The endless claim that there are no solutions to Brexit is pure insanity
This dangerous lie is being told to discredit any attempt to find a deal that will make Brexit feasible
Most of the talk outside Westminster isn’t about political realities any more. Almost everybody you speak to now is discussing pathology. Precisely what personality aberration or psychodynamic imperative has produced the latest bizarre behaviour from one side or the other of the Brexit farrago. The general consensus is that all the principal players have gone technically insane. The mystifying obtuseness of Theresa May is countered by the wild opprobrium of Donald Tusk. There are grown-ups entrusted with responsibilities for the well-being of whole populations who are wishing their opponents eternal damnation.
Social and diplomatic conventions are dissolving. Can this really be happening? The best evidence for this being what it seems – certifiable madness, rather than tactical bluster
– is the lying. Telling more and more brazen, desperate untruths has to be the giveaway. The mendacity that prevails now goes way beyond the hyperbole that made the early stages of this drama rather absurdly endearing.
Forget George Osborne’s emergency budget and the mass loss of jobs that would follow instantly on a Leave victory in the referendum. That’s all water under the bridge.
Listen to what is being said most recently, not just about the professional politicians but the ordinary people who were deluded enough to vote the way they did (and would do again, according to most opinion polling). They are not just benighted bigots, apparently. Nor are they simply daft sentimentalists who refuse to let go of their fantasy version of the Second World War.
No, they are – I find this almost too ridiculous to write – nostalgic for the great days of the British Empire. This calumny, which is new to the repertoire, is suddenly being repeated endlessly. Who on earth thought this up? Having spoken over the past two years to Leave supporters of pretty much every social class, every professional level and every political persuasion, from white van men to economics professors, I find this claim utterly asinine. Not a single person I have met – not a single, solitary one – has made any reference at all, favourable or unfavourable, to Britain’s imperial past in accounting for his decision to vote Leave.
They have sometimes (but not as often as Remain caricatures would suggest) mentioned the Blitz spirit – but such talk was almost always ironic. Of course, this Empire-nostalgia fabrication is peculiarly defamatory in an age of postcolonial guilt. Perhaps it is designed to shame all those Commonwealth migrants who voted Leave, whom Remainers never acknowledge. (Oddly, no one thought to castigate the ex-colonial message on the famous “thank-you” card from the people of Ireland to Jean-Claude Juncker which proclaimed that the British “don’t care about peace in Ireland” – a truly wicked thing to say.)
In any event, the allegation is so outrageously groundless that it has to be an indication of derangement: what sane adult could utter it with a straight face? And what could they hope to gain by it?
But this is just mood music: a song for the frenzied Remain lobby to sing that will reinforce its conviction that its adversaries are delusional and malevolent. There is another much more dangerous deception that is being given credence by endless repetition, which chimes conveniently with the Tusk theme of the Leave campaigners who didn’t have any plan.
This is the strange chant that is gaining in volume as the deadline closes in: There Are No Solutions. You can just hear the spin merchants behind the curtain hissing the lines to the leading performers: “The Brady amendment is nonsense, every proposed compromise is a myth, the Irish border problem is insoluble. So just keep repeating: There Are No Solutions.”
Unlike the Imperial Nostalgia smear, this lie has a clear practical objective: to discredit any attempt to find a way through to a deal that will make Brexit feasible. The goal is to make it seem impossible, or at least totally irresponsible, to leave. And it is, again, utterly false. From the outset, there were substantial proposals for resolving the problems that would follow our exit from the EU.
The political barnstorming and showmanship that dominated the referendum campaign was, in fact, informed by considerable academic and legal research into the foreseeable complexity of our withdrawal. But
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion since the Referendum result, that early work has expanded exponentially.
There is now a veritable compendium of learned exegesis – from Shanker Singham’s exposition of the possibilities of a free-trade agreement and Martin Howe’s legal analyses, to the magisterial historical studies of Professor Robert Tombs – presenting Remain with a formidable case to answer.
Indeed, the Letters page of this newspaper has made extraordinary contributions of professional insight and argument that any conscientious interlocutor should feel obliged to address. But no – the myth remains beyond the reach of rational disputation: There Are No Solutions.
It is stated, for example, with a kind of stupefying complacency, that the technology needed to avoid a hard border in Ireland “doesn’t exist”. Of course it doesn’t. It hasn’t been needed before now. To adapt existing technological border solutions to the specific needs of Ireland will be entirely within the bounds of human ingenuity. With even a modicum of good will and generosity of spirit, this problem – and the others – could have a feasible resolution.
Ah, there’s the crucial note. Are we – the EU and ourselves – sensible allies and friendly neighbours who wish for the best possible outcome for all of our peoples? Or, as a psychoanalyst might say, are there irrational, unforgotten resentments – guilt, and remorse, and rivalry, and regret, on all sides – that are pushing this supposedly practical process into inchoate rage? Can anybody put a stop to this, or are we moving with appalling inevitability – as was said about the steps toward the First World War – toward unintended disaster?
Are we and the EU sensible allies and friendly neighbours – or riven by irrational, unforgotten resentments?