What an amazing day it was yesterday. Brexiteers seem to be falling over each other to lay the blame for what one can only surmise is the growing realisation on their part that Brexit is an absolute disaster and they are powerless to stop it. Having set in train a huge national humiliation they are now looking desperately for scapegoats.
Alastair Heath at The Telegraph thinks Davis' DEXEU department isn't up to the job and the whole operation should be transferred to Downing Street. He likens Brexit to the moon landings and says Mrs May should take it on personally at the expense of everything else - even referring to Kennedy's speech in 1962 that led to the Apollo programme - but forgetting they took seven years to get to the moon. We have 18 months! He was a leading advocate of Brexit but now says we need a completely new "hit squad" and fast (HERE).
Paul Goodman (HERE), another foam flecked Brexiteer says unless the government is ready on day one (whenever that is) it could collapse - meaning the government itself I assume. And joining Goodman at Conservative Home is our old mate John Longworth (HERE) who says it's the civil service that's the problem. What all 400,000? He thinks we should tell them clearly “either get with the programme or get out”. And quickly recruit new ones? Of course it couldn't have anything to do with him.
Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave, now a constant critic of DEXEU and David Davis has added more tweets (HERE) attacking the "SW1 Horror show" we've got ourselves into by invoking Article 50 before we were ready, but strangely forgetting he rejected the idea of having an exit plan before the referendum (HERE).
The Telegraph reports civil servants are starting to protect themselves by writing emails that show they issued warnings about difficulties in case a future Chilcott style inquiry is launched (HERE). I assume the likelihood of this happening increases every week so who can blame them? Especially when they get home and read the newspapers to find they are being singled out as the saboteurs.
An article in The Guardian (HERE) by Ian Birrel suggests the Brexiteers are starting to leave a sinking ship.
Gisela Stuart lines up the Whitehall mandarins (HERE) for blame. She seems quite proud that she headed up the Vote Leave campaign in the Telegraph article. Let us hope that one day she realises the utter catastrophe she was responsible for visiting upon us and is prepared to admit it. She seems to think the EU "regulate our economy" and says other countries have access to the single market without Brussels "regulating their domestic economies".
This is to completely misunderstand the single market. Other countries have "access" but this is nowhere near as good as membership. If it was there wouldn't be any members.
And in a final twist, Simon Heffer the rather right wing commentator, writing in The New Statesman of all places (HERE) attacks Boris Johnson as well as the egregious Dominic Cummings for apparent involvement in the writing of Johnson's Telegraph article. Heffer says Cummings is a "publicity addict", others say he is a narcissist.
Heffer is a Brexiteer who wants a return to Imperial units (HERE) and he is also a friend of Bernard Jenkins another of the more extreme Brexiteers.
I ask myself why all these people should choose the day before the PM's big speech in Florence to launch vitriolic attacks, sometimes on each other but mainly on the people who are being asked to deliver Brexit? Could it be that even they are slowly starting to see the scale and reach of the problems? I think they are all acutely aware of the approaching calamity and are fighting like rats in a sack.
Someone on Conservative Home said if Brexit goes wrong we could all emigrate to an island in the Caribbean - at least they only have the exchange rate and hurricanes to worry about!
Someone on Conservative Home said if Brexit goes wrong we could all emigrate to an island in the Caribbean - at least they only have the exchange rate and hurricanes to worry about!
