Thursday 2 March 2023

Brexit is withering on the Vine

Sarah Vine is better known perhaps as the ex-wife of Michael Gove. He was justice secretary in 2016 and she was (and still is) a columnist for The Daily Mail. The couple were very close to the Camerons. She is now separated and the Camerons don’t speak to either of them. She bemoans all this in a self-pitying article in The Mail, blaming it all on Brexit. She says Cameron considered her a friend and she let him down, not telling him sooner that Michael was going to campaign for Vote Leave. 

Her piece is quite amazing for a lack of self-awareness and an almost total ignorance of Brexit.

She says, "Perhaps if he [Camron] had known from the start, it wouldn’t have felt like such a betrayal to him and Samantha. But for me it, was a question of loyalty to my friends or loyalty to my husband, a horrible choice which I am relieved — and sad — I will never have to make again."

Whether she thinks this is going to change the Camerons minds is hard to say, perhaps it will but somehow I doubt it. He won’t like this for example:

"Cameron walked away from a mess of his own making instead of accepting responsibility for the result and trying to minimise the chaos. That’s what led to the disastrous Theresa May tenure and, eventually, the ill-thought-out Northern Ireland Protocol."

That’s right, she blames him for all the problems. Presumably, she and Gove thought Cameron would shoulder responsibility for Brexit after campaigning vigorously against it.  Instead, she has watched "in disbelief and with dismay as those charged with making our departure happen — politicians, civil servants and other officials — have turned the whole thing into one long bureaucratic nightmare."

She was warned about this multiple times in 2016 and since but chose to believe (and tell her deluded readers) that it was all scaremongering. As it has become all too true she has watched in disbelief!  Honestly? She goes on:

"What my family went through as a result of Brexit, what happened with the Camerons and our wider group, how we became the focal point for Remainer anger, how people lost sight of who we really were and saw only what was said and written, the lies that were told, how it all was swept up by social media and spun around into a toxic tornado that seemed to engulf everything . . . in the end, it was all too much."

She talks of "the lies that were told" but doesn't say who told them. Is that an admission? Who knows?

Vine claims she had divided loyalty between her husband and her friends. She says now "And that is where, for me, Brexit becomes an intensely personal and painful issue. It goes to the heart of why the past six years of my life have been so difficult."

Poor thing - but what about the 16 million who didn't want Brexit and whose lives have been turned upside down by it?

All of this is not that different to Steve Baker, ERG member and Brexit hard man who admitted recently that Brexit has given in mental health issues. Who would have thought it?

Vine, however, is still the optimist, although God knows why. She thinks Sunak is about to pull Brexit out of the fire:

"It’s hard to articulate: but I feel that now, perhaps, with the end finally in sight, the time is right. Not least because I do think that, in a way, my own turmoil reflects that of many others whose own families have been deeply divided by this issue, and in some cases even torn apart like mine.

"Friends who have not spoken for years, relatives at war, neighbours at loggerheads. If Sunak’s plan succeeds, there is every chance that some of these rifts may finally begin to heal."

"For me, sadly, it’s too late. I think it runs too deep. The best I can really hope for is, like I said earlier, closure. I was too close to it all, burnt too badly. Ultimately, Brexit cost me not only some of my dearest friendships but also my marriage."

Of course, you can feel some sympathy but she gives no hint whatsoever as to why she voted to leave the EU in the first place or what benefits she thinks we might now enjoy.

And as for Sunak's new Windsor Framework (WF), she prays that he 'succeeds' so that "as individuals and as a nation we can at last begin to put this civil war behind us — and begin the next chapter in all our lives."

You feel like slapping her face and telling her to get real.  The WF may or may not work for Northern Ireland, but it will make zero difference to Brexit. In fact, all of the red tape problems that he listed as being resolved by the WF will still remain for all the other 99% of UK-EU trade.

Danny Blanchflower, an economist and former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee tweeted what many of us think:

Meanwhile, as Vine hopes Sunak succeeds, John Longworth who was CEO of the British Chambers of Commerce when the referendum was announced but was sacked after he started campaigning for Brexit against their wishes, has written an article in The Daily Express attacking Sunak as Britain's biggest traitor:

The right is turning on itself and we are now watching the beginning of the end of Brexit.  They can't even agree on what it is after seven years. Longworth is farther away from Sunak than Kier Starmer. The project cannot survive.

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