spot on. That’s why, when we shout at the radio or TV, we’re almost certainly yelling at some baffled Remainer who went to St Cake’s and simply can’t understand why Brexiteers would be so stupid and ghastly and racist.
From the media to Members of Parliament, when did we see a class of person so out of touch with real people?
Brexit may be endlessly postponed or even cancelled, if they think they can get away with it. But millions of people realising that their elected representatives don’t know or represent them at all? That will come a lot sooner. Put that to an indicative vote and see how it turns out.