Over the weekend I found myself at a Garbage concert in Cambridge. Typically the audience was subjected to a tedious left wing anti-Trump lecture from the lead singer which was met with loud cheers. I had to bite my tongue. I don't have Trump sympathies but I do very much dislike celebrities mouthing off when I've paid to listen to their music. I once walked out of an Alabama 3 gig for the same reasons.
If there was anything notable about it, it was that the concert was the whitest, most middle aged, middle class thing I have ever seen. Even the bouncers were white. I've never seen that before. And this, naturally is a remain stronghold, where pretty much the only foreigners you see are young and healthy international students. The multicultural pipe dream. Natrually it's denizens of this middle class paradise who seek to lecture the rest of the country on Brexit and immigration.
This is something of a contrast to what is now seemingly daily footage of feral youths on the rampage in the inner cities. Particularly London. It's easy to see why there is a gulf of understanding. Remainers are keen to push the notion that Brexit is essentially a racist enterprise and that's it's primarily about keeping foreigners out.
Here I'm not going to write a long article denying anything. For every given reason for voting for Brexit you can find people who did vote for that reason however crass or absurd. There are some who absolutely thought we would use budget contributions for the NHS and some who thought it would make a meaningful impact on Immigration. Farage set out his stall on that very issue and Farage is synonymous with Brexit.
Leaving the aside the rights and wrongs of such estimations, the point being that the lived experiences of either extreme are so far apart that the culture divide cannot be bridged. Cosseted upper middle class Cambridge is in no position to be wagging the finger at the rest of the country.
It is easy then to see why the media class and the liberal Twitter bubble has so totally fallen in love with Rory Stewart at a leadership contender. Aside from a different perspective on Brexit, he epitomises typical liberal establishment/middle class values. There is no middle ground here. Outside of my bubble of sane leavers, he is hated. He's too much of a wet and not nearly "right wing" enough to be considered a "real conservative". He's won the respect of a number of high profile remainers and that alone is enough to suspect him. He's the anti-Boris.
This again is evidence that this is less to do with Brexit as it is the ongoing culture war, where if I have to pick a side, I'm with the Brextremeists. I'd just rather not torch the economy and destroy our exports while we're at it. That option, though, does not seem to be on the menu. Like all civil wars economic concerns take a back seat.
The problem here is that the establishment lives in a self-satisfied bubble of denial. Even now Theresa May is pushing her zero carbon agenda, which we now know to mean corporate welfare, expensive boondoggles, higher taxes and higher utility bills and more authoritarianism in the name of saving the planet. Not for nothing have we had Greta Thunberg piped through every media channel.
Central to this argument is the disconnect between the ruling establishment and the wider public. The establishment does not listen. the establishment does not learn. All they want is to sweep Brexit under the rug, pretend nothing happened and get back to their business as usual. This is why we see academics commissioned to produce endless tracts blaming Brexit on austerity. That of itself is an establishment political agenda. They want the money tap turned back on whether we can afford it or not.
The working assumption being that Brexit is anger at the depletion of our public services rather than a sense of total disgust at our ruling class. They probably could buy off a large constituency with our own money given half the chance, but that (mutual) loathing won't go away. What ails Britain is a lot more serious than "austerity". For all that leadership contender prate about "one nation conservatism", the very idea that we are one nation has been utterly smashed. All that's left is identity silos and a sense of entitlement.
Here I start to wonder if the UK any longer exists as a viable governable entity. The Brexiters don't seem to care if Scotland or Ireland leaves the union. And why should should they? Why should the majority be held hostage to the misanthropic SNP? Does anybody really care about Northern Ireland? If Scotland goes they should take Northern Ireland with it. Devolution has turned Scotland into a grubby little fiefdom of pseudo-progressives whose loyalty to Brussels is less about European identity as it is a political device to further divide the UK.
For all the talk of a political stalemate right now, that same stalemate has been the norm for at least two decades now. With the EU acting as an economic life support machine holding it all together we've had an era of relative political stability. But during that time the grievances have snowballed to the point where the centre cannot hold. There needs to be a political reckoning to realign values in government with the values of the wider public.
