More than 15,000km away, Brexit keeps fascinating us. Scratch that: It’s riveting. And for reasons our own politicians might want to file under “why voters are pissed off”.
When 17.4 million Britons chose to leave the EU in 2016, it struck a chord because this was a vote for national sovereignty.
Britain gave us democracy and in Brexit we saw a rare win for freedom, a collective two-finger salute to the EU, a once modest common market that turned into a supranational behemoth.
It was a big dose of those fleeting, refreshing moments when Australian politicians tell the UN to butt out of our democracy.
The next piece of our fascination with Brexit has two parts.
One is the lead-up to the Brexit referendum. Elites got the result badly wrong. They often do. After Donald Trump was elected US President, The Washington Post and other newspapers apologised for having no clue what was happening in their country.
When Brexit voters were then mocked for their age, bigotry and stupidity, we felt that pain too, given local outbreaks of the mocking disease.
Part two of the Brexit story, starting after the vote, is fascinating for its darker intent.
Those delaying Brexit have turned a story about clueless, disconnected elites into a deliberate and knowing revolt against the democratic result of the referendum. Voters will not lightly forgive parliament’s mutiny against the democratic project.
As The Times’s Matt Chorley wrote on Monday, Brexit is testing the question of where power lies. First it was with the people, then it passed to the Prime Minister, then to her minority government, then to an intransigent parliament.
As I type this, I hear a hyperventilating ABC host on my radio telling us that six million people have signed a petition for a second referendum. Oh fair and balanced one, take us back to the source of power, the 17.4 million Brexit voters.
What also fascinates is the schlock-horror side to Brexit. A week ago, an anonymous Eurosceptic MP likened Theresa May to Annie Wilkes, the evil nurse in Stephen King’s Misery, who holds the bestselling author of the Misery series hostage after she rescues him during a blizzard. When his “No 1 fan” reads the last book in the series, she goes ballistic over an ending she doesn’t like. She ties him to the bed, breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer and forces him to rewrite the ending.
“(May) loves us so much that she’s holding us captive and she’s breaking every bone in our bodies … with her devotion to duty,” the MP said.
The British Prime Minister’s ineptitude has been horribly painful. But if only she were more like evil Annie and less like Theresa May. A more cunning PM might have knocked some heads together in Brussels, in her own party and in Westminster.
Sadly, May, who voted to remain in the EU, is the polite, stoic public servant, head down, bum up, doing a job given to her by her superiors. Right now, no one can locate who the boss is.
Let’s hope history will be kinder to her because May has made some stonking blunders. Calling an election in 2017, campaigning like a paper shuffler, delivered her minority government. May has had to contend with the Democratic Unionist Party insisting on no border in the Irish Sea. “This red line is blood red,” said DUP leader Arlene Foster.
Alas, you cannot be outside of something without having a fence, a border, a wall, a door, a window, a ledge, something to determine that you’re out, as opposed to in. There has to be a border somewhere if you’re out of the EU. May has failed to convey and convince people of the most basic facts.
May’s other infernal error was not preparing the ground from the start for a no-deal Brexit. Given almost three-quarters of MPs voted to remain, May should have anticipated mayhem in Westminster. By banking on a no-deal Brexit, she could better have forced agreement from remoaners. Instead, she went from “no deal is better than a bad deal” to taking no deal off the table, the ignominy of three failed Brexit votes in parliament, and the Conservative Party in disarray.
By failing to prepare the ground for a no-deal Brexit, May ceded ground to hysteria, fear mongering and, it must be said, legitimate concerns too about the now real prospect of parliament failing to agree on an exit deal.
May offered no explanations of contingency plans for the short term, no explanations of how a no-deal Brexit can, in the longer term, deliver a thriving UK, untethered from European bureaucracy and rules, trading independently like a Singapore of the north.
May cocked up with the EU too. She needed to understand what voters did. With its documented history of bombast, bullying and trickery to develop its supranational project, the EU has behaved predictably and rationally, trying to derail Brexit.
She should have used the no-deal Brexit as a ballistic missile to bluff and bludgeon EU leaders into a better deal for the UK.
When May announced in February that Britain would leave the EU without a deal only if there was explicit consent from the House of Commons, something that could not happen, she killed her negotiating position.
The House of Commons is also compelling to watch for its political ratbags. For flip-floppery in the house, special mention goes to Boris Johnson, who said in January “when this deal is voted down, let us not continue to flog this dead horse”, demanding a #BetterDeal when it was killed off by parliament. Last week, #BetterBoris voted for the dead horse to extend the Brexit pain.
Jacob Rees-Mogg made an ass of himself, accusing May’s deal of turning Britain into a slave state, “the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200”.
Last week, Rees-Mogg, head of the European Research Group, decided a British slave state would be fine for a while.
A shout-out to the pompously named ERG for putting more effort into a failed no-confidence motion against May than into selling its alternative Brexit plan.
Brexit brickbats for those who grandstanded with indicative votes in the Commons that had no legally binding effect, and reached no consensus.
With tough competition, worst performance in a political drama goes to Jeremy Corbyn. His CV reads as follows: Views on EU? Voted to leave in 1975, ignored Labour’s Remain policy and said Britain should leave the EU as soon as possible in 2016. Then, he climbed the fence. Position on Irish backstop? Unclear. Position on mushy Brexit with Customs union? Unclear. Until he told his party to vote for it yesterday. Position on Communist Manifesto? In rollicking agreement. Position on a second referendum? Won’t vote for it, then won’t rule it out.
Brexit makes you appreciate our own politics. Not all of it, James Ashby is a putrid boil that needs to be lanced, and Pauline Hanson should be punished for not doing it herself. But even those political rascals are a dismal reminder, along with Brexit, that voters do not take kindly to being scorned by those who mislay the first and last principle of democracy: government of the people, by the people and for the people.
janeta@bigpond.net.au
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