Tuesday 17 July 2018

Justine Greening's call.

It would appear even Parliament after last night is recognising a stalemate. There is Justine Greening calling for another referendum and various folks talking about crisis etc etc. What has changed? For over two years the UK has been unable to decide anything credible so what is different now? If I belonged to the ERG I would be delighted by recent events. Mrs May has not got her way post Chequers and it seems unlikely Brussels will agree to the proposal. The chances of us crashing out of the EU increase steadily and for all hard Brexiteers this must be the best solution forcing us to be independent. Yet business does not seem comfortable with this, the usual Tory partners. I rather think Mrs May's scheme is the only practical route to achieve a Brexit. What about this second referendum then? I am not calling for one. We live in a Parliamentary representative democracy. I did not have a lot of faith in the 2016 one because as was abundantly clear people could not on the information given know what they were voting about. Many thought it was about sending immigrants home the next day. So what would make another referendum better? I don't know. And why would it matter? Are we not leaving on March 19th next period? No, I think Parliamentarians have to knuckle down and sort it out. National interest comes before party and it a certain party is broken by it, so be it. And if there was another referendum how would I vote? Probably Remain because I would feel Leave has had plenty of time to show how to Brexit properly and beneficially and it has not done that. But what would voting Remain mean? Exactly where we were? Immigration was one of the strongest planks Leave had (although I note the numbers are still very high but it is now more rest of the world and less from the neighbours). Maybe we would be pressed to join Schengen or the Euro and regardless of what I think, the Brits will not buy those for a while yet. Incidentally having just come back from France I cannot work out why food (including French food) is so clearly cheaper in the UK than in France. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44855123