So……. What specific excuses do the Brexiters hide behind, then? Again, we remember the promises made during the referendum campaign: We all know the “Land of Unicorns and Rainbows” that was promised. The EU would roll over and give us a “Cake And Eat It” deal, all the foreigners would be shoved over the white cliffs of Dover at the point of a pitchfork and the NHS would be rolling in cash.
But of course, none of those things were ever going to happen. Leave campaign knew this from the very start, but enough people swallowed their lies to get them their 52% and that was what really mattered to them…… was the ONLY thing that mattered to them.
Since Johnson became PM, their message has changed in a very fundamental way. The message now is about finding a way to de-couple the VOTE to leave the EU from the CONSEQUENCES of leaving and this is being done in six distinct ways.
IT’S TOO LATE NOW
Pretty simple, this one. “The vote’s been held and we’ve got to live with it so get with the programme.” In this narrative, all debate ended with the referendum. Pro Brexit journalist Julia Hartley tweeted in 2018, in response to a question on the lack of foreign investment since the vote: “Look mate, I really don’t care. This question was answered two years ago. Move on with your life.” A typical Brexiter statement.
But politics doesn’t work like that. Winning the vote was just the first – and easiest - part of a process which is going to have consequences for generations to come.
IT’S NOT UP TO US
This is the denial of responsibility. This says that those who led the Leave campaign have done their bit by simply delivering a majority to leave the EU and its up to everybody else now to make it work. But in a way, winning the vote was a disaster for Brexiters because it meant that they were now responsible for what happened next.
They were warned over and over of the consequences but insisted that those warnings were not only wrong, but were malevolent, EU motivated fear mongering so Leavers now claim that the current mess is all the Remainers fault and it is we who must now change our attitude. But this is a red herring. It is up to Leavers to make Brexit work, not Remainers who have always insisted that the whole thing would end badly.
IT HASN’T BEEN DONE PROPERLY
This argument tells us that there was nothing wrong with the decision… that all the faults lie with other people. Firstly, Leavers argue that they never specified how Brexit was to be undertaken in a way that doesn’t damage the UK economically, politically or strategically. However, every mis-step of the government has been as a result of pressure from, and cheered on by, “Brexit Ultras” like the Tories favourite panto toff, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and this includes the dogmatic “Red Lines”, the premature triggering of Article 50 and the subsequent premature calling of a General Election to (according to the Daily Mail) “Crush The Saboteurs.”
This narrative often happens in failed businesses where any and every failed management decision is defended by its advocates who claim it would have worked brilliantly if it wasn’t for “inadequate implementation.”
This takes us back to “It’s Not Up To Us” in that Brexiters claim victimhood at the hands of "the elite", refusing to accept that having won the referendum and having a government pursuing what they campaigned for, it’s not their fault because they’re not the ones implementing it.
And then, of course, we come to the inevitable……
IT’S ALL THE REMAINERS FAULT
Of course, everything would have been just fine and dandy if it wasn’t for all those dreadful Remoaners who are vacuously accused of sabotage, treachery and talking Brexit down.
Depending on the situation, the failure of Brexit is blamed on the Civil Service, the BBC, the CBI, the House of Lords but not, mysteriously, ex-Public Schoolboys, multi millionaires, Hedge Fund speculators, right-wing politicians, media moguls, and newspaper owners who support Brexit. Sometimes, the fault lies with each and every individual of the 48% who voted Remain. Wow..!!
But hold on a minute…… if Brexit had been the wonderful thing its proponents claimed, then it wouldn’t have mattered what the Remainers did or said, would it..?
IT’S ALL THE EU’S FAULT
This is the most dominant of the post referendum excuses made by Brexiters. They claim that the EU has decided to “punish” Britain for leaving. Such claims are nonsense since they ascribe to the EU the consequences of Britain leaving and as such are just another form of denial of responsibility.
For instance, Brexiters blame the EU for the Irish border crisis as something created by the EU rather than the ineluctable legal consequence of Britain leaving the single market and customs union.
The problem with the punishment narrative is that the Brexiters said during the referendum campaign that Britain “Holds all the cards” and that “The EU needs us more than we need them.” If those things were true then no punishment would have been possible. If it was wrong then Vote Leave did indeed know of the consequences embedded in the lie, consequences that they concealed from the public.
IT’S NOT ABOUT PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES, IT’S ABOUT PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES
The last, desperate throw of the dice to give some justification for getting us into this mess, Brexiters claim a commitment to “sovereignty” in the abstract. This is the “Take Back Control” argument.
This enables them to argue that consequences don’t matter because the referendum was a philosophical vote. But rather than arguing that case on its own, instead they made arguments about immigration and NHS funding…. Arguments which would not have had to be made if they had a pure sovereignty agenda.
As the practical consequences of Brexit mount up and can no longer be dismissed as Project Fear, Brexiters now attempt to counter the Remain argument that “Nobody voted to be poorer.” The real reason behind the sovereignty argument is that it is intended to deflect discussion away from practical consequences.
The sovereignty red herring is used to ignore practical consequences to the extent that many Brexiters now argue that the hardships looming on the horizon are actually desirable because they will create a renewal of national morale by bringing about a return of the “Dunkirk Spirit.” Whaaaaaat…??
In summary, because the vote to leave the EU was the beginning of a process, not the end of it, the way that Brexiters are now trying to de-couple the vote from the consequences is crucial to them. The benefits promised by Brexit simply haven’t happened and actually look more distant now than ever before.
Immigration hasn’t been halted and they knew it never would be. The day after the referendum, Daniel Hannan stated the Leave campaign “Never said there was going to be some radical decline” (in immigration) and in March 2018 David Davis said that immigration is bound to rise.
Both have now subtly altered their position and say that what really matters is that Britain has its own immigration policy rather than the EU’s. Numbers don’t matter….. we can have as much immigration as (possibly more than) the EU but that will be OK because it would be us allowing it rather than being ordered to by Brussels. Does that sound to you like what we were told during the referendum campaign..? No..? I thought not.
As for free trade, many Brexiters now argue that this was the central argument in favour of Brexit. But it wasn’t. Immigration was and we all know it. And even if free trade had been, it wasn’t explained that any trade policy would involve the relaxation of immigration controls.
So, this is where Brexiters are now. All the pre-referendum swagger has gone, all the promises made have evaporated and in their place are a series of absurd and indefensible arguments which, even if they run together make two fundamentally different claims. One is that whatever happens now is not the fault of Brexiters. The other is that the referendum gave them a blank cheque to do whatever they please… that 23 June 2016 is a frozen in time moment that denotes either the end of their responsibility or the beginning of their freedom to define the consequences.
Both are linked to their boundless dishonesty since neither claim was entertained, let alone endorsed by the referendum.
But they are both profoundly unrealistic because politics did NOT end on 23 June 2016. On the contrary, it began a period of political dislocation in this country that will likely last for decades to come.
Brexiters seem to think that by winning the vote that would be an end to it and it is already obvious that this is not so. After 1 January 2021 Brexiters will – quite rightly – be held responsible for every consequence that flows from it.
That is the significance of the excuses they are putting forward to deny that the vote had any consequences. It’s not just that they don’t want to take the blame, they don’t want to take responsibility either.
The ultimate truth about Brexit is that it started as a protest movement with wholly un-thought out, unrealistic and disastrous policies and became – against the odds - a government set on delivering them.
The Brexiters are now running away from the consequences as fast as they can. The tragedy for our country is that in one way or another, the entire population – including the 48% who didn’t want anything to do with it - are stuck with having to live with them.