Nick Cohen is (unlike me) a gifted writer, always worth reading particularly on Brexit (but also on other topics too) and his latest effort (HERE) on the Spectator blog is no exception. He takes issue with a number of commentators who argue it's hypocrisy of remainers to accept the Irish referendum on abortion while campaigning to overturn Brexit. Charles Moore at The Telegraph was doing so at the weekend. Cohen debunks all that very effectively but he provides a link to a blog post by Dominic Cummings, Director of the Vote Leave campaign, (HERE) from June 2015 which I found absolutely astonishing.
I quote directly from the Cummings blog post:
Creating an exit plan that makes sense and which all reasonable people could unite around seems an almost insuperable task. Eurosceptic groups have been divided for years about many of the basic policy and political questions
Even if one succeeded, the sheer complexity of leaving would involve endless questions of detail that cannot be answered in such a plan even were it to be 20,000 pages long, and the longer it is the more errors are likely. On top of the extremely complex policy issues is a feedback loop – constructing such a plan depends partly on inherently uncertain assumptions about what is politically sellable in a referendum, making it even harder to rally support behind a plan. Further, in market research I have done it is clear that 15 years after the euro debate the general public know nothing more about the EU institutions than they did then. Less than 1% have heard of the EEA. Few MPs know the difference between the EEA and EFTA or the intricacies of the WTO rules. The idea that the public could be effectively educated about such things in the time we have seems unlikely.
Different people have different ideas about the best way to leave. For example, some people suggest we should leave the EU but simply remain in the Single Market while we negotiate a new deal. Others have different ideas. Global rules set by the World Trade Organisation provide some guarantees against European countries discriminating against British trade. But none of this is the real point. We are not a Government. We can’t negotiate anything. A NO vote as a simple matter of law does not mean that we leave the EU tomorrow. A NO vote really means that a new government team must negotiate a new deal with the EU and they will have to give us a vote on it.
Expanding the debate to consider a second negotiation and a second referendum offers potential advantages. It also has potential disadvantages. But as a matter of fact a NO vote does not mean we would immediately leave and it seems likely that the parties will be forced by public opinion to offer a second vote, and therefore this could be turned to the advantage of NO.
Vote Leave knew the task was exceedingly complex. Vote Leave knew people did not understand the issues. Vote Leave deliberately chose to have no plan. They wanted the government to be forced to produce a plan and then give us a vote on it! There is also plenty of references to a NO vote just being used to force the EU to offer a better deal.
This is a snake oil salesman's dream isn't it? Sell them anything you like, you won't have to deliver it, someone else will have to do it. It was like a vote for perpetual motion. Get a majority and the government would have to deliver it.
The blog post so damning that I half suspect he will delete it. To preserve it I have put a copy on my Google drive HERE. Now of course he is utterly scathing the the politicians are making a total horlicks of Brexit. I wonder why?
