Brexit update...

The political discourse over most of my lifetime has been "who are these lying liars who are lying to me". It is incredibly rare to get an interview that tells you who a politician and why they believe what they believe. No wonder we get the "you are all the same" on the doorstep. The fact is that on all sides of the political spectrum and, indeed the Brexit debate, there are genuinely honest and caring people trying to do their best for their constituents and the country- often at considerable personal cost. 

That a small group of fanatics have been able to hijack politics, injecting poison and lies- yes Nigel "reach for my shotgun" Farage and Dominic "misleading" Cummings, I'm talking about you- is deeply regrettable. The media who create an equivalence between true and false in the interests of "balance" are at least as guilty as politicians themselves. The BBC prefers the "entertainment" of a political cock fight to the "informing" and "educating" part of their mandate, and that should give us considerable pause.

I still believe that the best option for our country is to stay in the European Union, however I accept that many people- for quite valid reasons- have a different point of view. What I cannot except is the reckless way that extremists in the Brexit camp are prepared to risk major economic harm by advocating a Brexit that includes a total break at every level- especially as our country's enemies in the WTO, such as Russia, seem set to cause major trouble even on the most basic WTO accession. Leave won the referendum, but by a small margin and, as we now know there are increasingly murky circumstances around Russia, the funding and indeed the truth or otherwise of the campaign. Before the fanatics shout back "Project Fear"- the fact is that a lot of experts are expressing very profound fears about what happens to our economy- and as investment drains away, on the balance of evidence they are more likely to be right than Brexiteers whose intellectual stance has shall we say lost credibility in the past few weeks.

The victors in the referendum would still get their way under the terms of Mrs. Mays deal: the UK would leave the EU. However Brexit cannot be on the extreme terms put forward by the extremists. The closeness of the original result and constant polling since suggests that "the will of the people", in as far as we can tell seems pretty OK with a variety of halfway houses, but the insistence of the extremists to make no compromise and yet not put forward any coherent alternative of their own makes people like me more determined to resist any extreme Brexit and to go for a second referendum to validate that. I can reluctantly accept the deal on offer, in the hope we may limit the damage, and -yes- one day rejoin, since I think that is the best way for the future of the UK. If that deal is rejected then I will fight tooth and nail to get a second referendum and I expect that the voters would reject any Brexit then on offer.

Support for Brexit is collapsing because of the antics of the extremists, and unless a new willingness to compromise emerges from the Brexit camp, I think Remainers are totally justified in calling out the outrageous statements coming from the other camp: "you won, get over it". A fanatic is one who won't change their mind and won't change the subject, and the failure of Johnson, Davies, Raab et al is not the fault of Remainers, it is their own miscalculations that have discredited the Brexit process.

Mrs. May's plan is the only Brexit on offer, and if the Brexiteers can not accept compromise, we are totally entitled to scuttle the whole process- it is not in Britain's interest to leave anyway and the No-deal scenario is way beyond irresponsible.