{"id":1051,"date":"2018-07-14T08:43:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-14T07:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2018-07-18T07:53:44","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T06:53:44","slug":"abandon-tory-brexitshambles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/abandon-tory-brexitshambles\/","title":{"rendered":"Abandon Tory #BrexitShambles\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Laughter in the Commons as Theresa May pays tribute to Boris Johnson and David Davies after their resignations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sunday 8 July I offered something to Liberal Democrat Voice<\/i> suggesting that it\u2019s time to switch the language on Brexit into an explicit attack on \u201cTory Brexit\u201d. The resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson took that a great deal further, and left me wondering what further resignations would happen before it was read on Liberal Democrat Voice<\/i>, and whether we will be in another Tory leadership contest, or hurtling into a General Election.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been forceful posturing about \u201cgetting a good deal\u201d and \u201chow these negotiations work\u201d and \u201cabandonment of Brexit\u201d. On the other side of the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn quipped that May\u2019s Brexit deal took \u201ctwo years to form and two days to unravel\u201d.<\/p>\n


\nIn among the noise and the drama, Sophie in \u2019t Veld the Dutch D66 \/ ALDE MEP was interviewed on the Today<\/i> programme on 9 July, saying that Brexit is about damage limitation — she expressed regret that it is happening, but the priority is to limit damage on both sides from what I\u2019m bound to call the UK\u2019s monumental act of self harm. Nothing there about \u201cgood deals\u201d or \u201cpunishment\u201d or \u201cstatus\u201d, just a wise leader acting wisely. At least there are people in the European Parliament who are looking out for our interests.<\/p>\n

Prior to that weekend, I had been hearing whispers from Labour about \u201cTory Brexit\u201d, with the implication that it\u2019s time to shift the rhetoric. Labour has had to move gradually in order to not lose faith with those Labour supporters who voted Leave. It\u2019s been difficult to talk about lies from the Leave campaign without seeming to accuse people of being gullible.<\/p>\n

The temperature had already been changing, with mounting evidence that the Leave campaign broke electoral<\/a> law (likely to lead to action from the Electoral Commission<\/a>) and cynically lied<\/a>, preying on people\u2019s fears, rather than helping to enable the sort of engage that would have enabled people to make an informed decision. The snag is that those things are as likely to contribute to cynicism about politics as they to pressure for a meaningful People\u2019s Vote on Brexit.<\/p>\n

Support for Brexit has seemed to be a mix of people holding fantasies of Britain\u2019s questionably-glorious Imperial past, and the financially-excluded expressing real pain. It\u2019s increasingly sounding like the privileged duping those who have already lost out.<\/p>\n

Vocal support for Brexit is now the domain of the Tory right wing. Not the natural voice of the left-behind.<\/p>\n

I suspect we will find out rather soon whether the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson are driven by principle, or self-interested preparations for a leadership challenge.<\/p>\n

The rumour mill is also suggesting that Theresa May edging towards putting country ahead of party — arguing that her proposals are the best option on Brexit for the UK. From where I stand, they show that there is no Brexit deal that is as good as full EU membership. But what we are now seeing is the Tory right wing showing its true colours. These are the people driving Brexit now, and whose lies in the Leave campaign were most outrageous, because they came from people who had some claim to be political leaders.<\/p>\n

Its tempting to get sucked into the Tory soap opera. It\u2019s actually time to heed the words of Sophie in \u2019t Veld and limit the damage from the Tory fantasies. It\u2019s time to attack Tory Brexit — in the full knowledge that the choice is between Tory Brexit and no Brexit.<\/p>\n

And the probability of a 2018 General Election has gone up. The country needs Liberal Democrats and Labour both to oppose the disastrous consequences of Tory Brexit.<\/p>\n

\nOriginal version published on Liberal Democrat Voice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harold Wilson once said \u201ca week is a long time in politics\u201d\u2026 The weekend after Theresa May’s “agreement” on Brexit at Chequers make that sound like an understatement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[72],"tags":[21,190,191],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit-politics","tag-brexit","tag-chequers-agreement","tag-tory-brexit-chaos"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}