We were told by the Right that the economic crash was the
fault of Labour spending yet for years after Labour failed to dispel this
untruth. Now we are told that Brexit is the “will of the people” and nobody has
the courage to deny this either. Labour
must, if it is ever to win again, learn the lesson that it must gainsay the
mantras fed to the public by Lynton Crosby et al.
We are told that the Brexit negotiations are aimed at
minimising the negative impact of leaving the EU. By implication as well as by all available
evidence, any other future model will be worse for the rights of citizens and
worse for our economic future. Brexit “hard” or “soft”, Norwegian models or
joining EFTA are all worse than where we are now, so why not say so? The
negative impacts can be avoided completely if we stay, yet our leaders fail to
say so, terrified of gainsaying “the will of the people”, the latest mantra of
the xenophobes.
The referendum should not have been allowed to go
unchallenged. Cameron should not have been allowed to decide that a simple
majority could change our Constitution for ever nor that the vote should be
mandatory. These went unchallenged and were accepted into Labour thinking, so
much so that they joined forces with the Right to enable the signing of Article
50. This brought Brexit back into Parliament’s aegis and rendered arguments
about the referendum’s validity redundant. We know that most MPs are Remainers
yet allow them to continue to act as if we must now accept a second-best future
or worse. Anyone who dares to suggest
that “the will of the people” makes Remaining impossible is shouted down. Are they
all so pathetic that none will stand up for what they actually believe in and
for the country’s best future?
Perhaps it would help those with vestiges of backbone if
they were to see the triggering of Article 50 not as about accepting whatever
outcome this weak government can negotiate but as being about starting the
process of negotiation, to see if an acceptable deal is feasible. Thanks to
Gina Miller, Parliament will have a say before we actually leave. To make this
have any point, surely we have to have the option not of “no deal is better
than a bad deal” – ie exit on the worst possible terms – but of staying a
member of the EU – of saying, “we have tried to find a future outside but
failed”? The EU will welcome us staying and so, one suspects, will a majority
of the people by then.
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