04/07/2016
For want of understanding, the politico-media establishment is doing what it always does â churning out a torrent of words. But rather than aid clarity, this does nothing other than draw attention to the single fact that, in its response to the EU referendum, total confusion reigns.
No amount of reading, no careful summarising and no diligent synthesis will deliver clarity. It is not there to be had. After decades of ignoring the detail of our relationship with the European Union, the establishment is well and truly caught out. It really doesn't understand the subject so all it can do is make a great deal of noise, and hope no-one notices.
Thus, after a noise-filled day, we are no better informed than it was when we started. No one has sought to distil the issues down to their essentials. But then to attempt to do so in the current, frenetic climate, would simply add to the noise.
Nevertheless, we need to place on record the essentials which are so far being neglected, making a virtue out of brevity. There are three key questions that should be put to the Conservative Party leadership candidates, and upon their answers they should be judged.
The first is: when would they recommend triggering Article 50, and under what circumstances; second, would they seek to secure full participation in the Single Market; and third, in the event that Single Market participation is sought: how would they reconcile this with the demands for unrestricted free movement of persons?
Anyone who has read and understood this blog over term will know exactly why these are the essentials. Those who do not, by now, are probably beyond help.
The crucial point to make is that anything else is of secondary importance. While we need a Prime Minister who can manage the affairs of government, there is nothing more important at the moment than negotiating a successful withdrawal from the European Union.
As we wrote in
Flexcit (in words that were in the original edition), "the economic consequences of a botched withdrawal could be dire". Any significant perturbation in our relations could cause major disruption to our economy, well beyond just our trade. It could even drive us into recession. There is no margin for error. We cannot afford to get it wrong.
Yet, attempts to avoid "getting it wrong" demand that we do at least have some grasp of the issues. But the evidence that that is the case is almost completely lacking. We are mired in a Westminster soap opera that is generating a great deal of heat and very little light.
In his column on
Sunday, therefore, Booker hit exactly the right note, recalling those famous words by Sir Robert Walpole (pictured) in 1739: "They may ring their bells now. Before long they will be wringing their hands".
Walpole was, wrote Booker, a Tory prime minister who had been reluctantly pushed by a wave of political hysteria into declaring a war on Spain which he rightly feared would end in disaster.
And that fear is again rearing its head. We achieved a great victory Thursday week last, but the truth is that the campaigns by both sides in the referendum have been horribly caught out by the result. Neither had any plan for what to do next. And still, right now, they have no idea â reflected in the mostly vacuous addresses from the leadership candidates.
Mrs May apart, none of them seem to have the first idea of the enormity of what we have done, or the nature of the colossal task that awaits us. If joining what was to become the EU and developing our relations with our European neighbours was one of the most significant policy issues of the latter part of the 20th Century, withdrawal is going to define politics and policy for the first half of the 21st.
Yet only now is the turd
Boris Johnson calling for a "plan", offering (for a fee) five vacuous points that would even disgrace the scribblings on the back of an envelope â demonstrating that he hasn't a clue of how to go about Brexit.
If Brexit is going to be managed at all effectively, we are going to have to have a "remainer" at the helm. Leadsom, along with Gove (Fox hardly matters) are irredeemably tainted by the lies of the Vote Leave campaign and its inability to come up with a plan.
Any person elected as the new Prime Minister will have to stay true to the demands of the majority, but he or she will also have to ignore the promises that Vote Leave so unwisely made. Only a "remain" Prime Minister, in the name of us all, can reject its stupidity and make the "fresh start" that Mrs Leadsom so unconvincingly demands.
That is not to say that Mrs May is by any means perfect, or even a desirable choice. As so often in British politics (and politics generally, it seems), we are faced with a least-worst option. That choice is made easier only by the poverty of the opposition to Mrs May. She may be the least-worst, but others are so considerably worse that there can hardly be an argument about who we should have.
The bigger problem is actually not the leadership, but Parliament itself. It is, after all, that venerable institution which has the task of scrutinising the Executive, and holding it to account. And, in the final stages of the withdrawal process, it will be Parliament which has the last word â in ratifying (or refusing to ratify) the exit settlement.
Yet, on the "leave" side, there was not a single MP who had the courage to face down the Vote Leave campaign and its Rasputin-like campaign director Dominic Cummings, who turned the noble cause of leaving the EU into a national disgrace. All of them â every single one of them â are tainted. There is not one whom you could trust to have the conviction hold the Executive to a sensible deal.
The dire performance of the "leave" MPs, however, does not in any way make the "remains" any better. Their only merit is that they are not "leavers" and are not thus tainted by the Cummings lies. It will be for them to craft the exit plan, and for the "leave" MPs largely to whinge from the sidelines about "bent banana directives" and funding the NHS from the non-existent savings that are supposed to accrue from our withdrawal.
But when all is said and done, it is going to be us, the people, who make the running. The referendum, if nothing else, has shown our current batch of MPs to be a motley crew â profoundly ignorant, opinionated and self-obsessed, with little understanding of how a modern state works.
Booker concludes his piece with the observation that we are entering far more dangerous waters than most people realise. We need all the clear thinking and proper understanding of the rules which was so woefully lacking from the Vote Leave campaign, but which the cooler-headed Theresa May seemed to be offering when she said that "Brexit means Brexit".
Having described the process of leaving as akin to a game of snakes and ladders, Booker opines that the only possible way to navigate to the top of that snakes and ladders board, and to give the British people the goal they voted for on 23 June 23, is for the MPs to elect Mrs May.
But behind that is Flexcit. We must hope that those civil servants who have been studying our plan will find that it is the way out of the labyrinth into which, for the right if not fully understood reasons, we have now placed ourselves.
If not, it will not be long before we are wringing our hands, as the enormity of what we have done, and failed to do, sinks in.
