He says hard Brexit, you say soft Brexit, I say let's call the whole thing off

If the stakes weren’t quite so high, it would be quite amusing watching the speed with which the wheels are coming off the Brexit bus.

With hindsight, I suppose it should have been obvious that this would happen. After all, the Brexit side in the 2016 referendum wasn’t a homogeneous group – it was made up of people who were united only in their single, negative impulse of loathing the European Union. They were held together by no shared positive goal for what might come afterwards. 

In fact, their views were so disparate as to be mutually incompatible.

There were those who just wanted out at any cost, whatever the potential damage to the British economy – or who believed that the economy would do better outside the world’s biggest free-trade area than within it.

Then there were those who favoured something rather less hard. They felt Britain could give up some of the freedoms that leaving the EU would provide, in return for continuing to enjoy some of the benefits. That is the kind of compromise – or fudge if we’re less generous – that Theresa May has recently proposed.

Finally, there are those who wanted to leave the political organisation of the EU but stay, Norway-like, in the European Single Market and Customs Union.

May: mother of the fudge, to no one's taste

The trouble is that none of these options commands anything like a majority. Which is hardly surprising.

Only a few fundamentalist Brexiters believe a hard Brexit could possibly do anything but massive damage to the British economy.

The fudge satisfies no one. It eliminates the freedom Britain hopes to enjoy from Brexit, to make new trade deals around the world, as Britain would commit to abide by EU regulations – with no say in how they are made.

As for the Norway option, it would leave Britain – rather like Norway – a member of the EU in all but name but with no seat at the table.

None of these options would on its own have more support than the only really solid vote in the referendum – the powerful 48% vote for staying in the EU. Had all the real choices been on the ballot paper, the Remain vote would have beaten all the others and by a significant margin – it wouldn’t have had an absolute majority but it would certainly have enjoyed a good relative one.

That means we would have stayed in the EU and saved all the time and money wasted over the last two years, debating between approaches none of which has the support of the electorate or the agreement of the EU.

Theresa May has said that ‘under no circumstances’ would there be a second referendum. But voices are beginning to be raised in favour of holding a re-run vote. I can’t see how one can reasonably argue against one. After all, the electorate oppose all the actual forms Brexit might take, in practice, even those voters who like the idea of Brexit in principle.

This is like a group of friends in London who decide they’d like to spend the weekend in Manchester. However, they decide not to drive. The rule out taking a plane as too expensive. And they reject the idea of going by rail as some of them get travel sick on trains.

It’s clearly far too far to walk.

So, hey, why not just stay in London? They can then repair to the pub and have a good evening spending a fraction of what it would have cost to go to Manchester in the first place.

As we in Britain could do to. Why don’t we drop this whole painful Brexit business and go and spend some of the non-Brexit dividend having a party somewhere on the continent? Your choice. Prague? Rome? Stockholm? Madrid? Paris? Berlin?

After all, if we stay in the EU we could choose any one of them. And what fun that would be.