This is not so easy in that opinions on virtually every issue are sharply divided somewhere in the middle. Far from being the last battle, leaving the EU without a deal is the second major battle in what promises to be a far longer war. If there is to be a new political settlement then one side or the other needs a decisive victory. Like all civil wars, if it is not fought to a conclusion then nothing is resolved.
Of course, there are those who still believe the WTO is a trade safety net and that it will be alreight on the night. That's a conversation I have daily on Twitter. The propaganda has worked a treat. But in the main, I detect an awareness that even Brexiters know this is not going to be a walk in the park. They just don't see any other option. Parliament has seen to that.
Here I respect Rory Stewart for pouring cold water on a no deal Brexit, but if Brussels is not going to reopen negotiations and parliament won't ratify a deal, it's difficult to see a way out even for a Brexit realist. No deal may not be viable leverage with the EU but it could be used to threaten parliament, but then Theresa May tried that one on to no avail. It only works if it has sunk in with parliament that no deal is the legal default and they cannot legislate against it. For as long as parliament clings on to this misapprehension, the threat cannot work.
Consequently, as much as I have no desire to see us leave without a deal, it seems inevitable because parliament has closed down all of the other options. Boris Johnson might take May's deal for another walk around the block as a last opportunity for parliament but if the arithmetic is still the same, then we are on course for exiting the EU sans agreement.
For the UK this spells a hammer blow to our exports and our international standing and though the Tories are under the impression that it saves their bacon at the ballot box, no party can withstand the torrent of dismal economic news that goes with it which puts us odds on for a deeply fragmented Corbyn government, very possibly in coalition with the Lib Dems. Labour is not popular enough to romp home with a landslide. A divisive figure like Johnson cannot bring in the swing voters the Tories sorely need.
That said, Labour is not in great shape either. The party is sharply divided over Brexit and Tom Watson seems to be launching an early leadership campaign. Corbyn may not survive as far as the next election. By the next election politics will look very different. Attitudes will have shifted and if the threat of Corbyn has gone, Labour might well be the party left to clear up the mess left by the Tories. Tory credibility will be spent and the Brexit Party will have imploded by then. There is then a renewed battle over our relationship with the EU.
Either way, Britain's political malaise will not be solved any time soon. As we attempt to rebuild our relationship with the EU the UK will be forced to make a number of unhappy compromises. Any future trade deal will need to be ratified by EU member states and it won't go anywhere near ratification unless their red lines are addressed.
Here we will see Spanish demands for fishing rights as a starter for ten. With the UK in no position to set terms we will likely become a quasi-member of the Common Fisheries Policy with no say in the rules, thus slaughtering a Brexiter sacred cow in the process. By the time we're finished caving into Brussels, Brexiters will wish they'd taken May's deal while they could.
Like a dance of the seven veils, the Ultra's version of Brexit will reveal itself to be a busted flush, but at no time will the perpetrators ever take responsibility. Farage or his successor will keep stoking the embers of the betrayal narrative just enough to keep a populist movement nourished and what we have come to regard as "chaos" will likely become the new normal for British politics.
At one time I thought Brexit was at least part of the solution, but now I think its only utility is to drag the issues into the spotlight. A process other EU member states will have to undergo eventually. If it provides any remedy to anything it will be a humbling for both sides. Britain will no longer be the soft power super power that remainers imagine it is, and their ambitions will have to be revised according to our budget. They will have to get used to the idea of Britain being a midranking power that nobody really listens to.
For all that leavers are accused of having delusions of empire, the EU has served as a proxy empire for our establishment who treat the EU as an international amplifier. The reality is that the UK's international influence has been on the wane for some time, not least as we have dismantled our own diplomatic apparatus in order to make way for the EU. It is our ruling class whose psychology never got used to the idea of Britain being an comparative irrelevance. It applies as much to the free trade Tories as it does the progressive left who demand we take action against human rights abuses around the world.
As much as EU membership has hollowed out British politics and weakened us as a cohesive country, dividing loyalties and weakening the national identity (quite deliberately), Britain's inherent political schizophrenia, put in stasis for for forty years, needs to be addressed quite urgently. Ultimately we must recall why we are here to begin with. We could have left the EU amicably with a deal but we have a political establishment that was utterly outclassed from the outset and one that was determined to derail Brexit by any means necessary. It is that very incompetence and mendacity that played midwife to Brexit itself.
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