On 21st February 2016 Nigel Adams made a statement to his constituents about the forthcoming referendum (HERE). It was bold, confident stuff and he warned that the remainers would be negative and phrases like ‘fear of the unknown’ and a ‘leap into the dark’ would be trotted out regularly. Then after the vote, on 5th September 2016, during the first debate on exiting the EU, our intrepid MP welcomed David Davis to his role as Secretary of State for DEXEU and hopefully asked if he had "seen any evidence of contingency planning across Whitehall, prior to the referendum, relating to the possibility that the British public might vote to leave the EU" (Hansard column 69). I am not making this up.
Basically, Mr Davis told him "it was rather difficult to find documents" as if he himself had been frantically opening and closing empty filing cabinets all weekend searching for a folder marked "Brexit Plan". In other words the answer was no. The forlorn hope that someone somewhere had actually thought about Brexit was immediately dashed. One can almost hear the nervous, apprehensive tone in Mr Adams' question and afterwards see him slump back into his place in shock and horror, his face contorted into a long, silent scream like an Edvard Munch painting. What have I done?
This is rather like leaping out of the aeroplane door and after a few seconds in free fall, turning to your hapless colleague plummeting earthwards with you, and asking if he'd thought about parachutes or had done any "contingency planning".
More than this, you begin to approach terminal velocity and on looking up, notice half the complement of passengers have heeded your advice to seek a brighter more prosperous future outside the stifling confines of the aeroplane and are also hurtling towards the ground below, all without parachutes.
Really, would it not have been wiser to check that there was a plan before betting the future of the entire nation on something entirely unknown? This is a perfect example of hubris - now watch out for nemesis.
