For me the main news this morning concerns Peter Oborne. If you don't know him, he's a journalist who has worked at The Daily Mail and The Telegraph and was an Associate editor at The Spectator. He held what you might think of as softish right-wing views and was a leading Brexiteer during the campaign, arguing strongly we should leave the 'undemocratic' EU.
But he has now recanted! His piece for OpenDemocracy is HERE. It begins:
"It’s nearly three years since I, along with 17. 4 million other Britons, voted for Brexit. Today I have to admit that the Brexit project has gone sour.
"Brexit has paralysed the system. It has turned Britain into a laughing stock. And it is certain to make us poorer and to lead to lower incomes and lost jobs.
"We Brexiteers would be wise to acknowledge all this. It’s past time we did. We need to acknowledge, too, that that we will never be forgiven if and when Brexit goes wrong. Future generations will look back at what we did and damn us".
On twitter he is getting praise:
At the other end of the spectrum, and probably the very last person who will admit to being wrong on Brexit is Mr Charles Moore.
There are the deluded and the delusional and others who are way beyond help. Mr Moore is one such person. He inhabits a strange quasi-reality, occasionally becoming sufficiently close to lucidity to knock out a few hundred words on Brexit for his regular Saturday column in The Telegraph and now syndicated in the Irish Independent HERE. What Ireland will make of his column is anybody's guess - it might confirm their belief that we have all gone mad.
In January 2017 Moore told us only remainers thought Brexit was 'mind-blowingly complicated' (HERE) before starting on his own journey and saying in June 2018, that it was actually 'fantastically complicated' (HERE). Things happen slowly in the Moore household and his journey towards reality has temporarily stopped.
Moore latest effort to convince himself Brexit can still be saved begins by outlining where May went wrong:
"Mrs May has destroyed her own negotiating position anyway, by declaring, despite having said the opposite a hundred times, that no deal will not happen. She has no cards left to play".
As Sir Ivan Rogers wearily points out this was never a credible position in Brussels so in fact she never had any cards to play at all. Triggering Article 50 handed the whole pack, including the jokers, to the EU and we haven't played a card since.
But listen to this:
"Enticing the UK by hints on the backstop, the EU could then pick its moment to work out how best to hold us down in the customs union and, if we remain as weak as we are now, demand a second referendum, too. Then, from the EU's point of view, the worst that can happen is that it neuters the UK: its best is that we decide to stay in after all, humiliated. Angela the Mild will avoid crowing, but her European Germany/German Europe (same thing) will have confirmed its reign, and she can happily hand over to her designated successor.
"That is the way things are going. Can Britain do anything to stop it? Not, obviously, under Mrs May. Not under Mr Corbyn who, thanks to her begging him for help, now at last looks important. A bad Brexit, created by the Tories, is exactly what he wants.
"There would have to be a new Conservative leader, who was a Leaver. He or she would have to exploit the long extension period to fight and win a general election, with the no-deal option as his proposed Brexit bottom line. He would blame Labour for the sell-out (though this would hardly be the full picture) and explicitly seek the numbers of MPs required to move his party, after more than two years of drift, to decision. For this he would need a purged central organisation which would let constituencies get rid of Remain candidates and pick Leave ones".
He says we need a new Conservative leader who can fight and win a general election with a no-deal Brexit as his or her bottom line. This is precisely what May tried in 2017 and failed. The Tories are 5% behind labour in the polls and expect to be decimated in the forthcoming local elections in May and probably the European elections as well. Standing on a manifesto that essentially wipes out agriculture and manufacturing in the country may not altogether be a winner. In fact it would be the shortest suicide not in history and make Labour's 1983 effort seem like a verbose triumph.
Amazingly, Moor thinks the EU is an 'empire':
"The EU is not, as some of my fellow Brexiteers think, a dictatorship, but an empire. Empires are not necessarily all bad. When they work, they can bring more peace, more order and better drains, as did both the Roman and the British. When they don't work, they impoverish, oppress and kill millions, as did the Soviet Union. On a scale out of 10, if the British empire is seven and the Soviet Union is one, the EU is three or four".
I wonder when Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon, South Africa, Kenya and a whole host of countries applied to join the British empire?
What is he on?
