Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Fixing Brexit: Defeating the Will of the British People

It seemed strange to me that after Prime Minister David Cameron, an opponent of Brexit, resigned following the victory of the Outs in the Brexit referendum, the governing Conservative party chose Teresa May, one of the Ins, as its new leader.

Stranger still, it seemed to me, that almost immediately after become Prime Minister, Teresa May decided to go to Switzerland for a couple of weeks "holiday."

Really? I mean, if she's so weak that merely being appointed Prime Minister necessitates a holiday, what use is she?

But then the question naturally arises, what discussions, negotiations, or deals might more easily be conducted during a two-week-long foreign holiday, than while resident at her official Downing St. home in London. Could it be that Ms. May is working to betray the people and reverse the Brexit decision?

Certainly her statement that a letter notifying the EU of Britain's intention to leave the EU would not be sent until next year was hardly encouraging. Then, during her absence abroad, it is announced that the British Government will not be "ready" to proceed with Brexit until 2019.

In politics, as Harold Wilson remarked, a week is a long time. In the implementation of the public's will on getting the Hell out of the EU, it seems that Ms. May has opted for a delay amounting in political terms to an eternity.

Which raises the question: is Ms. May is a traitor?

Brendan O'Neill, writing in this week's Spectator, seems to thinks so. His title? Betraying Brexit: the revolt of the elites against the people.

Why, he asks,
is everyone so chilled out about the threats to Brexit? Why isn’t there more public fury over the plotting of lords and academics and experts to stymie Brexit and thwart the will of 17.4m people? In all the years I’ve been writing about politics, I cannot remember a time when democracy has been treated with as much disgust, with as much naked, Victorian-era elitism, as it is being today.

Every day brings fresh news of the revolt of the elite, of the march of the neo-reactionaries against the mandate of the masses. At the weekend it was revealed that Brexit might not happen until 2019, because David Davis and Liam Fox can’t get their departments in order, the amateurs. The lovers of the EU and loathers of the blob could barely contain their glee. March for Europe, a celeb-backed, media-cheered chattering-class outfit agitated by the throng and the dumb decision it made on 23 June, spied an opportunity to do over Brexit entirely. ‘[W]e can help delay Brexit further and ultimately defeat it altogether,’ it said yesterday. ‘We can win this.’

‘We can win this.’ The ‘we’ they’re talking about is a minority view,backed by the likes of Bob Geldof, Owen Jones and Jarvis Cocker, yes, but by only 10,000 people on Facebook. And the thing they think they can win is the overthrow of the largest democratic mandate in British history. Can we ditch the euphemisms, please? Can we stop referring to these pro-EU groups and sad-eyed marchers for Brussels as progressives simply trying to keep Britain open and cosmo? Because in reality this is a nasty, elitist political strain, driven by an urge to silence the ignorant people.

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