It’s curious how many Bregretters I’m meeting these days. That’s people who voted for Britain to leave the EU but are regretting their choice these days.
‘We were duped by Farage,’ one told me. ‘All that rubbish about extra money for the NHS – it was all lies.’
Well, yes. Farage, then leader of UKIP, and leading Conservatives such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and even a few Labourites, went to the country with a false prospectus about Brexit. And sadly a wafer thin majority fell for their snake oil. Today, they’re beginning to realise that no outcome to the Brexit process can possibly leave Britain anything but worse off, and probably a lot worse off. And when I say Britain, I mean the British people, especially those outside the wealthiest elite.
‘Another referendum,’ my friend went on, ‘would give a landslide against Brexit.’
Well, I’m not that confident. But it does seem likely Brexit would be defeated in a new referendum. The arithmetic just suggests as much: I know of no Remainers who have switched to Brexit, but quite a few Brexiters who’ve switched to Remain. I would expect the Remain vote to win by a margin at least as good as it lost by in 2016, and probably a few points better.
Which makes it ironic that the people who are most opposed to a second referendum claim they’re respecting the will of the people. The people spoke, they assure us, on 23 June 2016 and voted to leave the EU. That decision has to be carried through.
In other words, they’re not concerned with the will of the people. Only with the will of the people as it was then. Not as it’s struggling to make itself known now.
Sadly, since one of the main opponents of another referendum is Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, I can only conclude that they’re arguing from a position of dishonesty. They know as well as I do, as well as any commentator of the state of opinions in the UK, that today views have swung decidedly against Brexit. And yet they refuse to allow expression to those views.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that both Theresa May, Tory leader and current Prime Minister, and Jeremy Corbyn actually favour a Brexit though they won’t come out openly to say so. Their talk of respecting the people’s decision is just cover for the position they won’t avow. The last thing they want is the people’s voice to be heard, as it would mean changing attitude and abandoning their secret wish.
Just at a time when the electorate is moving decisively against Brexit, it is faced with a miserable pair of alternatives. Both main parties are led by people who refuse to be guided by a democratic choice of the people they claim to represent, whose voice they insist they respect. Or even to offer the people the right to make such a choice.
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| A dire alternative: two deeply unpopular, rightly distrusted leaders Neither Corbyn nor May will admit their position on Brexit or speak out for the people who will pay the price |
Given their position on the central question of the day, they deserve to be.
It means that at the next general election, whenever it is, voters will have to pick between two candidates without courage or honesty and inseparable on the biggest question that faces Britain today. With clothes pegs on our noses, we shall have to choose the lesser of two evils. We shall elect a Prime Minister in whom no one other than a small band of true believers has any confidence.
Oscar Wilde defined a pessimist as one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. I suppose we shall be spared that grim fate. Though it’s hardly a healthy state for our democracy. Especially if our leaders’ ambiguities have left Britain out in the cold after a hard Brexit, without even a trading agreement with the EU, as seems likely at the moment. A tough world and an untrusted leader – that’s probably not the outcome most Brexiters were hoping for.
I fear that Bregret is set to get a lot worse yet.
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