Politicians are enjoying Brexit too much for my liking
With nine days until we leave the EU, we watch events unfold with pinch-me disbelief
‘Paging G Fawkes. Would a Mr G Fawkes please make himself known at the front gate of the House of Commons. Forty million people have left him a package containing firelighters and a box of matches…”
Before you accuse me of hate speech, let me make one thing crystal clear: I don’t actually want to see Parliament burnt down. If the Speaker and most of the elected representatives were taken to the Terrace and chucked in the Thames, that would be sufficient.
It is nine days till we leave the European Union – “I guarantee that we will be leaving the EU on the 29th of March” (Theresa May) – and not only do we not seem to be leaving, no one has the faintest clue what we are doing. The Commemorative Brexit coins have been delayed due to “confusion over the date of departure”. At some point in the last week, it was actually suggested that a way out of this mess would be provided by a lawyer called Pannick!
According to witnesses, after John Bercow went rogue and ruled out a third vote on Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement, citing a precedent from 1604, there were “collective hysterics” in the International Press Centre in Brussels. Our Parliament has made us an international laughing stock. A resounding 82 per cent of MPS were elected on manifestos promising to honour the result of the referendum. They had one job – and they failed.
“Never before has the political class of this country been held in such contempt. Every day, new revelations of MPS’ greed, dishonesty and venality provoke further waves of justified anger.” Those words were published 10 years ago at the height of the expenses’ scandal, which was uncovered by The Telegraph. They could be reprinted today, except greed, dishonesty and venality would have to be replaced with incompetence, shamelessness and brazen contempt for the voters.
Do they realise what effect their shenanigans are having outside the Westminster bubble? One veteran Conservative Party activist tells me she tried to rally the troops recently for the local elections in May. “Literally no one is willing to volunteer to do anything.” A frustrated businessman wrote to me saying that, although he voted Remain, he had made preparations for leaving on the 29th. “It’s uncertainty that will kill my company, not Brexit.”
The country is at the end of its tether. Daily, we watch shambolic events unfold with pinch-me disbelief. Meanwhile, our politicians look like they’re having the time of their lives. Another amendment to bicker over? Yippee, bring it on! A chance to sit in an outside broadcast studio and say clueless, contradictory things to the nation at this Historic Moment? Bingo!
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that many are simply too thick to grasp the issues.
Seriously, nothing would surprise us any more. Not Cabinet ministers failing to back the Prime Minister’s deal yet somehow hanging on to their jobs. Not the blatantly biased Speaker showing disregard for the rules when it suits the Remain cause but insisting on their strict observance when it doesn’t. Not the fact that May’s deal actually offers a lot of what Labour says it wants, but Jeremy Corbyn is too much of a tribal bigot to show statesmanship and reach consensus with the hated Tories.
Not Philip Hammond slyly failing to make no-deal preparations that would have strengthened his country’s cause until it was too late. Not the People’s Vote posse cheering the prospect of an Article 50 extension because it brings a divisive second referendum nearer. (Even though the country is dead set against another referendum.) And not ERG hardliners rejecting the deal in the belief they can still enjoy the purists’ Brexit, despite being up against 600 Remainer MPS who would eat their own children to stop that happening.
None of this is even remotely shocking. Not once you’ve accepted the fact that our Parliament is full of monstrously self-aggrandising politicians who have forgotten about us and who have turned Westminster into a Brian Rix farce.
Trouble is, it’s not even funny. The long-term damage to Parliamentary democracy is incalculable. Millions will think twice before voting again. “You, the British people, will decide,” David Cameron said in his Chatham House speech. How hopeful those words sounded then, how hollow now.
What a savage irony it would be if Brexit, in part the heartfelt cry of people who thought a remote, arrogant metropolitan elite weren’t listening to them, is thwarted by a remote, arrogant metropolitan elite who don’t want to listen. Forcing through any Brexit now is a matter of vital national importance.
See those gilets jaunes burning shops on the Champs-elysées? Well, if our ruling class thinks it can ignore the biggest democratic vote in British history, then they’re coming here. Guy Fawkes won’t be needed. Fireworks guaranteed.