Brexit - yes or no?
Reply #198 - June 26, 2016, 12:11 AM
There's an argument doing the rounds on FB saying that David Cameron detonated a suicide vest of sorts by abdicating responsibility for triggering Article 50 to his successor. And on the face of it, it seems logical enough: if any Brexit-minded successor fails to trigger Article 50, they're done for; if the contenders (Gove, Johnson) don't run, they're willingly becoming spent forces; if they do trigger Article 50, the clusterfuck we've seen predicted with the loss of Northern Ireland and Scotland will become a reality on their watch, as will a massive recession and the penalties accruing from various broken trade agreements.
Neither Gove nor Johnson, it is said, so far have felt compelled to suggest that Article 50 should be triggered immediately, and both are notably quiet right now; the suggestion is that triggering Article 50 is such an irreversible step, that would cause such widespread destruction to the UK as we know it, that neither of them would want to have it happen on their watch. While the idea of having Brexit's leaders make the admission that they can't follow through on what they campaigned for is bound to raise a smile, this scenario strikes me as somewhat incomplete.
For one thing, I'm predicting* an increased visibility of the far right as a grassroots political force in the immediate future. They are emboldened now in a way that hasn't been seen in a very long time, if the breaking reports of the carnival of racist arseholes we've all seen in the past 24 hours are even half true. UKIP may have acted as a lightning rod of sorts for English nationalist types in the past few years, but even if the kippers don't turn into marginally more electable English Democrats, their work - as far as enabling a critical mass of the English far right is concerned - is more or less done. This brings me to the other question; whether there will be people so committed to Brexit ideologically that, despite the shitstorm so far, they decide to push on anyway. I'm not convinced that the prospective leadership of the Tory party is able to weigh posterity against pragmatism and *not* decide to go for broke; this, as far as I'm concerned, will be the one remaining hurdle that, once crossed, will make UKIP (or its successors, assuming that they don't merge back into the Tory party) a party political force no longer confined to the (acceptable) fringes of British politics (although they will have to lose Farage sooner rather than later if this happens).
This is my nightmare scenario: ten years after a Brexit, Westminister (now the Parliament of England and Wales) is constituted by a Tory party forming the centre-left, UKIP forming the centre-right, with actual fascists on the fringes of both. In the intervening period, Labour. so riven with schism between those who thought it would be more relevant if it turned into UKIP-lite and those desperately trying to cling to left-wing principle, saw UKIP eat its lunch, so to speak, years before. Right now, I'm not feeling terribly optimistic that such a scenario is impossible.
* I'm sincerely hoping to be very, very wrong about everything after the asterisk.
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Topic: Brexit - yes or no?