But he has now recanted! His piece for OpenDemocracy is HERE. It begins:
"It’s nearly three years since I, along with 17. 4 million other Britons, voted for Brexit. Today I have to admit that the Brexit project has gone sour.
"Brexit has paralysed the system. It has turned Britain into a laughing stock. And it is certain to make us poorer and to lead to lower incomes and lost jobs.
"We Brexiteers would be wise to acknowledge all this. It’s past time we did. We need to acknowledge, too, that that we will never be forgiven if and when Brexit goes wrong. Future generations will look back at what we did and damn us".
On twitter he is getting praise:
It takes a real man to make this sort of mea culpa and let us hope his honesty in the face of overwhelming facts causes one or two others to make the same short journey. Not everyone will be able to do it.This is brave. Previously ardent Brexiteer Peter Oborne swallows his pride.— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) 7 April 2019
"The economic arguments for Brexit have been destroyed by a series of shattering blows."
If more showed the same courage, the UK could still be saved from this historic mistake.https://t.co/v85heGyAzP
At the other end of the spectrum, and probably the very last person who will admit to being wrong on Brexit is Mr Charles Moore.
There are the deluded and the delusional and others who are way beyond help. Mr Moore is one such person. He inhabits a strange quasi-reality, occasionally becoming sufficiently close to lucidity to knock out a few hundred words on Brexit for his regular Saturday column in The Telegraph and now syndicated in the Irish Independent HERE. What Ireland will make of his column is anybody's guess - it might confirm their belief that we have all gone mad.
In January 2017 Moore told us only remainers thought Brexit was 'mind-blowingly complicated' (HERE) before starting on his own journey and saying in June 2018, that it was actually 'fantastically complicated' (HERE). Things happen slowly in the Moore household and his journey towards reality has temporarily stopped.
Moore latest effort to convince himself Brexit can still be saved begins by outlining where May went wrong:
"Mrs May has destroyed her own negotiating position anyway, by declaring, despite having said the opposite a hundred times, that no deal will not happen. She has no cards left to play".
As Sir Ivan Rogers wearily points out this was never a credible position in Brussels so in fact she never had any cards to play at all. Triggering Article 50 handed the whole pack, including the jokers, to the EU and we haven't played a card since.
But listen to this:
"Enticing the UK by hints on the backstop, the EU could then pick its moment to work out how best to hold us down in the customs union and, if we remain as weak as we are now, demand a second referendum, too. Then, from the EU's point of view, the worst that can happen is that it neuters the UK: its best is that we decide to stay in after all, humiliated. Angela the Mild will avoid crowing, but her European Germany/German Europe (same thing) will have confirmed its reign, and she can happily hand over to her designated successor.
"That is the way things are going. Can Britain do anything to stop it? Not, obviously, under Mrs May. Not under Mr Corbyn who, thanks to her begging him for help, now at last looks important. A bad Brexit, created by the Tories, is exactly what he wants.
"There would have to be a new Conservative leader, who was a Leaver. He or she would have to exploit the long extension period to fight and win a general election, with the no-deal option as his proposed Brexit bottom line. He would blame Labour for the sell-out (though this would hardly be the full picture) and explicitly seek the numbers of MPs required to move his party, after more than two years of drift, to decision. For this he would need a purged central organisation which would let constituencies get rid of Remain candidates and pick Leave ones".
He says we need a new Conservative leader who can fight and win a general election with a no-deal Brexit as his or her bottom line. This is precisely what May tried in 2017 and failed. The Tories are 5% behind labour in the polls and expect to be decimated in the forthcoming local elections in May and probably the European elections as well. Standing on a manifesto that essentially wipes out agriculture and manufacturing in the country may not altogether be a winner. In fact it would be the shortest suicide not in history and make Labour's 1983 effort seem like a verbose triumph.
Amazingly, Moor thinks the EU is an 'empire':
"The EU is not, as some of my fellow Brexiteers think, a dictatorship, but an empire. Empires are not necessarily all bad. When they work, they can bring more peace, more order and better drains, as did both the Roman and the British. When they don't work, they impoverish, oppress and kill millions, as did the Soviet Union. On a scale out of 10, if the British empire is seven and the Soviet Union is one, the EU is three or four".
I wonder when Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon, South Africa, Kenya and a whole host of countries applied to join the British empire?
What is he on?
