I think I finally understand Charles Moore's sometime bizzarre utterances on Brexit, of which he has long been a champion. He thinks we're still living in 1776! In his column this week (HERE) he is harking back to the declaration of independence as if the globalised, interconnected and rules based world we live in never happened. To Madcap Moore one imagines he thinks we are still able to build empires with a few wooden sailing ships, barrels of gunpowder and cannons. We can impose our will on a lot of backward people around the world by force of arms, according to his sort of thinking.
Richard North has done a rather good take down of his column (HERE), in a far more comprehensive way than I ever could. It's well worth a read.
Moore is a raving Brexiteer who is always right behind anybody he perceives as being totally antithetical to the EU, as he once was behind May and Davis. But when his heroes come up against the sheer granite of reality and begin to turn, to shift position or compromise in any way they are attacked in his columns as weak and useless. He of course, is the only one who could steer the ship of state through the choppy waters of Brexit.
He is one of those men who has been writing about his fellow establishment members for so long he thinks he has become almost omnipotent. I assume he sits at home tapping away at his keyboard and as the words appear so they become received truth. In this article HERE he says the government's industrial strategy is harmless nonsense and doesn't think we need a plan at all. He says Silicon Valley wasn't the result of a plan, and this is probably true, but it's also true that Airbus for example, was the result of a plan.
I don't believe for one second that Moore has ever been inside a factory in this country or in Europe. If he had done before pontificating about industrial strategies he would realise this country is light years even from the average in Europe.
