On 25 June 2016, plain Daniel Hannan as he was then, penned a celebratory piece for The Sun: PROUD TO BE BRITISH Why Project Sneer was doomed to be rejected. As you might expect, it was a sneering, jeering, rejection of the Stronger In campaign and all of the organisations and people who worked to convince a majority of voters in this country that remaining in the EU was their best option. The implication of his article was that the entire population had voted to leave. There's not a single word of sympathy or reassurance for the 48% - the 16,141,241 - many of whom were devastated by the result.
Hannan was elevated to the Lords for his services to breaking the country and soon the Conservative Party. He admitted that he supported Brexit before the word was coined. It was the culmination of 26 years, his life’s work as he put it. He wrote: "I promised myself that I would make British independence my life’s work."
At the end of his Sun piece, he quoted some words from the G K Chesterton poem The Secret People:
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
For we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Bill Cash used Chesterton's poem in a
debate in the chamber in February 2016 when he spoke about "unelected bureaucrats" of which Lord Hannan is now one. Richard LittleJohn
in The Daily Mail did the same on 27 June, a few days after the vote.
The Secret People was more or less adopted by Brexiteers as their preferred text with Chesterton, who wrote the poem in 1907, becoming a sort of prophet of Brexit, telling of a long-suffering 'common people' oppressed by an alien ‘elite.’
As far as speaking for the 'people' it was only true of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted strongly to remain. On that point, it is worth noting that Brexiteers frequently objected to the UK being occasionally outvoted in the European Parliament on minor matters but had no problem with Scotland and NI being outvoted on Brexit, the most far-reaching foreign policy decision for half a century.
Well, the people of the whole United Kingdom are being invited to speak again on 4 July and although the word Brexit can't be uttered, it's pretty obvious the fortunes of the party that delivered it and promised so much to do so, is going to be annihilated at the ballot box. It will be less the people of England (and Wales and Scotland) quietly speaking but more shouting from the rooftops.
While we're on a poetic bent, I ought to quote Rudyard Kipling and his poem: A Dead Statesman
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
The line about my lies being proved untrue is particularly apt. And especially for Daniel Hannan, perhaps a stanza from Oscar Wilde's: The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard,
Imagine waking up on 5 July and learning that the party you have supported for decades has been destroyed by the very work you have dedicated your life to.
The 48% has grown to 60% or more while the 52% who 'won' on 23 June 2016 is now down to 40% or less. Rejoin is in the ascendancy. The work begins in earnest on 5 July.
