Except for a shrinking number of Brexit ultras fighting a desperate rearguard action, I think most serious commentators have now come to the conclusion that the ill-fated project is headed for failure - if it hasn’t already failed. Of course, some people are so invested in it they will never admit it isn't working or can't be made to work. For them, there will always be another attempt, another different Brexit that hasn't been tried yet, and even those who will claim we haven't even got Brexit at all because remainers thwarted it at every turn.
That is always the beauty of some unreachable but somehow nebulous Utopia seen through a different lens by every individual adherent. They will not be and never could have been, satisfied. Let us ignore them.
But even failed experiments tell us something. What have we learned?
For me, one clear answer is that a lot of professional commentators are as dim as nightlights. For years I read various columnists and reporters in national newspapers and assumed they were rational, knowledgeable, and well-connected. That their opinions were grounded in reality and worth reading.
Brexit has taught me otherwise. The fourth estate has enormous influence and some members of it are paid huge sums of money but pump out an awful lot of rubbish.
One such is Allister Heath, editor of The Sunday Telegraph. He has been featured on this blog several times but his idiocy surely reached a peak this autumn in the aftermath of the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget.
This is Mr. Heath on 23 September, greeting Kwarteng's statement like an excited puppy:
Heath told his devotees that "it wasn’t merely the policies that were astonishingly good" but "at a stroke of a pen, Britain’s competitiveness, its attractiveness to investors and top talent, has been transformed."
Six weeks on, Truss and Kwarteng have been swept away by the very free-market forces Heath has been championing for years. Is he happy? No. Is he contrite? No.
He reacts as all Brexiteers do by inventing a new reality to explain the current problems:
It is a tour-de-force in blame culture but it is 'the right' who come under the hammer most. They (whoever they are) have "failed to shift the country in a conservative direction, defeated by incompetence, the power of the dominant Left-wing ideology and vested interests, and some bad luck."
No mention of the government having a 70+ seat majority and MPs who would I assume have happily voted anything Truss demanded through the House. It is as if having failed to identify who carries any specific blame for the "final, abject humiliation" (his words) of the Kwarteng mini-budget he is widening his sights to take in every politician not on the left.
Listen to this broadside:
"The Right has, inter alia, been routed on crime, tax, the NHS, pensions and welfare, regulation, immigration, the family, higher education, wokery, the environment, economic growth, housebuilding, monetary policy, debt, pandemic management, defence, the constitution, devolution and individual freedom (with one or two exceptions)."
Phew! Quite a list, eh?
Even now he fails to see the malign impact of Brexit and the entire ideology behind it:
"Why did the Right fail? There is nothing wrong with its world view. But it can only win when it grasps the extraordinary strength of its opponents, realises that politics is downstream from economic conditions, technology and culture, and carefully works out how to change a world and a system deeply hostile to its ideas."
His thinking if not his ideology is not that far removed from the communist leaders of 1917 to the mid-80s era, indifferent to the suffering of millions and convinced only that he is right. Soon, no doubt, there will be a hue and cry for more of the unbelievers and the unidentified and unidentifiable 'wreckers and saboteurs' who will face show trials and public execution.
I honestly think he needs to seek treatment.
However, I can honestly say the last six years have been a revelation to me. I can finally appreciate how badly served we are. Our political class and media are simply not up to the job, after Brexit there needs to be real change but at the moment I do not see where that might come from.
