Before the referendum the Vote Leave campaign was deliberately vague because, as Dominic Cummings said (HERE), before the referendum was held, "creating an exit plan that makes sense and which all reasonable people could unite around seems an almost insuperable task"
In other words they knew it was impossible to come to a consensus about what Brexit actually means, there were just too many different opinions. People voted to leave for all sorts of reasons, not all of them logical or rational. Cummings himself said, "I’ve learned over the years that ‘rational discussion’ accomplishes almost nothing in politics" (HERE). He relied on emotion and coined the idea of £350 million a week for the NHS which he thought was decisive in swinging it for leave.
Let's be honest there was a whole range of things that prompted the leave vote. Immigration was one but so was sovereignty, independence, money for the NHS, over regulation, German dominance and so on. The 52% was a coalition if you like, a coalition of the disaffected and the disillusioned as well as the xenophobic and the plain irrational.
But eventually, sooner or later, Brexit will have to mean just one specific thing. That insuperable task that Cummings mentioned will be no more superable next year than it was in 2016. The coalition to leave will be split. Bearing in mind that 48% wanted to remain anyway, it doesn't take a genius to see that it would only take a small part of the leave coalition vote to realise they are not getting what they wanted to swing it back to remain.
I do not therefore believe there will ever be a majority for any one version of whatever deal the government finally comes to.
It's utterly inconceivable that there would ever be a majority in parliament to crash out on WTO terms, however much the hard Brexiteers might want it, and even less so in the country as a whole.
Rafael Behr in The Guardian calls on shy Tory remainers to begin speaking out (HERE), to add their voice to those of pro EU MPs and others. They may find they are actually on the right side of history.
Rafael Behr in The Guardian calls on shy Tory remainers to begin speaking out (HERE), to add their voice to those of pro EU MPs and others. They may find they are actually on the right side of history.
