Saturday 20 July 2019

Can Remain now win, 100 days before Brexit?


A sobering article in today’s Financial Times by Camilla Cavendish, who assertively claims that, ‘Remainers have lost and must now accept defeat’.
Her article opens:

‘Britain’s downhill slope towards leaving the EU is getting steeper; the slide into liberation-oblivion is coming closer.’
She claims, ‘A second referendum is vanishingly unlikely. Moderates who don’t want the UK to leave the EU are still going through the motions, but that battle has already been lost.
‘The only question now is what kind of Brexit we will get.’
She goes on:
‘A second referendum looks increasingly like fantasy, since neither main party leader wants it.’
She adds, ‘MPs who oppose a no-deal exit are running out of procedural devices. On Thursday, the Commons voted by a majority of 41 to prevent the next administration from suspending parliament for more than two weeks.
‘That guarantees slightly more time for the moderates to try to force the prime minister to request an extension. But it would still be a tall order.’
She says of Mr Johnson becoming Prime Minister next week, ‘In the honeymoon period, Tory rebels will come under extreme pressure not to be “turncoats” who vote with Labour. Few will be willing to trigger the ultimate sanction: bringing down their own government in a no-confidence vote.’
The key for Boris Johnson and his team would be to postpone any general election until after 1 November, by which time, Britain would have left the EU.
And she concludes:
‘The forces of political gravity mean there is no point in wishing away the referendum result.
‘The best we can hope for is that both sides will strike a better deal than no deal, and avoid leaving the country in limbo.
‘Tories who say they want to “finish the job” will soon find out that the real job will only start when we leave.
‘You can’t climb up a slippery slope — you can only go forward into the unknown.’
Is she right? Depressingly, quite possibly.
Where is the potent, effective, determined, professional counter attack by the Remain movement?
I can’t see it.
Where is the national, brilliant awareness campaign to explain to the nation how almost everything they’ve been told about the EU these past 40 years has been grotesquely wrong?
The intense drive to properly explain the positive benefits of EU membership; how the EU is democratically run by its members for the benefit of members?
I can’t see that either. We’ve never had such a campaign in the UK.
Labour is in disarray, with the worst polling ratings in its history. They still cannot say if they would support their version of Brexit, or Remain, in a new snap general election.
The LibDems don’t even have a leader yet, and precious little time for any new leader to be known, let alone loved, by the nation at large.
The Tories are about to confirm Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the UK, with a promise by him that we will leave the EU ‘deal or no deal, come what may, do or die’ by 31 October.
Yes, there is an anti-Brexit march in London today – hopefully a huge march – with the message, ‘Say no to Boris and yes to Europe.’
The demand of the march is to call on Mr Johnson to ‘stop hurtling us towards the cliff edge’.
It’s an urgently vital message, and it needs to be heard. But it is not enough.
100 days until Brexit is due to happen, ‘do or die’, according to our next Prime Minister.
Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Petitions, protests, marches, motions – they have all been tried, and for sure, Brexit has been delayed, but now its looming large. It’s in our face.
We can now peer over the perilous cliff edge, feel giddy at the sight, with our knees weakening at all the ominous predictions of economic calamity, but even that has not been enough to stop Britain now hurtling towards its Brexit destination.
What can the Remain side do in 100 days to put a legitimate halt to Brexit? Something it’s never done before?

 You tell me.
  • My video on what I believe Remain must do to win:


______________________________________________________
Other articles by Jon Danzig:
_________________________________________________________
  • Join the discussion about this article on Facebook and Twitter:
Posted by
Labels: , , , , , ,