The Brexit proxy war

One of my chief complaints is that many people would prefer to tune into the perpetual slanging match of the Brexit culture war than engage in the urgent issues. This is what has dangerously polarised the Brexit debate where the obnoxiousness of either extreme is equally repellent to the point where there is no middle ground. Many want a no deal Brexit simply because there is no trust that Brexit will be carried out and, things being what they are, any Brexit is better than no Brexit.

This is a toxic spiral where the worst elements of either side are making compromise impossible. The Ultras, having near total control of the Brexit narrative and the the pro-Brexit media are pushing for the most damaging Brexit imaginable and were I a remainer I would respond in much the same way the "#FBPE" crowd have.

But then the remainers are no saints either. They have lied through their teeth from the beginning. They are deranged, condescending, bitter, preening, vindictive snobby bigots and they have made this personal.

Moreover, what I'm not prepared to put up with is the perpetual slander from the remain camp. Take for instance the announcement that Nigel Farage is returning to frontline politics. This to the remainers is cause enough to redouble their campaign efforts. This tells you a lot about the ultra remainer mentality. The average remain activist thinks that Brexit is a populist "xenophobic" revolt led by Farage and that we are all hanging on his every word. They've never really understood the eurosceptic movement.

Farage was only ever tolerated because the party couldn't put up anybody better. If you went to any eurosceptic meeting at any time in the last thirty years you would have heard a procession of anoraks droning on about sovereignty, regulation, red tape, the Commonwealth and EU corruption. Ukip had people who could do detail but not without boring the pants off everybody in the room. Say what you like about Farage, he can knock out a rabble rousing speech on command. It's his only talent.

He was, therefore, the unchallenged leader of Ukip and though a great many knew precisely what sort of man he was, they put up with him because he was an engaging spokesman for the media. The exposure was welcomed. Immigration only ever became a theme in the run up to the 2009 euro elections largely because there were a million BNP votes up for grabs in the north (a symptom of white working class abandonment). It was electoral calculus. Nothing more.

When it came to the referendum, the lack of preparedness ensured that Farage was sidelined by the Tory Vote Leave outfit and short of one or two iconic moments, neither of which did him any credit, already having flagging public approval ratings, he was largely superfluous to the campaign effort.

Much noise has been made about the infamous "Boiling point" poster, largely because the media managed to manufacture outrage over it. Had they not it would likely have gone unremarked. Very possibly it alienated the ethnic minority vote and lost votes for leave.

By the time the referendum was over, Farage was a spent force and Ukip has all but collapsed. It's difficult to see how he can return to Ukip now that Ukip has been captured by the populist right and has champion the cause of Tommy Robinson over Brexit. Leaving the EU is no longer the primary occupation of Ukip and the current management would likely not welcome his return. they would rather grunt about Muslims than Brexit.

Bluntly, Farage was a leader of convenience, and though he had his personality cult for a while, the spell has worn off and his subsequent media appearances have been somewhat lacklustre to say the least. When it comes to the mechanics of Brexit he is totally out of his depth. He is, therefore, yesterday's man, now upstaged by Rees-Mogg whose own appeal is on the wane. The novelty act has worn thin.

The point here is that leavers do not care about Farage. We care about Brexit. Getting what we are owed. We did what we were supposed to do. We put up a twenty year long fight and we forced a referendum and to my surprise we won it. None of Vote Leave's shady shenanigans can take that away.

I still maintain that Remain has the likes of Geldof, Izzard, Lucas and the progressive luvvies to thank for their loss. I am of the view that Vote Leave and Leave.EU were a brake parachute to the leave cause and a perpetual source of embarrassment. Certainly not representative of many of the erudite and clever leavers I've had the pleasure of working with over the years.

Even now, when it outwardly appears that leave sentiment is weakening, what's shoring it up is the AC Graylings, Adonis's and Umunnas. It certainly isn't a phobia of foreigners. If anything it's a deep contempt for the sneering condescension of shallow opportunists who will stop at nothing to ensure the 2016 vote is rendered meaningless.

This is where there is no real disagreement on the leave side. Some want a Norway exit, some want a WTO exit but we can all agree that the continuity remain campaign are deeply obnoxious repellent people with values completely alien to the rest of us.

This is actually pivotal in that there is a political sentiment to Brexit that transcends the technical minutia of trade and it is fundamentally a question of who governs us. This is not just a question of ending the legal supremacy of the EU. It is also about ridding ourselves of the people who did this to us in the first place.

