Simon's Blog

One part of me is finding the whole unravelling of the Brexit vote quite funny, another  findings the whole thing saddening whilst a third makes me feel quite angry.   Let me recap:  In June 2016 Great Britain voted to leave the European Union and that is it.   Since then there has been a tsunami of people claiming to know what this vote means but the truth is that the only thing anybody knows is why they voted the way they did.   For me it was the realisation that the European Union is Great Britain’s largest trading partner and so it is in our long term interest to have a say in how the European Union is run so that we can trade on the terms that best suits us.    I accepted that this means compromises along the way but for me these were worth the costs.   Clearly other people thought differently and enough people thought this for a majority of people who voted to vote to leave.   I accept that.

What I don’t accept is that the right wing of the Tory party, nor UKIP nor the Daily Mail, Express or Telegraph have any right to exclusively define what leaving means.   They seem to have forgotten that the vote was close and instead act as though there was a landslide vote to leave.   There wasn’t.   Now we have a our rapidly disintegrating Prime Minister acting as though she has a huge mandate for anything she wants to do.   Yesterday saw this delusion collapse in front of her eyes when the House of Commons started to show the Government that it has every right to voice its opinion on what Brexit means.  In fact this was a key part of the leave argument that Parliament should be sovereign.  Yesterday saw the first rumblings of this argument being put into action and many of the Leave campaigners didn’t seem to like it “How Dare Parliament Question Brexit?” was a cry that could heard from the very same people who wanted Parliament to be sovereign…I think that can be described as ironic.

So we have a government in total disarray about Brexit; a Prime Minister who seems to be melting in front of our eyes as she tries to micromanage every aspect of the Government programme and perhaps worst of all the leader of the opposition who seems happiest talking to the converted rather than offering real opposition to this discredited shower of deck chair rearrangers.   I would cry if I wasn’t laughing with anger.

When the history of this is written nobody will believe it.  Surely they will ask this can’t be true?   The historian will point out that if you think this is nonsense then look what was happening in the most powerful country in the world at the same time where there was a possibility that the power to destroy the world could have been given to Donald Trump.

I think a large stiff drink is required.