Political

Why conventional wisdom may have it wrong about Remain campaigners

Remain campaigners are, in the conventional political wisdom, meant to be disparate, divided, indecisive and losing.

But consider the following sequence of events.

One, the leading Leave party loses its Parliamentary majority at a general election.

Two, the leading Leave party crashes to single figures in a nation-wide election as the Leave camp splits deeply with the rise of a new Leave party.

Three, the leading Leave party loses its Prime Minister.

Four, Brexit still hasn’t taken place.

Five, in a desperate bid to make Brexit happen, the Prime Minister is driven to a headline-grabbing gambit… that only a quarter of voters support.

Now, remind me who are meant to be the campaigning dunces in all this…?

Especially as that unpopular headline-grabbing gambit is – courtesy of introducing a new time pressure and a new focus of anger – just the sort of thing that may very well drive together, not apart, that Remain coalition.

 

P.S. Of course, depending on the course of events to come, this post may end up looking very foolish. But I’ll be able to console myself that at least it won’t look as foolish as Matt Hancock:

5 responses to “Why conventional wisdom may have it wrong about Remain campaigners”

  1. My concern is the contempt with which the Brexiters are treating the people of the island of Ireland. They accuse Remainers of ignoring the democratic will of the people, as expressed three long years ago. Yet Northern Ireland voted Remain, while the Republic didn’t have a vote — and the issue of the UK’s land border with the EU barely featured at all in the Referendum campaign. Egged on by the DUP, Johnson calls the backstop “undemocratic”, but by insisting on its removal from any deal, and refusing to ask for an extension to Article 50, he’s condemning us to no-deal. This may well mean the reinstatement of an Irish border, but Johnson will wash his hands of it because the UK didn’t actually erect that border. The callousness and hypocrisy are staggering.

  2. and this is supposed to be a democracy, governed by the so-called ‘mother of all parliaments’..

    more like the mother of all f***-ups.

  3. My fear is this:
    Johnson does NOT want to go down in history as a short term PM who destroyed Britain, or who triggered a GNU which forced the Conservatives out of office. He wants a General Election, in which he is returned with a good majority and a government that will thus last 5 years and do whatever he (and his minders////// advisors want). But if he calls it for October and we leave because Parliament can’t stop it and things go as badly as expected, he’ll be blamed for it. So he wants Labour, Lib Dems etc. to force it through a Vote of No Confidence, followed by 2 weeks of scrabbling to form a new anti-Cons government, followed by an automatic General Election in which the Cons can campaign on Who governs Britain + Democracy (17M referendum votes should be honoured version) plus scare tactics on Corbin/Socialism to convince moderate remainers to vote Conservative regardless. Maybe even all timed so we’ve left the EU by then. He’ll tell Brexiters “Only the Cons can protect the Referendum result”, and with our electoral system, if he can get 40% of the vote he’ll have a big majority of MPs.
    Then when things get worse on leaving, he can blame that on the other parties forcing a General Election, and the EU’s “intransigence”, and if that doesn’t work it doesn’t matter as he’s in power for 5 more years anyway. He’ll have 5 years to plot for the next one, and anyway won’t be a one (short) term PM who never won a General Election. He may even get that statue he apparently craves.

  4. The obstacle confronting Remainers is the difficulty of obtaining a parliamentary majority for any unequivocally Remain motion. The hypocrisy of the Leavers’ position is manifest: they are petrified that their ideological project does not reflect the majority view, and they are ferocious because they know they have only one chance to win. The crux of the matter is that MPs have sleepwalked into this crisis, betraying the trust of the country. To troop through the lobbies in support of both the flawed concept of the original referendum, then article 50, without stopping to consider the full implications was simply dereliction of duty.

    Now they are wasting what time is left bogged down in concocted compromises, parliamentary manoeuvring and procedural sleight of hand. Whether out of inertia, misplaced loyalty, inability to think outside the Westminster box, or simple self-interest, they have made a series of terrible mistakes. The practical difficulty is to persuade enough of them to admit as much, change their voting behaviour and act with honour for once in their lives. I am not holding my breath.

  5. “a new focus of anger” – this is classic right-wing behaviour. Lead the people on a string by their noses from one “outrage” to another, allowing the architects behind the scenes to continue their planned new world order. The mainstream media is as guilty as anyone else of following the agenda set by Bannon, Miller and Cummings.

    We must be smarter in our thinking, our understanding and our fight-back against growing fascism. Understand the big picture, don’t get caught up in the every day minutiae.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

All comments and data you submit with them will be handled in line with the privacy and moderation policies.