Politicians in no-man’s land never knew what they wanted from Brexit
YOUR otherwise cogent reporting on Theresa May’s humiliation in the House of Commons vote on Tuesday (‘Humiliation for May after huge Brexit deal defeat’, Irish Independent, January 16) contains one surprising comment and one white elephant in the room.
The surprising comment is that Boris Johnson is a hardline Brexiteer. This totally misunderstands, or misrepresents Johnson’s raison d’etre. During France’s wars of religion in the 16th century, Henry IV, a Protestant converted to Catholicism, was quoted as saying that “Paris was worth a Mass”.
Similarly, when, to the bewilderment of his sister and brother, Boris Johnson turned from being an ardent European to a Brexiteer, one could almost hear him whispering: “No 10 is worth the scorn of people of principle.”
The white elephant is what is Theresa May’s endgame?
May was, maybe is, a Remainer, who stood on the fence at the time of the Brexit vote, vastly superior in her political understanding than Johnson. In the event, she took the chalice, in her naivety not realising how poisoned it was.
During two years of negotiations, with the inane David Davis as her European agent, absolutely nothing was resolved or agreed, except that the hapless Davis and the Brexiteers didn’t have any idea of what to do; that they had no plan for exiting the EU and, because of this, they were the most irresponsible group of spoilers. Because, there is no answer. There is no Plan B for Monday. There is no room for further discussions with the EU, which the leaders of the EU have told the UK.
The Tory Brexiteers and the DUP are living in a wonderland of their overworked fantasies; there is no chance of movement on the backstop; this has been made more than clear by the EU. In short, they are all in a state of denial because none of them has a policy, which begs the question of the reason of their political existence. They are all running about like March hares precisely because they do not know, and have never known, what they want other than pouring oil on the flames on the despondence of the British working class, which itself has been brought about by the class warfare waged against it for decades and centuries by that very Conservative Party. There will be no hard Brexit.
The UK will remain in the EU after March.
It may be that the UK will remain in the economic union, accepting free movement through the EU and Britain, but no political union.
Or there may be no Brexit at all. Harry Charalambou
Muswell Hill, London, England