Talking past each other

The biggest mistake made by the London Brexit blob was to fight on the opposition's strongest turf; the economics of leaving. This blog has been fairly straight up saying that there will be considerable short to mid-term economic consequences and has been saying for some time now that the Tory "free trade" shtick is pretty thin gruel. It was always going to come back to bite them and finally we are starting to see people waking up to the dangers of a no deal Brexit. The ultra Brexit blob is now taking a pasting whenever they appear on the media.

Once you shred their WTO assertions they really have nothing to fall back on except deflection and bluster. It finally looks like their big lie tactic is folding. They are gradually losing the propaganda war. Whether or not this has any impact on events in the real world remains to be seen. We still have no clearer idea how this plays out and the closer we get to Brexit day the more unpredictable it becomes.

The problem, though, is that whatever consequences might arise from no deal, the media will trivialise the reporting of it which allows the likes of Brendan O'Neill to run another tedious "project fear" article, and pretty soon we are back to square one where any hint of serious analysis is written off as remoaner propaganda. It's easy to do when Remainers very often miss the subtleties of the warnings and they always go overboard. It's the reasons why Carole Cadwalladr is not taken seriously. 

Here I would observe that had Leave bothered with a plan (something more credible than "just leave") we could have neutralised the remainer histrionics early on. They are playing a different game though. On a long enough timeline the intellectual basis for a no deal Brexit would collapse simply because there are no facts to support it but the ultras only need to hold the line for a few more months. They don't even need to win over the wider public. They just need the Tory grassroots to keep the faith which is entirely achievable.

Here the remainers blow it. The more extreme the leavers get, the more shrill the remainers become. Positions become entrenched, the debate becomes polarised and any sort of sensible plan withers on the vine as moderate voices are drowned out. 

Meanwhile, this is a tidy little ride for the media who like to set up biff-bam confrontations between the extremes. This is why we'll be seeing a lot more of Jason Hunter up against one of the intellectual pygmies from BrexitCentral. Hunter has become the wunderkind of the remain luvvies as he effortlessly demolishes Brexiters. Having an adequate command of the basics he projects a cultivated image of a super Brexit nerd and his fawning sycophantic followers lap it up.

This is actually typical of the media. The BBC is not the only offender. These viral confrontations bring in the hits and junior producers are lavished with praise for their initiative. There is no obligation for quality debate among equals. This is just airtime filler.  

This is also highly typical of the remain herd in that they have their fleeting love affairs with articulate remainer campaigners who pop up out of nowhere and are richly rewarded for actually saying nothing new at all. There is nothing Hunter is saying that we haven't been saying for the last two years, but he'll do the rounds of the media until they get bored of him "taking scalps".

The debate, therefore, has become entirely self-serving while remainers delude themselves that a second referendum is within their grasp and subsequently ignoring anything going on in the real world. We are, consequently, wasting the short window we have to lodge the one solution that can avoid a bloody mess and satisfy the referendum mandate. Instead of seeking solutions this has become a fight to the death and a zero sum game. Once more our politics has failed us.