If, somehow, the Brexit vote is overturned (which it won't be) the politicians breathe a sigh of relief and go back to business as usual, papering over the cracks and trying to pretend over time that nothing happened. We will go back to the tedious bickering over NHS funding and HS2 and Northern Powerhouse and we'll see elaborate "new deal" style initiatives to patronise the north of England while the progressive consensus maintains its grip on public discourse.

The response to that will, of course, be a Ukip on steroids more in the from of the Ukip that exists now than the one of yore. That really will be a xenophobic openly racist movement and it will be bigger than the BNP and Ukip combined at their peak - armed this time with the narrative that their votes were betrayed. It's too ugly to contemplate.

Brexit, if anything is a safeguard against that, and if one side has to lose then it has to be the incumbent establishment. And by that I mean the vice like grip of the politically correct consensus where even the Tory party investigated the comments of Boris Johnson and the Police even found the time of day to give it consideration.

Ultimately there are things we need to discuss. Contentious issues that require a policy resolution rather than sweeping it all under the carpet. If, however, anyone putting their head above the parapet is labelled "far right" then there simply cannot be a frank and honest debate. The more the left tries it on, the more the public concludes that they might as well say absolutely anything since everything is out of bounds.

This is where the EU and Brexit is a proxy issue for both sides in the culture war. The Remain movement is not especially interested in remaining in the EU any more than the current Ukip is interested in leaving it. This is a struggle for power. Presently the remainers are the incumbent power, they have full control over all civil society institutions and they control the agenda. For as long as we remain in the EU that status quo is propped up and though we can change the governing party it does not change who is really in control.

Here there is a distinct class divide between those who welcome immigration who are largely sheltered from its negative externalities and those who think perhaps freedom of movement does have an effect on the price of labour and that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be having an epidemic of Pakistani rape gangs molesting teenage girls. The latter happens to think sorting out these social issues is more important than how convenient it is for Nissan to export crappy rotbox hatchbacks.

These are people who are not going to be fobbed of with EU regional development funding, will likely never make use of freedom of movement, don't get foreign holidays and couldn't give a tinker's damn about roaming phone charges. The philistines!

So we have a clash of agendas between what is convenient for the pampered middle classes and those who the single market is of little benefit. Nuclear, tech and aerospace won't bother to train if they can cast the recruitment net from Amsterdam to Athens. All the while people who can't compete with immigrants living fifteen to a room in an overcrowded HMO are not than enamoured with the unfair competition.

Regular readers have noticed a particular schizophrenia on this blog in that I make damning critiques of the single market while essentially campaigning to remain in it. I happen to exist on a pivot point between to two camps and though my heart says dump the single market, my head says otherwise. We should at least try to make the EEA work for us before resorting to extreme measures.

That debate, though, seems increasingly redundant as the culture war rages on and the talks are at a standstill. It seems we are heading for an accidental Brexit and there's not much any of us can do about it. I therefore have to pick the side I would rather see win. And that isn't remainers. A no deal Brexit was always a risk and a risk I accepted when I voted to leave.

What Britain needs most of all, more than it needs trade, is a politics that better reflects who and what we are. For two decades our establishment has been carried away with the delusion that we share the warped "progressive" values of the media/Westminster bubble. It is that self-delusion that has allowed our politics to pander to its own vanity which in turn causes acute social issued to fester, ignoring the gradual visible decline just so long as GDP creeps up by 0.03% every year.

What we see from remainers is a vocal disgust that the public have been allowed to choose their own destiny and ever more disgust that they would choose something different. We are ruled by a class of people who actively despise us who think our grubby politics must be contained and that media must be turned over to educating us plebs. Radio 4 has become intolerable in its persistent condescension. Nor do we need TV dramas with shoehorned token ethnics to remind us we live in a multi-ethnic country.

Ultimately our ruling class think they are better than the rest of us; more enlightened, more progressive, more liberal, but in defending their grip on power they have become censorious, authoritarian and illiberal to the point of turning a blind eye to the monstrous and the depraved. There must be a democratic correction to this artificial distortion because nothing can be resolved unless there is. Unless we have government by consent then the social fabric will tear.

Brexit, therefore, is not so much uncorking a genie, as it is safety valve to allow politics to self-correct. No doubt there is a long and turbulent process to establish a new equilibrium, but that is essentially democracy warts and all. It is no exaggeration to say that if you defeat Brexit you defeat democracy.

Remainers continue to slander leave as a populist xenophobic movement, but at heart, Brexit is just a thirst for democracy and change. The remain message is all about preserving the economic and social status quo, but primarily it's about their refusal to relinquish power. That's what makes this an all out culture war. This is ultimately a test of whether votes really can remove regimes. If they can't, all bets are off.