A couple of articles appeared in the last few days written by some of the more extreme Brexiteers which reveal the turmoil and anxiety going on inside what passes for their brain. Brendan O'Neill is the chief political writer of Spiked Online, a rather grand title for what is little more than his personal blog although it does get him on TV occasionally. I wouldn't advise anybody to read it regularly. Anyway, this week he writes: Rishi Sunak is selling off our sovereignty. This is about the latest iteration of the Northern Ireland protocol and the deal agreed with the DUP to get Stormont up and running again, which it did yesterday.
O'Neill is irked that Brexit (which he campaigned for and supported) has "brought in a vast new machinery of checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. In short, a sea border between Britain and NI; a partitioning, in trade terms at least, of our sovereign nation."
The latest arrangements not only cement the sea border but as he points out: "It also proposes a ‘legal requirement’ that all new legislation be ‘assessed’ to ensure it does not ‘impact… on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain’. In short, new laws drawn up in Britain will be screened to make sure they do not further complicate trade between Britain and Northern Ireland."
He gives the usual rant about Brexit being about sovereignty and "liberating our nation from the law-making of faraway officials over whom we have no control" but O'Neill now complains that our own law-makers "look set to do the bidding of those faraway officials." I suppose it's progress of sorts, He has perhaps started to realise that you can't share a continent with a trading super-power and do your own thing all the time.
He may soon begin to understand that for governments, sovereignty is like politics, the art of the possible, and it comes with huge limitations. The DUP deal has been negotiated with elected British politicians, subject to the laws of economic and diplomatic reality.
In The Telegraph, Lord Frost writes that: Four years after Brexit, the Remainers have never been more powerful. He makes a similar complaint, that governments are not free to act and that we don't need a "further proliferation of quangos, expert groups, judicial reviews, human rights provisions, Ofcoms and the like." But it was democratically elected governments of the past that created the laws empowering judges and regulators, precisely because they were 'experts.'
Frost says the heart of the problem could be seen in the Brexit negotiations under Mrs May with "parliament deciding to act independently [..] as if it were itself the government." But parliament is the ultimate symbol of sovereignty and governments in a democracy can only act with parliamentary approval.
Both men seem to want a dictatorship, with governments doing whatever comes to mind nationally and internationally without restraint of any sort for a period of five years when the electorate is allowed to make a pronouncement on their record. It is the 'elected dictatorship' that Lord Hailsham used to warn about fifty or sixty years ago. If this is indeed what regaining sovereignty means to these people, Brexit deserves to be killed off as soon as possible.
It smacks of Germany in the 1930s and Russia as it is today. It's alright while the elected government is doing what you want personally, Unfortunately, this is a random, passing thing.
Another Frost observation is noted by Lord (Gavin) Barwell, Theresa May's former Chief of Staff. This concerns voters starting to recognise Brexit is a disaster.
Important article by @DavidGHFrost. He says "If voters come to believe Brexit is failing then the Conservative Party will fail too" - the first acceptance from a prominent Brexiteer that if the public conclude Brexit has failed the Conservative Party will have to abandon it https://t.co/gIuSfoVQfk
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) February 2, 2024
I think the word 'if' at the beginning is a bit superfluous. The latest polling shows voters would prefer to rejoin the EU by a massive 63% compared to 37% who want to stay out. They have already made up their mind.
Where I do agree with Frost is that the fortunes of the Tory party and Brexit are inextricably linked and if they are ever to win a future election, a future leader will have to abandon it. I am absolutely certain this will happen. Tories are notoriously power-hungry and pragmatic.
