Although I have voted Conservative in some electoral contests, I’m not great fan of the British Prime Minister Theresa May. I’m especially unhappy over the way that her and her advisers have handled the Brexit process. My view on this is that although some compromise with the EU as part of the exit process should have been expected, the PM and her negotiating team have not been nearly tough enough with the EU bearing in mind Britain’s strong position as a net contributor to the EU’s coffers.
However, despite significant disagreement with the Prime Minister and the way that she has run both her government and the Brexit process, there are some issues about which I find myself in agreement with her. The area of primary agreement that I have with her is her statement in a recent speech that politicians who seek to hamper the Brexit process, and thereby keep Britain in the European Union, risks ‘catastrophic harm’ to the public’s confidence in our system of democratic political representation and government.
Whilst it is likely that the PM’s speech to factory workers in an area where nearly 70% of the electorate voted Leave, is a way of scaring politicians into backing her bad exit deal, the scenario she paints of a populace who have lost faith in the representative political system is a scary one. I really don’t want to see a massive unbridgeable gulf between rulers and ruled, that will merely stoke the fires of anger and make these divisions even worse than they are at present. It will give fuel to extremists of all types, some from the Right and some from the Left and worryingly some extremists, of all political stripes who worship at the altar of revolutionary violence. A political class that thumbs its noses at those who voted one way or another is one that risks creating and exacerbating conflict.
Britain is remarkable among European nations in that it avoided the worst of the political excesses that convulsed the continent in the 19th and 20th centuries. Neither Communism nor Fascism ever got a significant foothold in the political system and we avoided the upheavals and convulsions that 1848, the so called ‘Year of Revolutions’. We didn’t succumb to Communism and Fascism because despite its faults, our flexible constitutional system worked and the working classes instead of chasing demagogues and revolution as Germany and Russia did, were able to channel their concerns into a Labour party that was built more on Methodism than on Marx. We avoided being racked with revolution in 1848 because in part the middle classes were pacified with things like reform and an extension to the voting franchise. The political class has often tacked a little way one way or another in order to head off the destructive growth of extremes and they’ve done a good job so far. Even the monarchy has been able to read the political runes and avoid destructive trouble. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert for example chose to have a new style of monarchy one based around family values, rather than the libertine values that characterised some previous monarchs such as King George IV and which were alienating people and feeding dissatisfaction.
We do indeed have a remarkable history and Britain has, with the exception of the Irish issue, been incredibly stable when compared to other European nations. We have had no Hitler, no Stalin, no Napoleon, no Mussolini. We have had neither a Franco nor a Salazar running Britain with an authoritarian iron fist and we have been all the better for avoiding the horrors that have been inflicted on other nations. I believe that we have not had these horrors because the politicians in Britain have on the whole been sensible enough to know when the public’s bile is rising and deal with the problems that are causing that bile to rise.
Like the PM I worry about what sort of forces the obstructionists, mostly Remainers, in Parliament are likely to unleash. A wholesale breakdown of trust between the political class and the people will not be good and if possible should be avoided. We are currently in a precarious position where a decision, whether or not to leave or stay in the EU that was delegated by Parliament to the people, is being hampered by the politicians who we were told would implement the decision that was made by the people. Breaking Brexit would be a truly terrible breach of trust by the political classes and would have far reaching and in my view, very negative effects. A situation where Parliament openly rebelled against the people would not solve our current problems, it would make them worse and maybe add new problems.
If Brexit is blocked by the Remainers in Parliament then it would give a great boost to those who favour revolution over evolution. It would give some credence to claims by the plastic Bolsheviks of the far Left and their counterparts on the extreme Right, that the representatives in Parliament no longer properly represent the will of the nation and that violent revolution is now the only solution.
I do not want to see this country convulsed by the politics of extreme nutcases, but that is what we are likely to get if the political classes, especially the Remain section, continue on the path that they are on. Whilst I am a Brexiteer and am mightily pleased with the vote to leave the EU, I would have accepted a Remain vote if that had been the result of the Referendum. I take that view because I believe in the same democracy that generations of Britons have fought for and sometimes died to protect.
My message to the obstructionists in the Palace of Westminster is this: Being obsessed with keeping Britain in the EU and tying to place obstacles in the way of Brexit is not going to end well. The behaviour of these obstructionists is, as the Prime Minister said, going to cause a profound loss of trust in the political system. If the residual trust in the political system goes down the toilet then whole swathes of people will look towards the sometimes deranged extremists of Antifa and the Yellow Vests as a means of voicing their concerns about how we are governed. This will not be a good thing. I really don’t want to be governed by those on the Far Left who believe that ‘punching Nazis’ (or those that they perceive – often wrongly are Nazis) is acceptable or the increasingly moronical ‘yellow vests’ and their conspiraloon allies. I want to be governed by those who put the national interest first and it is now pretty obvious that the way to put the national interest first is for the political classes to accept the result of the Referendum and leave the EU as quickly as possible.
The Remainer obstructionists may think that by acting in the manner that they are acting is doing what in their minds may be the sensible thing and that Britain should continue to hold firmly onto ‘Nurse’ in the form of the EU. But their behaviour risks unleashing something much, much worse and much more upsetting to order than leaving the EU would be. Therefore it is time now for the Remainers to recognise that they have lost the national argument over the EU and to work with others to make the best of the hand that the population has dealt them.
