Dan Hannan, who I admire greatly, has penned numerous pieces about how a slim majority for Leaving the EU does not provide Brexiteers with a mandate for a clean Brexit, but (in his words) “a phased and partial recovery of powers”
He’s wrong.
He is overlooking a key piece of information that I would suggest renders his argument inert.
You see, the campaign for Brexit was quite dirty – both sides exaggerated unashamedly when defining the consequences of the British electorate voting the wrong way.
The Leavers said that staying in the EU would be to shackle ourselves to a corpse, and that leaving would give the NHS £350m a week.
The Remainers said that if we left the EU, the economy would crash, there would be punishment budgets, and the world would basically end, but that Remaining in the EU would enable us to remain at peace and happy, joyfully continuing to partner with the EU while they earnestly undertook the challenge of reforming the EU with our help.
All was bollocks – the Brexiteers had no power whatever to bind the British government to spending £350m on the NHS, and the Remainers knew full well that the EU had little appetite for reform but very large appetites for a federal Europe and their own Army, regardless what lies Nick Clegg might have told us in exchange for his lovely EU pension.
If we had voted to Remain, it would have been fair to contend that a mandate had been given by the British electorate to pursue the goals of the campaign, because we would have done so despite the extreme consequences laid out by its opponents.
But we voted to Leave, which means the British electorate voted to Leave despite the plagues of locusts and the imminent punishment beatings.
We desired the outcome so vigorously, we were willing to tolerate the tortures.
Anyone who dares to suggest that our course must now be moderated, even though we boldly demanded it despite the terrible consequences, is having a second bite at their nauseating cherry.
They are saying “If you insist on full speed ahead, you’ll crash” but then once we demand full speed ahead anyway they are retreating into “Ah, but you didn’t really understand what the consequences would be of full speed ahead, so we’ll slow you to a crawl”.
To keep you safe.
Sorry – you cannot reasonably make an extreme offer, then renege on it.
They bluffed.
We called.
Hand over our Brexit, bitches.
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The problem is that we can't be half in and half out. Could we get half our representation? Pay half the fees? Obey half of their laws, and if so who decides which half? Be half subject to the ECJ?
It is a binary choice, either fully in on the path to the EU superstate, or fully out. Wonderful as compromise can be in this case no workable compromise is possible.
So either we leave without a deal or we put up with a highly unsatisfactory compromise which will cause much trouble until it is painfully rejected as it will be.
It must be hurting the people so passionately against the EU to find out that the UK will probably still be an EU member at the end of March, because of how Parliament works and because the MPs in it now have a couple of options to bottle it and they likely will. But instead of campaigning all over again to not be a member of the EU, the people I'm thinking of are insisting 'We're leaving', 'Too bad, we're out', 'Suck it up bitches, your campaign was rubbish and you lost'.
It's not going to work to deny reality this way, and to keep attacking the campaigns ( there were several ).
People who want to leave the EU by the end of March have to stop attacking the losers of 2016, and keep up the attack on the EU and keep explaining why the things that uniquely and compulsorily follow from EU membership are bad policies.
We could have had a workable phased departure, starting it in 2016 and finishing it next March. Instead the plan is to think about maybe considering what might be a way of leaving next year. Sorry, it's too late, if you wanted a managed phased withdrawal you should have started two years ago. We're now stuck with the current status quo of leave full stop, and politicians in a deadlock unable to change the status quo.
However, certain branches of civil servants have been ignoring the pols and *have* been putting things in place over the last two years. About a year ago we ensured we were still a ICCA member in our own right, so all Freedoms Of The Air still apply, so aeroplanes aren't going to fall out of the sky. HMRC brought forward reforms to VAT declarations so it's all done in the end-of-year accounts regardless of source instead of messing about with customs. I know somebody in Trading Standards who's been reviewing procedures with the hope that sanity prevails and that quality control will be done at point of sale, and not in ports. The only things being held up or causing problems are where the pols are actively involved.
Nobody promised £350m a week to the NHS. The policy binding thing is in fact a Remain straw man. Leaving was leaving, the only policy item involved. Governments still make policy (or invite bloody foreigners to make it for them). Leave did not need, was not required, to have a plan for the future, any more than Remain felt obliged to tell us exactly what Johnny Foreigner's plan for the EU was.
All of which I suspect Alex Noble knows fine well.