The multiple nuances of moving next door

Cor blimey! What a kerfuffle! Talk about a dog’s breakfast.

In some ways those oldfashioned words are all you can say about the Brexit shenanigans which have dominated everything this week. They make as much constructive sense as anything else I’ve heard.

We were offered not a whiff of joined-up-thinking after the Prime Minister’s preparing-to-leave plan was torn to pieces by Westminster jackals, vultures and other carrion-eaters. When individual members of political parties seem to be barking up different trees, how can “constructive” be used in relation to anything?

It’s not only politicians. I watched BBC Question Time and every member of the audience seemed to have their own take on Brexit – although there was an underlying consensus which hinted at a shared confusion.

I’ve never seen anything so divisive – and I have this unpleasant mental image of David Cameron looking sheepish in his luxurious Cotswold shepherd’s hut, watching the nation slowly sinking in the quagmire and muttering: “I did that!”

Thanks Dave. Here’s 30 years of hard-labour in Dartmoor jail as a reward. And no, you can’t take that shepherd’s hut with you to the granite quarries, or your Bullingdon Club tie.

Back in the uncomfortable land of reality, it has all been moving so rapidly, the hours that exist between me writing these words and you reading them might have brought about yet more mayhem. However, if a visiting Martian was asking for a low-down, you could pool the electorate into three main groups…

There are remainers, like me. The people who know globalisation is a reality and that we’d better deal with it by working closely with others rather than by sticking our heads into the nationalistic sand. Remainers say that, unless there is a worldwide ban on the internet and global trade, the future is with us now. What we need is joined-up thinking rather than parochial barricade-building.

Then there are out-and-out leavers who would quit the EU without any deal. They make up the smallest of the three groups – mainly because most hard-headed business leaders with no political axe to grind warn that this would be disastrous for the economy, jobs, food and medicine supplies, and just about everything else.

What many find perplexing about this group is that they seem willing to enter a future that has no plan of action. Politicians who stop at nothing when trashing the efforts of those trying to reach an EU accord become extremely vague when extolling the golden promise of unfettered future trade.

How unusual it would be for a homeowner to say: “I don’t like it here anymore. I’m leaving. Right now, without making any arrangements at all. I’ll drop the keys at the estate agent’s on the way – and leave it to them, or a solicitor, or someone, to sort everything out. They can send me a cheque, or a bill, in the post. When I know where I’m going, that is.”

By far the largest of the three groups is made up of those who feel a bit let-down, a bit angry, and a lot confused. Folk who voted either way or not at all in the wretched referendum – but who now say: “I wish they’d just get on with it.”

But get on with what? This is the problem. There is no one “it” which makes up the last part of the word Brexit. There never was. That’s why Cameron’s ludicrous “in or out” referendum always was going to cause such a mess.

Everything in this world is full of nuance and that obviously is the case when it comes to complex international relationships.

Put a backstop here and you have Scottish unrest there. Insist on it and you could break up the Union.

Put a tariff here, and there you could see the formation of the world’s biggest lorry park clogging Kentish motorways. Demand this, and you lose the benefit of that. Drop out of this later, and you could pay the price sooner.

It’s not a case, as some think, of nasty bureaucrats in Brussels devising problems. Nor can you make simplistic analogies and say Brexit is like severing a limb. The present mess is what happens when you attempt to reverse four decades of integration.

It’s like having a huge shared house in which you have, over 40 years, contributed to building the electrics, plumbing, floorboards and everything else – then one day saying you want to move next door. But you still want some of the benefits the house offers, although you want rid of any responsibility.

“So you want to keep a front door key which means we won’t know who’s locking up at night,” say your old housemates. “And you want occasional use of the loo? So how much will you pay for the toilet paper?”

A nightmare scenario. Which presumably, at the time of writing, is why Mrs May cannot find a new Brexit Secretary.

There is no one ‘it’ which makes up the last part of the word Brexit...