Like it or not, it’s impossible to have a Brexit-free day
s a regular solo swimmer at the Hampstead Heath ladies pond, I overhear dozens of conversations a week between women of all ages. Normally it’s dogs, kids and holidays. Sometimes stressful property sales. The pattern of conversation hasn’t changed much in the several years I’ve been a regular. But in the past few weeks, since Boris Johnson took over as a Prime Minister hell bent on ramming through Brexit, it has.
Suddenly, the ladies of the pond have become political, obsessive about the goings-on in Westminster. I’ve noticed the same thing among other normally non-political friends, people who – like me – have generally found Brexit a grinding slog of stubbornness and political arcana. Brexit, for the last three years something we all strove to escape from, has now become wild and exciting, and as addictive as House of Cards – only real.
I get that there are plenty of people craving a day off – especially now, as the intensity of it all has reached fever pitch. I know some people who now forbid the topic at the dinner table, and totally understand why. Indeed Brexit has long been a downer at parties and dinners; even when you’re on the same side as a fellow guest, you could well end up rowing with them about the state of British democracy, the virtues and downsides of the EU bloc, and the perils of the Irish border. Whatever happened to pleasant comments about the weather?
But for those keen on escape, the turmoil of the last few weeks has made it impossible to escape. And you know what? I, for one, have submitted to this with a degree of glee. I can’t help but feel a sneaking admiration for the way our country has finally come to life, politically. Boris’s bucking bronco approach has forced even normally disinterested people, people who just want it all to be over, to get stuck in.
Following the PM’s audacious move to prorogue parliament for five weeks leading up to Oct 14, the sense of living through a moment in parliamentary history that will be pored over for centuries to come has proved intoxicating beyond control.
People are digging up old statute books and bandying around dates as if suddenly life depended on our grasp of the significance of 1678 (a notable Charles II prorogation) and 1854 (Queen Victoria’s two-month-plus prorogue). I ran into a historian friend in Waitrose the other day – a rare Brexiter academic – and like all the other historians I know, including the majority that are Remainers, he was clearly having a field day.
We’d barely got the pleasantries out when, waving about a deli pot of prawn with crushed green peas, he launched into an articulate defence of
Athe constitutionality of prorogation. Eyes flashing, he followed this with a gleeful insistence that, contrary to Remainer rage, nothing could be more democratic.
The Brexit debacle is brainbreakingly complex, from the stakes involved in the Irish backstop to the parliamentary arithmetic required to stop a snap election to the role of the Privy Council and the procedures governing Royal Assent. Newsnight infographics have started to look like rocket science – my whole family, including my physicist father, stared agog at them last Wednesday. Every day the whole scene changes and for ordinary mortals, keeping up has become almost impossible. No wonder many of us avoided it for so long.
But you didn’t need to understand much to appreciate the astounding spectacle of Parliament thrashing for its life as the Prime Minister drove it on to accept the possibility of a no deal. Watching Parliament’s almost pathological refusal to let him was grimly amazing, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the picture of great British democracy in action. Everyone
I know watched aghast as the Prime Minster was cut down not once, not twice, but three times, losing three votes in the space of 24 hours – as a breathless Emily Maitlis pointed out on Wednesday’s Newsnight, that is more than Gordon Brown lost in three years.
With each defeat last week, a triple header that saw the Prime Minister fail to stop a bill to block no-deal Brexit and lose a vote on holding an early election, I was bombarded with updates and observations from friends. Chums who normally care more about the latest hipster eatery in Peckham were suddenly counting the seconds until debates began and pouncing on updates and results as soon as they were announced. In the middle of an epic performance of Beethoven’s at the Proms last Tuesday, the friend I was with began checking Twitter to see how the debate over the anti-nodeal bill in the House was proceeding. Normally, the only thing he checks on Twitter is what the critics have made of the latest indie noir film.
Sane people crave the day Brexit will be resolved, over and done with. In the meantime, there’s nothing quite like the spectacle of politicians fighting like cats and dogs, grandees falling left and right and the prospect of existential Armageddon to keep us hanging on.
I couldn’t help but marvel at the picture of great British democracy in action
architectural variety, countless historical treasures and possibly the best urban swimming options in the world. Let’s not forget either that getting home from anywhere, at any time, is always possible, especially with the night Tube at the weekend.
And while Britain has been charged with being xenophobic and provincial since the Brexit vote, it’s France that has the real problem here.
When Matthew Disney, a British ex-Marine, was forced to abandon the rowing machine he was carrying up Mont Blanc last week for charity due to bad weather, the local mayor responded with xenophobic insults. In a fit of pique, JeanMarc Peillex, 65, the mayor of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, said he couldn’t wait for Brexit so people like Disney would “stay in your island”. In a furious online letter, he wrote: “With such a surname, perhaps he mistook the mountain for an amusement park.”
Imagine if a British mayor did anything remotely similar. Exactly: you can’t. For my money, the M. Peillexs of the world can have their French cake – and capital – and enjoy them. I’ll take our “island” any day.