Page 16 Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 28, 2019COMMENT
A transparent bid to
crush the referendum
THERE was something faintly absurd
about the grandiosity of opposition party
leaders yesterday, as they met to discuss
how best to sabotage Brexit.
The summit was ostensibly about
preventing No Deal. But there was no
mistaking its real purpose.
With shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir
Starmer announcing in advance that Labour
will campaign for Remain regardless of any
Brexit deal offered by the EU (did anyone
tell Jeremy Corbyn?), all pretence of
respecting the referendum result fell away.
This little talking shop was not just about
stopping a No Deal Brexit. It was about
stopping any form of Brexit.
At the end, a suitably pompous
communique was issued.
The attendees stressed the urgency of the
situation, warned of the ‘gravest abuse of
power in living memory’ and denounced
Boris Johnson as a raving anti-democrat.
And in the face of this monstrous and
imminent assault on our great constitution,
what did they agree to do? Have some more
meetings, of course. How very dynamic!
The truth is that these parties have
almost nothing in common beyond an
arrogant desire to keep Britain in the EU,
against the will of the people.
The Lib Dems and Corbynistas loathe
each other, the SNP are interested only in
securing a second independence
referendum, and within Labour itself, there
is only rancour, schism and confusion.
Sir Keir and his slick metropolitan friends
may want to renege on their promise to
honour the referendum. But what about
the two thirds of his fellow MPs who
represent Leave-voting seats?
How are they to justify this volte-face to
their constituents?
Meanwhile, the flip-flopping Mr Corbyn –
until yesterday a committed Eurosceptic –
has written to Tory MPs urging them to
join his rebellion.
Any tempted to do so must surely realise
their career in the party would be over.
What makeshift strategy will this tawdry
Remain alliance eventually settle on?
A vote of no-confidence in the Government
looks doomed to failure, as does trying to
install a ‘caretaker’ government.
They’ll probably go for legislation to
extend the Brexit deadline, assuming
Brussels agrees.
And if they’re successful, what then?
There’s no Commons majority for another
referendum, or to revoke Article 50, and the
insurgents are reluctant to risk a snap
election, in case it triggers a No Deal Brexit.
So these Parliamentary contortions are
not really about policy. They are purely
delaying tactics.
The Prime Minister, by contrast, powers
on with his plans to pull Britain out of the
EU by Halloween, come what may. It is a
high-risk strategy but there were signs last
week of a new spirit of engagement across
the Channel.
His ‘do-or-die’ attitude has concentrated
minds, and may now represent the best
chance of averting a No Deal outcome.
Is it really too much to ask for MPs of all
stripes to put the national interest first and
help him try to get Brexit done? This half-
in, half-out purgatory simply can’t go on.
÷
THE Mail trusts pilots’ union chief
Brian Strutton is enjoying his luxury
holiday cruising the Mediterranean. As he
lounges on his sunbed with cocktail in
hand, perhaps the Balpa general secretary
will spare a thought for the thousands of
families whose annual vacations will be
ruined by the callous decision of his hugely
well-paid members at BA to come out on
strike. Or perhaps not.
÷
WITH the police and criminal justice
system increasingly turning a blind
eye to dealers as well as users, little wonder
the death toll from drugs is soaring. Such
is the heartbreaking human cost of
their insouciance.
What IS it that
Corbyn and his
rabble alliance
don’t understand
about democracy?
by Dominic
Sandbrook
A
fEW nights ago,
my son and I
watched a
Batman film, the
first of the trilogy
starring Christian Bale as
the superhero. The plot,
some of you might
remember, involves a
villain who proposes to
introduce a hallucinogen-
ic drug into Gotham
City’s water supply.
The drug in question is a ‘fear
gas’, which causes you to see
what you most dread. Once
released, it will induce mass
hysteria in Gotham’s popula-
tion, plunging the city into
anarchic violence. Thank good-
ness, then, that Batman is on
hand to save the day!
Alas, not even the most
dashing superhero can save
Britain. for our own version of
the hallucinogenic drug has
been active for the past three
years, driving some people
completely mad. Its name, of
course, is Brexit.Inflamed
There are victims on all sides,
but by far the saddest cases
are those unreconstructed
Remainers so inflamed by
hysterical disappointment that
they have completely lost
touch with reality.
The issues were clearly and
fully aired, both sides had con-
siderable airtime, and in the
end the British people had
their say. That should have
been that. for my part, I voted
Remain and am a democrat.
But more than three years
after the vote, many suppos-
edly intelligent people are still
incapable of accepting it.
So here we are, weeks from
leaving the EU, and still a rag-
tag gang of disaffected MPs are
scouring the parliamentary
rulebooks, determined to find
a way of extending the deadline
— yet again.
Yesterday’s episode was
surely the most shambolic of
the lot. Alarmed that Boris
Johnson might take us out on
October 31 without a deal, the
PM’s adversaries have spent
the past few weeks talking up
the fantasy of a Government of
National Unity, to be headed
by anybody from Ken Clarke to
Harriet Harman. This wentdown very badly with Jeremy
Corbyn, who regards Brexit as
an irritating distraction from
his project of turning Britain
into the new East Germany.
