One would like to describe Dr Richard North's son Peter as a useful idiot but it would be stretching the word 'useful' a bit too far and insulting idiots everywhere. On Sunday he tweeted that he thought Brexit was going to be a "mess" but he blamed it on remainers and the Tories. The North family were entirely innocent apparently. The arrogant Dr North and his son, who have campaigned as hard as anyone for Brexit, can see it is turning into a "mess", something a lot of us were pointing out well before the referendum.
Anyway the tweet was picked up and received a lot of pushback - mainly from remainers saying hold on, don't look at us, don't try and shuffle off responsibility onto people who are wholly innocent of blame.
Last night Peter responded, presumably with advice from his father, on the family's new website "Turbulent Times" - designed by his daughter apparently - with an explanation. You can see it HERE
In it he says:
"In hindsight, had I know [sic] the tweet was going to go viral, I might have been more specific in saying remainer Members of Parliament own this mess as much as the Tories. That case is certainly easier to argue.
"Over the course of the last parliament, we watched in dismay as various splinter cells went to war against each other, and at no point did a coherent consensus emerge even among the remain side. We were dealing with a gaggle of MPs on both sides of the house who couldn’t give us a functioning definition of either the customs union or the single market."
At no point did a coherent consensus emerge "even among the remain side." Oh, I think there was a consensus - that it was better to remain in the EU - and the way to do that democratically was by a second referendum which the North family opposed.
A second vote would have resolved the issue. If leave won we on the remain side would have had to shut up and accept it. If remain had won we could have stayed in the EU. Calls for a second referendum were made on the grounds that we knew so much more than we did before June 2016, we coild see it would all end in disaster.
Now it's all turning into a mess it's our (or remain MPs) fault. Amazing.
What I think it does demonstrate is the slow recognition of the immense problems that lie ahead, and not too far ahead now either. Big questions will need to be resolved that will expose the truth about Brexit for the very first time. I am talking about the Irish border, the costs of the form-filling and barriers to trade with the EU, the negligible impact on GDP of a trade deal with the USA which will cost the agriculture sector dearly while simultaneously lowering our food, environment and animal welfare standards, and so on.
The only people who are pleased with the result of Brexit are the Russians, as espoused by the recently departed Russian ambassador Alexandr Yakovenko. His alleged words are quoted in a tweet:
“We have crushed the British to the ground, they are on their knees and they will not rise for a very long time.”Aleksandr Yakovenko, summing up Russian achievements during his tenure as UK Ambassador, 2011-19.
— KT Parker #SaveTheBees 🐝🐝🐝 (@lunaperla) July 6, 2020
The words are quoted in this podcast (16:47 minutes in) about Luke Harding at The Guardian and his new book about Russia. Harding was told by an unnamed diplomat that these were the words of Yakovlenko as he left London to return to Moscow. It all sounds very plausible to me.
You can see why the Russians might regards Peter (and Richard) as useful idiots, the phrase often attributed to Lenin speaking about western socialists who were susceptible to communist propaganda. Until the Russian report is released we won't know the extent of the Kremlin's involvement in the referendum or in British politics in general. I daresay we won't know all that they did even after the report is released.
Brexit has been a stunning success for Russian foreign policy. It has weakened Britain and the EU in a way that they could never have imagined. It has brought Britain to its knees and the arguments are likely to go on for decades.
All achieved at minimal cost.
But I suspect it will eventually fail. Brexit was a referendum, a success achieved by liars and useful idiots persuading the gullible of something patently against their own best interests. The problems in delivering on the wild fantasies are now apparent. No amount of attempted cake eating or circle squaring will resolve the deep and inherent contradictions involved.
Sooner or later the British people will come to their senses - the Norths are perhaps just reaching that point - and recognise the EU has benefits and disadvantages but the benefits far outweigh any downside and this is now becoming obvious.
