“The mounting bills of Brexit are, according to surveys, finally getting through to the electorate. As people resume travel to continental Europe they are finding that all manner of Brexit-induced hazards are inhibiting their freedom of choice. Yet Starmer, having failed for several years to take the Johnson government to task on such issues, now tells us he does not wish to rejoin the EU and single market, but wants to ‘make Brexit work’.
The point is that Brexit doesn’t work and cannot be made to work. The Labour leader seems obsessed with the third of Labour voters misled by what Lord Heseltine calls Johnson’s ‘pack of lies’ during the referendum campaign. It is absurd to say we cannot go back on that so-called “democratic” referendum outcome. In a democracy – which I think we still are (just!) – the electorate can change its mind every time there is a general election.
Now, I have news for the Labour leader. I get around quite a lot and have met many a Labour voter in the past week. Every one of them has been shocked by his U-turn on Brexit. Every one of them has said that as a result, they are going to vote Lib Dem in the next election. Offending two-thirds of your electorate in order to please one-third – who by now ought to realise they were conned anyway? Funny old electoral strategy.
The entire Brexit tragedy began with David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum in the first place. Brexit has been largely about what Michel Barnier, the EU’s negotiator, noted in his My Secret Brexit Diary My Secret Brexit Diary: the ‘bickering, backstabbing, serial betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a handful of Conservative party MPs. Boris Johnson … will, along with David Cameron and a few others, carry a real burden of responsibility in their country’s history.’ Some of us would like Starmer to come to the rescue, not dip his fingers in the blood.”
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Protesters against Brexit and Boris Johnson outside the Houses of Parliament last month. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
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