On Twitter, there are a lot of people on the left who make wild accusations about this government being fascist and some even suggest they are Nazis. That is clearly not true and don't believe it for a second. If it was remotely true we would all know it, but it isn't. However, there are some worrying signs of authoritarianism coming through, and the thread which links them is the utterly single minded determination to pursue a stupid, irrational ideology regardless of the cost.
Professor Chris Grey frequently points to the many mad paradoxes of Brexit and how it's adherents and supporters seem impervious to logic, and more importantly how they refuse to compromise - ever. And because a lot of us opt for the quiet life and avoid confrontation they are often appeased, as Hitler was in the late 1930s.
The Tory party has morphed into UKIP, something that could not have happened unless a section of the party on the extreme right were not already sympathetic to UKIP's aims anyway. The ERG refused to compromise with their more moderate colleagues who were eventually forced out. I'm talking of men like Dominic Grieve or Rory Stewart and women like Anna Soubry and Annette Sandbach.
The Brexiteers refused to compromise with David Cameron. His renegotiation was dismissed even before it started. There was nothing the EU could offer that would have satisfied them.
Theresa May fought a losing battle with them. It took her six months to decide, under pressure from the ERG and her own advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, that we must leave the SM and the CU because there could be no soft Brexit compromise, despite the narrow Vote Leave victory.
She then tried to limit the damage to UK industry and to the UK itself by setting out to negotiate a close relationship with the EU single market and the customs union but the EU saw it as cherry picking and the ERG didn't like it anyway, because it meant compromise.
The fact that the hard Brexit policy led inevitably to a risk of reigniting the troubles in NI and that a second Scottish independence referendum risked the breakup of the UK was of no consequence to the madmen on the right. No compromise they demanded.
Johnson gave them what they wanted. The cries of industry were ignored. It is well known the Chemical industry and the financial sector wanted to retain regulatory alignment but that would have meant being under the ECJ and the Brexiteers wouldn't compromise.
Now it seems the EU Commission is falling into the same trap, as Mujtaba Rahman points out:
Additional EU flexibility on Protocol - whether 3 or 6 months - makes it less likely it gets what it wants: full HMG compliance with the treaty it signed. It postpones escalation. But it will make it more, not less, difficult to put the relationship back onto the right track 1/
— Mujtaba Rahman (@Mij_Europe) June 23, 2021
Rahman says the EU is about to compromise over the NI protocol and chilled meats and I think this is probably all they could do in the face of the unbending position of the British government. But, he says it is only delaying a genuine resolution and will ultimately make things harder because, as he puts it:
"It will reinforce the view at the top of Govt that its current political strategy - a combination of unilateralism, top line ambiguity, red meat for the base & “reasonableness“ of officialdom - is working. If the EU refuses to draw a line, HMG will not be bound by one"
I am afraid this is true. Frost and Johnson think as long as they keep pushing, their intransigence will be rewarded. Brussels is keen not to be seen to start a trade war and want to appear reasonable - as Chamberlain did in 1938. But the problem, as always with bullies, is that each concession granted is perceived as weakness, is pocketed and becomes a prelude to more requests for concessions.
Rahman can see the problem. The UK government doesn't believe the protocol can be simply tinkered with but needs a wholesale reform and they want it to look quite different to what it is now. But the risk is that:
"More flex now = what is ultimately implemented will be v diff to what was signed in 2019 - the “hollow out“ risk EU worries about; or entire Protocol is suspended as/when EU tries to claw back the flex. The delay does nothing to fix problem - & arguably makes it worse."
So, these people will simply keep pushing, They have destroyed their own party which will pay a high price for Brexit in the long run. They have destroyed the DUP. They have boosted the SNP and will eventually break the United Kingdom. They have paved the way for Irish re-unification although you can bet this will come at an even higher price.
They have divided and embittered England to an extent that I would never have thought possible and, unchecked, they would like to see the EU destroyed and won't be satisfied until it is.
At some point, somebody will need to stop the appeasement while opening the eyes of those who have been so cruelly deceived into thinking Brexit will ever be a benefit to anyone. Brexiteers can never be satisfied because their aims are so nebulous, unachievable and ill-defined, like religious fundamentalists in the Middle East.
I have hopes that one day a big majority will see through Brexit and I am comforted in this by the WhatUKthinks series of polls. This is now up to 184 polls now with three new ones added in June. All three show a majority still believe Brexit was a mistake, the last one with an 8% lead for those thinking the decision to leave the EU was wrong. It follows a couple of polls in April and May with either the two sides neck and neck or a slight lead for those thinking the decision was right.
That now seems a blip and we are back to normal. If things continue downhill, with food shortages being forecast within “weeks,” I expect the polls to widen as we head into the second half of 2021 with no prospects of the sunlit uplands ever appearing and the real cost of Brexit coming clearer by the day..
