In the prime minister's New Year message she says (HERE) if MPs approve her deal later this month, the UK could "move forward together" and concentrate on other issues like housing and health. Other Conservative MPs also have messages about putting it all behind us after March 29th. The Shropshire Star, for example, has a round up of these sort of messages from local MPs (HERE).
The message is, let's put all that acrimony behind us and everything will be just fine.
Daniel Kawczynski, Shrewsbury and Atcham MP, said he had "never known this country so divided in my lifetime". But hopes the healing process will begin on March 29 when the Britain leaves the EU.
And Owen Paterson, the eurosceptic MP for North Shropshire, said he hoped the country would recognise the opportunities offered by leaving the EU and added, “There are 87 days before we leave the European Union. There is, therefore, much to look forward to in the coming year. By subduing the scaremongering, we can begin to look ahead at the wonderful opportunities of a clean, genuine Brexit".
Paterson, as we know, is one of the ultras, calling for a 'clean' Brexit and it's slightly surprising to me that he expects us all to shut up afterwards.
All of this got me thinking what might happen if Brexit actually happens as planned on March 29th and we enter a transition period. Will the great pro-EU movement painstakingly built over the past two years accept Brexit, meakly disperse and 'get behind' the government? Personally, I think this is the Brexiteers' greatest pipe dream. It underestimates several things, not least the amount and strength of feeling among most remainers.
I think it was A C Grayling in Manchester who told us that the European movement had grown enormously and was then (2017) larger than any political party with hundreds of thousands of people either campaigning, leafleting, writing letters, organising or on Facebook groups and so on. I don't see this changing after March 29th whatever happens.
But what should we do if somehow a deal of some kind gets through the House? Our aim must be to work towards returning ourselves to full membership of the EU. This may take some time but we have every advantage in our favour.
It may prove much easier than we think right now. Brexit is a failed project. I think we know this already. The Brexiteers cannot agree even among themselves what it means. Any project without clear objectives is bound to fail and the public mood seems receptive to the idea that Brexit will be bad for them personally and for the nation. I don't think anybody will be happier in five years than they were before the 2016 referendum. It's almost as if the whole country is covering up waiting for the inevitable blow to fall.
The original referendum was built on a rickety foundation of lies. As time goes on the edifice of Brexit that is being constructed will fail catastrophically. We will be able to point to each fantasy as the promises made all turn out to be empty ones.
Next week Channel 4 airs what you might call a drocumentary - a mixture of drama and documentary - about the campaign, Brexit: The Uncivil War, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings. The iNews has a brief report HERE. Cummings was Campaign Director for Vote Leave and is the man credited with dreaming up the 'Take Back Control' slogan and the £350 million lie. It might bring the whole rotten story to a wider audience.
Cummings realised emotional lies would win out over complex and hard to understand truths. But the long term future of serious nations is not and cannot be built on lies.
In hoping we can 'turn a corner' and 'move forward together' Theresa May seems to think half the nation will somehow overlook the fact that the referendum was narrowly won on vacuous slogans and half truths and just fall in line. This is never going to happen. The sixteen million think the other seventeen million were persuaded by falsehoods, fabrications, fictions and fantasies. Moreover, many remainers think when leavers realise what Brexit has done to them and the country, we will be united not in support of Brexit, but against it.
When Brexit turns out badly not only will the remain side feel aggrieved, the leave side will as well. When half the population don't get what they do want and the other half find themselves getting what they don't want, what are we supposed to do?
Brexit will one day be recognised as the massive foreign policy blunder that it is. When life outside the EU is decidedly worse than it was inside after UKIP and the Eurosceptics spent decades trying to convince us otherwise, that everything would be better beyond the 'shackles' of the EU, it will be comparatively easy to persuade a large majority it was all a mistake.
When that day comes will the population blame themselves? I don't think so, they will point the finger at men like Cummings.
We listened to the Eurosceptics for years. Outside the EU, if that is what happens, let us make our voices heard even louder.
