Juliet SAMUEL
Over-confidence and a lack of realism since the 2017 general election have blighted their strategy
Since the referendum of 2016, it’s been popular to depict the reaction of the losing side as a very slow progression through the “stages of grief ”, as described by two Swiss psychiatrists in the Sixties. In response to loss, the subject first goes into denial, then exhibits anger, next starts trying to bargain her way out of the situation before succumbing to depression and finally reaching acceptance.
Today was meant to be the first day of our life as a newly independent country. That it isn’t indicates that the last stage of grief – acceptance – was never reached. On the contrary, it now appears that even as the Eurosceptics were still crowing over their victory and taking ever-more extreme positions on Brexit, it was in fact they who had gone into denial. They lost their ideal Brexit when the Tories lost their majority in 2017. Yet rather than salvaging what they could from the situation, they embarked upon a doomed march into the wilderness.
Along the way, I have lost count of the number of times Tory Brexiteers assured me that everything was on track. “Number 10 is fully onside,” they declared. “The legislation has already been passed,” they exclaimed. “Nothing can stop us,” they boasted.
Today, all of this talk is revealed as meaningless bravado. The refusal to admit this earlier and compromise has set the country on a path towards a catastrophic denial of the referendum result. Jacob Rees-mogg, for all his enlightening discourses on the British constitution, failed to acknowledge that ultimately Parliament can do what it likes, especially when faced with such a cripplingly weak Prime Minister. He was rightly monstered by Emily Maitlis on Newsnight this week for having said that he could vote for an agreement he described only in November as turning Britain into a “slave state”. Perhaps, if he had realised this earlier, he could have tried to persuade his DUP friends.
Nor have the holdouts had a better war. Sir Bill Cash, reiterating his opposition to the deal in Parliament yesterday, declared obscurely: “The British people will be incredibly angry and they will be very devastated if the repeal of the repeal of the 1972 Act takes place!” They might well be, Sir William, but not if anything about this is led or explained by you. Meanwhile, arch brexiteer Steve Baker won wild applause from the European Research Group this week when he declared that he was “consumed by a ferocious rage” at their situation. I think it is safe to say that he and his colleagues have reached the “anger” stage of grief.
Perhaps, when they get beyond rage, they might reflect upon their own role in this. In June 2017, when the election results rolled in, I knew that the Brexit negotiations were doomed. Without a majority, Theresa May’s credibility was shot to pieces. She wouldn’t be able to play hardball, issue ultimatums or deliver on anything. The next day I expressed this doubt to a staunch Brexiteer. “I don’t see how it changes anything,” he said breezily.
It was this over-confidence that had already prompted so many Tory MPS to push Mrs May into the foolish act of triggering Article 50 prematurely, a mistake for which they now blame her. As Mr Rees-mogg admitted recently, he now sees that Brexit might be a “process” rather than “an event”.
Over the months of botched negotiations that followed the election, Brexit ministers briefed repeatedly that it was all going swimmingly. After the December 2017 agreement that created the backstop, one Cabinet minister confidently offered an interpretation of the document that was incompatible with the text. Another minister said that the Government would of course draft a suitable legal text to deliver its aims, so there was nothing to worry about. In fact, our Government waited three months for Brussels to draft the text. Brexiteer MPS said that although ill-informed outsiders might have doubts, they had been positively assured by No 10 that all was well.
As it became clearer and clearer that all was not well in Government, the fall-back position was to state that, anyway, Brexit was unstoppable. They had enshrined the very date of our departure in law, for goodness’ sake!
In retrospect, privately, some now admit they were naïve. A popular stance is to blame civil servants. A former Cabinet minister describes how documents would “pass back and forth over my desk”, but when this person raised objections, they would disappear into the bureaucracy. There were arguments not followed up on, grumbling that never coalesced into action, meetings with the Prime Minister with no result.
One former minister describes Brexiteer ministers being stonewalled at every turn by Olly Robbins and co when demanding that the UK pursue a Canada-style free trade agreement. But who could possibly enable a civil servant to wield this much power? Only a prime minister, obviously, either by intention or by a negligent absence of decision-making. In a power vacuum, the civil service is just a machine that tends towards continuity. Brexit was never its revolution to lead.
At no point did it seem to occur to these Brexiteer politicians that they were being boxed in at every turn. At no point did they admit that pure victory was impossible and convene an urgent meeting about how to unite behind a new, coherent strategy in response. They allowed others to shape the compromise that emerged, and now they have even lost that.
Their last refuge, perhaps in the “depression” phrase of grief, is to rail about how unfair all of this is. Yes, it is jolly unfair. Brexit won the referendum fair and square. But politics isn’t some school football match in which a teacher is going to intervene if someone engages in a nasty tackle. If you want to visit a revolutionary change upon a country, you’d damn well better be up to the fight.
I’ve always had an odd, emotional fondness for Westminster’s Eurosceptics. They are an awkward clan of characters with an outsized share of talent. There are creative genii, hard-drinking rabble-rousers, geeky, introverted wonks, principled believers, know-it-all intellectuals and even a few ambitious smooth-talkers. At its best, this movement is inspired, original and brilliant. But it also suffers from an excess of factionalism, pettiness and fanaticism. It is a tragedy that these failings have been allowed to thwart its strengths, that, having won the chance to change things, it was unable to wield power.
The fight will move now to a protracted negotiation over the political declaration, with the spectre of a second referendum looming ever larger. It isn’t over yet. But before the Brexiteers move on to play the second half, it’s time for a long, hard think about how they ended up here.
Rather than salvaging what they could from the situation, they marched into a wilderness