Politics

Can you hear us yet, Boris Johnson? Brexit is over. The only question is what comes next


The only reasonable explanation for how badly Brexit is going is that Boris Johnson is being paid to destroy it.

Because since he entered Downing Street, accompanied by all the architects of this big idea, the progress, appearance and tone of it has only got worse.

In little over a week he has become weaker, less popular, and more doomed to failure than Theresa May. He has done more to damage the Union than Irish republicans or Scots nationalists, spaffed more cash up the wall than a Kazakh money-launderer, and done more to unite his opponents than the Large Hadron Collider has to smash atoms together.

He’s even started a clock counting down on his own political career, like a lemming dangling its foot over Beachy Head to see how far away the rocks are. Just a little further, you’re nearly there…

The number and type of Tory rebels have multiplied. His Parliamentary majority has been rendered near-invisible. He has taken May’s red lines, which she was forced to abandon for being unworkable, and burned them into his own forearms.

 

Three years after he complained about a government spending £9m on a leaflet, he’s blowing £138m on billboards. Project Fear has turned into Project Worse Than That, with £6bn needed to allay the problems that have been identified since he told us there was nothing to worry about.

And in Brecon and Radnorshire yesterday, in a by-election where the Tories outspent the Lib Dems on Facebook ads by 4 to 1 and focused on their leader rather than the candidate, he lost a constituency that only 2 years ago had a 8,000 Tory majority and was 52-48 in favour of Brexit.

Boris Johnson
Well, bugger

 

In the 15 by-elections that have been held since 2015, the Tories have gained just one seat. That was Copeland, back in February 2017 when a party promising to Leave still had the future on its side.

In the same period, poll trackers show that the country has been resolutely Remain. The last 3 by-elections have all been held in Leave constituencies, and each was won by a Remain-voting candidate.

If Johnson was right – if Brexit was a winner – this should not be happening. The great deal he once predicted would have been struck. The working majority in Parliament would have voted the deal through. His party would be united, while the Remainers splintered in confusion. Big business would be fighting to set up shop here. We would have left already.

If Johnson was a man of the people, if he had his finger on the pulse, he’d have switched sides again. He could still have been PM, that way, but with an economy that had stopped stuttering, a mandate for rebuilding Britain, and the money with which to do it.

ARSE!

 

Instead the best deal we got was a bad one. The DUP took the money and ran while the Tories rebelled against each other. Brexit supporters split into hardliners, reluctants, rebels and defectors. The cause has attracted racists, fascists, rioters and the worst dingleberries that Donald Trump fandom can produce.

Yet this is still a cause for which 17.4m mostly non-racist, non-mental citizens voted for. They voted for Johnson’s idea, in the belief that he had a plan and the things he said were honestly-believed, if not entirely true.

And it is they who have been most let down to find that all he now offers to deliver are the things they never wanted and expressly voted against – closing Parliament, dividing the country, and wasted taxpayer billions.

They’d all want a selfie with Curtis off Love Island too – it doesn’t mean they’d vote for him

In Brecon he succeeded only in uniting the Remain candidates. Although theoretical Leave votes were still in the majority, they splintered into being pro-May’s deal, pro-No Deal, pro-some other deal, or pro-screaming into the void.

And there was no ‘Boris Bounce’. He is officially the least popular PM in their first week of office. He is the only one to have been heckled in the capitals of four different nations in as many days. The Lib Dems’ successful alliance with Plaid Cymru, Change UK and the Greens, in which they stood aside to allow a clear run at the seat, is now set to be repeated in Wales’ 40 constituencies, and 50 or more elsewhere.

  

The best that Johnson can come up with is to ask the EU to abolish the backstop which this country first demanded. Even if he were to win this argument with his former self, that Northern Ireland issue must still be resolved in whatever trade deal we eventually strike with the EU.

The border, in places, bisects living rooms, roads, farms, businesses, and petrol pumps. Unless he can find a technological solution for a chicken, housewife and gallons of unleaded criss-crossing that border 74 times a day, it simply cannot be done, however desperately he throws resources and words at it.

Ken Livingstone gives a reply to a question from a listener, as The Mayor of London Boris Johnson (R) looks on
“Ooh, ooh, d’you know who that reminds me of? Six letters, rhymes with whittler…”

Those decent and intelligent people who voted for Leave are jaded, disappointed, and bemused. They are watching something unfold that looks disorganised, extravagant, and hopeless. They see it being done in their name. The crazy, blind ones are enthused, and they think it’s all for them, too.

That Brexit will fail is clearer than ever. Parliament is more belligerent, the maths is worse, the rebels have multiplied. Our preparedness for No Deal, with less than 100 days to go, is less advanced than it was in spring. Johnson has vowed to let the EU sweat without any talks while that deadline looms, while sending envoys to negotiate with people whose gambit is to watch him fail.

No Deal is more likely, but also less possible. A general election is definite, and the chances of a majority vanishingly small. The problem he, and we, should bend our minds to is not what colour unicorns we want. It is what we will do when 17.4m people realise they’ve been had.

“Is there a fire escape?”

For many, Brexit was an article of faith. When it is disproved – whether by a disastrous departure or, to their eyes, an equally-bad Remaining – they will be as angry as an ardent Catholic who finds out Jesus was transgender and the priest has been buggering the cat.

 

That anger has to go somewhere. Blame will be apportioned, and judging from the past 3 years it will not be done correctly. You might relish the thought of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel tearing each other limb from limb, but none of us will enjoy seeing the same vicious despair play out in our own family, at our own dinner table, or in our own office.

When Brexit fails, there must be forgiveness for those who started this, and those who will end it. There must also be a reckoning, but in the form of an official inquiry rather than civil unrest. To let the blame flap free, like a whip on a rollercoaster, would be just as fatal to this nation’s sanity as Brexit was.

When Johnson loses, he and his cohorts must be the only ones to sink. And the rest of us, rise up to take our country back to the one place we can agree we want to go – a happy, and prosperous, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

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