“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.
So begins a great piece by Allister Heath the Telegraph which attempts to explain the current madness surrounding Brexit.
The insane part is not, of course, the perfectly sensible decision by 17.4 million people to leave the sclerotic, corrupt, anti-democratic, socialistic, supra-national tyranny the EU.
All the insanity lies on the Remainer side of the argument: this extraordinary belief these losers have that if only they wriggle and squeal and lie and distract and insult and cheat and prevaricate hard enough, they can somehow prevent the inevitable from happening.
They can’t and they won’t. Things that are inevitable are, by definition, unavoidable. Brexit is inevitable not because people like me – and you, dear reader – wish it to be so. It’s inevitable because as even the most cursory glance at global geopolitical currents will tell you, populism is on the march; the old Social Democratic order which has held the world in thrall since the end of the Second World War is on its last legs; from Brazil to the US, from Italy to Hungary, the citadels of the globalist elite are crumbling.
Davos Man is readying his rocket escape pod. It’s all over and in his heart, he knows it. Brexit is going to happen because it cannot not happen.
This is why it would be so much better for all of us if the Remainers just did the decent thing and capitulated gracefully. “All right, have your No Deal,” they could say. “But if it goes horribly wrong and it becomes clear that Britain would have been better off in the European Union, as we argued, then we reserve the right to make you Brexiteers pay. We’ll vote you out of power and we’ll impose our values on you and you’ll see how much better things are and how right we were. So there!” If that were to happen it would a perfect example of a functioning democracy at its best.
But I’m not optimistic this will happen. Nor is Allister Heath, though he does paint a tantalising picture of the dream scenario: one in which Theresa May’s Conservative government seized this historic opportunity to crush the forces of socialism for at least a generation.
All the Conservative government has to do is fully embrace Brexit. His argument is summed up in this par:
The Tories should be targeting at least 40 per cent of the electorate, a Brexit coalition of centre-Right middle-class voters (there are plenty left, especially in the shires and suburbs), the patriotic working class, and aspiring immigrant communities. They should forget about prosperous uber-Remainers in Islington or Wimbledon – with the arrival of the TIGs, the Left-wing, “progressive”, self-righteously metropolitan component of the middle class is now a lost cause – and target instead those groups that should be voting for a Brexit Tory party but aren’t.
Yes exactly. As Heath explains – and as I argued here the other week – the new centrist semi-party calling itself The Independent Group (TIG) has split the Labour vote. If Jeremy Corbyn was ever a force to be reckoned with – which I doubt – his mojo has now been stolen away from him by looks-great-in-a-suit Chuka Umunna and his gang of Blairite Remoaner squishes.
The early polling is crystal-clear: The Independent Group’s (TIG) pro-Remain, social-democratic identity will dramatically split the Leftist vote. YouGov puts the TIGs on a hypothetical 18 per cent were they to field candidates nationally, with Corbyn’s Labour on 23 per cent (down from 40 per cent at the election) and the Tories on 36 per cent (down from 42.4 per cent).
So yes, that would be the rational move for the Conservatives: to grasp the Brexit nettle and clean up with the majority Brexit electorate, appealing to a broad demographic not dissimilar to the one that supported Margaret Thatcher.
Unfortunately, it almost certainly won’t happen – largely I think because of David Cameron.
Though we think of David Cameron (if at all) these days as the Prime Minister who wasn’t that bad because at least he wasn’t Theresa May, what we forget is that he was actually the agent of Satan – “the heir to Blair”, as he styled himself – responsible for removing every last vestige of conservatism from the Conservative party by stuffing every other constituency with spineless Blairites like himself. The Tory grassroots is overwhelmingly for Brexit; but the parliamentary party is not, which is why you have this ugly spectacle of a parliament riding roughshod over the will of the voters it is supposed to serve.
This is what Jacob Rees-Mogg was on about when, during his sell-out show at the London Palladium the other night, he said that he didn’t believe a No Deal Brexit was now possible:
He says he’s ready for no deal. ‘But I don’t think we’ve got the votes in parliament for it,’ he admits. So he has changed tactics, and is ready to back an extension of Article 50 in the hope of improving Theresa May’s deal. ‘If three months’ delay is the price we have to pay to get out properly… well, three months in the history of our great nation is a mere bagatelle. We can live with that. So we are very optimistic and we will make sure that Brexit succeeds.’
Part of me wants to share Rees-Mogg’s optimism.
But then I look at the slow-motion train wreck that is Theresa May and I just go: “No.”
I go even more “No” when I look at the Remainers. They’ll love the comparison, I’m sure, but they remind me of the faction in Germany during the last year of the War who didn’t want to ease the pain by making truce with the Allies, but insisted on Götterdämmerung.
In a parallel universe, what happens in the next few week’s is truly amazing. Theresa May puts country and party before personal ideology, goes for a No Deal Brexit, then resigns gracefully and the Conservatives are taken over by the faction including Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss, Steve Baker, Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab that believes in limited government, low taxes, deregulation, free speech and free trade. Britain prospers. Socialism is consigned to oblivion.
Meanwhile in this one it all goes to pot. Theresa May, true to what Heath calls her “distaste for commerce, capitalism and conservative values”, continues to chase the votes of TIG style Remoaner centrists, kills Brexit – and reaps a whirlwind.
Good news for Nigel Farage. Good news for Jeremy Corbyn. Good news for Tommy Robinson who told me this morning he’d love to stand for parliament given half the chance.
But too interesting for my tastes. Way too interesting.
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