Two weeks ago, he published
an open letter suggesting that
MPs should kick out Mr John-
son in a no-confidence vote
and install him as PM instead.
Yesterday was to be the big
day when all would be decided.
The self-styled Rebel Alliance
would hammer it all out; then,
when they were ready, the plot-
ters would make a grand decla-
ration to a grateful electorate.
But the Remainers’ big day
was, as usual, risible.
It began with the unedifying
spectacle of Corbyn’s Brexit
spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer,
on Radio 4’s Today Programme,
stonewalling perfectly
reasonable questions from
John Humphrys, while
desperately trying to persuade
listeners his leader could unite
a ramshackle army of pro-
Corbyn Labour, anti-
Corbyn Labour, Lib Dems, SNP,
Tory rebels, Greens and the
Independent Group for Change,
or whatever they now
call themselves.
This went about as well as
you might imagine, with
Starmer flapping and flounder-
ing like a fish on a hook.
Contrary to Starmer’s claims,
Mr Corbyn is not a universally
loved unifying figure, but the
most toxic political character
in the land. The latest YouGov
polls show that just 15 per cent
of people think he would make
the best Prime Minister.
Indeed, despite public unease
at the thought of a disorderly
Brexit, polls show that almost
half of the electorate would
take No Deal if it meant no
Corbyn premiership.
The thought of such a man —
an unrepentant Marxist, a
cheerleader for Vladimir Putin’s
Russia and an apologist for the
Provisional IRA — presiding
over a Government of National
Unity would be comical if it
were not so terrifying. And
clearly many of the self-styledrebels agree. for by the time
the much-heralded meeting
broke up yesterday, the no-
confidence vote had been
relegated to the back burner.
Instead, a bland statement
said they would ‘act together to
find practical ways to prevent
No Deal, including the possi-
bility of passing legislation’.
Not this again! We’ve been
through all this before, when
Remain MPs tried to seize con-
trol of the Commons and forced
through a series of ‘indicative
votes’ on a preferred Brexit
outcome. And it was, as you
may recall, an utter fiasco, with
no option securing a majority.
If this chaotic rabble can’t
even agree among themselves,
how on earth can they expect
us to let them take control?
And don’t they understand
how enraged millions of people
would be, to see Britain’s exit
from the EU frustrated by such
obscure machinations?
But worse was to follow. Late
yesterday afternoon, some of
the rabble, led by the Lib
Dems, the SNP and Labour’s
John McDonnell, reassembled
in Westminster to unveil plans
for a rival ‘People’s Parliament’
if Mr Johnson ignores them.Arrogant
What arrant, arrogant,
dangerous nonsense! Parlia-
ment is the people’s
Parliament. We don’t need
another one — and by what
right would a hard-line Marxist
such as John McDonnell, let
alone a glorified student dis-
cussion group like the Lib
Dems, claim to convene one?
And one other thought. If
they are so exercised by the
prospect of No Deal, as they
claim, why didn’t the Lib Dems,
the Greens, the Anna Soubrys
and all the rest of them vote for
Theresa May’s deal?
They had three chances to do
so, and they refused every time.
So if Britain does crash out
without a deal, these inflexible
Remainers will deserve a large
share of the blame. They’ll
never accept it, of course. Itnever occurs to them that
democracy often means living
with defeat, or that true politi-
cal maturity lies in accepting
you might be mistaken.
for deep in their intellectual
DNA, as with so many hard-
core Euro-enthusiasts, is the
unshakeable conviction that
they are the chosen, the saved,
the saints, while the rest of us
are irredeemable sinners.
All of this brings me to the
latest victim of Brexit-induced
madness, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Justin Welby.
In the past, the Archbishop
seemed to be a nice, sensible
sort of fellow. But now he, too,
is in danger of being sucked
into the hysteria of the
liberal intelligentsia.Snobbery
Yesterday, senior Remain
MPs invited Archbishop Welby
to chair a series of ‘citizens’
assemblies’ at Coventry
Cathedral, aimed at discussing
‘alternatives to leaving the EU’.
The Archbishop announced
he’d be glad to do so, provided
that such an initiative ‘doesn’t
aim to stop or delay Brexit,
and has cross-party support’.
But almost by definition, a
citizens’ assembly would be a
Remain front. After all, the MPs
who invited him — the likes of
Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper
— are not exactly neutral.
Then the Bishop of Bucking-
ham stuck his oar in, insisting
clergymen had the duty to
‘challenge the attacks, the xen-
ophobia and the racism that
seem to have been felt to be
acceptable at least for a while’.
I didn’t vote Leave, but even
I’m offended by that. To
attribute Brexit to ‘xenopho-
bia’ and ‘racism’ is snobbery.
for the past three years,
though, this stuff has been par
for the course. Thrashing
around in the madness of dis-
appointment, the ultra-
Remainers see themselves as
holy warriors, fighting the good
fight against the forces of evil.
But I can’t be the only former
Remain voter who wishes they
would recognise reality.
They could have won the
referendum, but they didn’t.
They could have voted for Mrs
May’s deal, but they didn’t.
They had their chance, thrice,
and they blew it.
And if they had an ounce of
humility, they’d admit it.