The answer is no because it isn't a bad idea. It's a very seriously good idea to resolve a political issue which has fragmented British politics for decades. It's a wholly positive thing to realise that the mistakes made by previous generations of politicians need correction. Britain has never been at ease with EU membership and we've only been able to stay in this long through a series of opt outs and fudges made by our politicians, largely as a nod to the fact they were doing this to us without consent.
Part of the reason it's being done badly is also the reason Brexit was necessary. The essential problem we have from both Labour and the Tories is that neither are prepared to embrace the principle of Brexit - which is primarily the repatriation of political authority over competences given to Brussels.
They have more or less grasped that we need a deal to mitigate the economic costs of doing so, but being so devoid of principles they are prepared to sacrifice sovereignty for GDP. Not at any point have they attempted to balance the dilemma.
This is what happens when the establishment is in thrall to bland managerialism believing that the function of the economy is to supply government with money. They don't understand Brexit because they do not understand that we would prioritise differently. That primarily is the cultural gulf between us and them. They say we should remain so that we can instead address other problems, failing to realise that they and their twisted priorities ARE the central problem.
It is their belief that their top down paternal centralist spending agenda must be safeguarded and democracy can be allowed just so long as it does not disturb their agenda and upset their priorities. They reel off a list of things we *could* be doing if we weren't busy with Brexit. Why sure we could, but we won't. And they expect us to trust them when they say they really really will fix things this time if only we give them another chance.
They want to remain because remaining is the easy thing to do. Brexit is a hassle, Brexit is a disruption, Brexit is boring, and most of all Brexit is far outside of their comfort zone. Normally all this complicated stuff about logistics and trade is taken care of by the little grey people while they bicker about welfare handouts. They are not used to thinking in strategic terms about the direction of the country and our place in the world.
Brexit has caught them totally off guard. They don't like or understand Brexit. they reach for simplistic answers; it was the Russians, it was the bus, the people are thick, the people just don't like foreigners. They tell themselves all sorts of things - that's it's really just NHS waiting times or austerity so we'll see an array of spending gestures and sticking plasters thinking that will be enough of a decoy to allow them to fudge Brexit.
This is ultimately their style of government. There's no big ideas about how to bring down energy prices. The structure of the energy market is largely dictated by Brussels. The system of targets and quotas largely dictate they type of generation and the details are all worked out by the civil service. It a lot of ways we have replicated the EU system, of government where after the instructions from Brussels have landed, civil servants and private consultants work up a proposal and then it is put to the house for rubber stamping.
Our politics is no longer in the business of researching and innovating in policy. It waits to be told what to do and the job of politics is merely to find ways to finance it. Politics then becomes a scrap over funding peppered with the odd hobby horse initiative to ban something. For all that remainers have wailed about us becoming a "rule taker" what exactly do they think parliament has been for the last forty years?
You can always tell in any Brexit the ones who don't understand the EU. They speak of it as though it were a separate entity running in parallel to our own government rather than an intrinsic part of it. That's why they don't understand the extent of its influence thus do not admit it. This is the essential misapprehension that leads to remainers claiming we do not need to leave the EU in order to reshape the order of the UK and our institutions. They are oblivious to the invisible bars and the constraints on the exercise of vital powers.
The 2016 referendum was as much an opinion poll on the establishment as it was a vote on EU membership. The two issues, though, are not unconnected. There is a reason why our politics is a hollow sham. There is a reason it has lost much of its intellectual prowess and gravitas. There is a reason we have seen an atrophy of institutional skills. The real business of policy and governance is not done in Westminster. In part this is what has killed our politics. Lobbyists, NGOs and unions now focus their attention on Brussels rather than London. They have learned to cut out the middleman.
The cumulative effect of all this is that the levers of power in London are not attached to anything. Our votes are increasingly meaningless and our politics becomes ever less substantial. Politics then becomes a circuit between television studio and meeting room.
Here you only have to look at the committee system. I've watched a fair few of them over the course of Brexit. Ambitious wonks and academics use them for their own personal YouTube PR and politicians use them for grandstanding, but nothing they touch on ever translates into policy and their conclusions and recommendations don't feed into anything. It is a total waste of everyone's time. Throughout, the system is totally robbed of its vitality, inquisitiveness and urgency.
The Brexit deal on offer does not honour Brexit. Theresa May has instead produced a piece of electoral calculus. She thinks so long as we retake fishing and end freedom of movement we won't make a fuss. The non-regression clauses mean she can say that rights are protected - thinking this will buy off some of the dissent on the Labour benches.
Essentially both parties don't mind if we remain an occupied territory and will gladly compromise UK sovereignty territory just so long as they don't have to lift a finger. They care not for principle. They are bereft of imagination, ambition and integrity. They are only interested in whatever it takes to limp across the finish line at the next election. They are not remotely interested in delivering Brexit and they never were.
Essentially they are anxious to get back to business as usual. They think that come Brexit day, the new agreement will slot into place, the trucks keep rolling and so long as that happens and they keep the worst of it out of the headlines they can go back to their usual routine of grandstanding and virtue signalling. The less brexity Brexit is, the happier they will be.
We have yet to see how this plays out. We do not know if the deal will make it through parliament. It does not enjoy much support so we can expect a full establishment media propaganda campaign and maybe a few shuttle trips to Brussels for some last minute theatre, fabricating a great victory, which the Tory establishment will praise - as ever they do, and parliament will fall into line. That's usually how they pull off a euro-scam.
They can try it. It might even work. For a time. If they do, though, they will have signed their own collective death warrant. Our relationship with the EU is one betrayal after another - and time and again they lie without shame. This time they will discover that there are limits to our patience. Our votes will go elsewhere.
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