LONDON (Labour Buzz) - With talks stalling and Johnson flying out for last-ditch talks in Brussels a no-deal Brexit looks more likely than ever. The blame game has started. But as the reaction to a column by Guardian columnist Owen Jones shows, remainers are still set on fighting amongst themselves. Meanwhile, the true architects of this storm, the Tories, sneak away unscathed.
Jones, possibly sensing the reaction his article might have suggested people read it first. So, let’s do that first. Jones was, for possibly the first time in his life agreeing with Peter Mandelson who said recently said this was “the price the rest of us in the pro-EU camp will pay for trying, in the years following 2016, to reverse the referendum decision rather than achieve the least damaging form of Brexit.”
This, he said, is ‘not to apportion blame to ardent remainers’, before going on to do just that.
Brexit, he said, is a Tory disease, at least in the form we have it now. Even so, he suggested, that ‘does not absolve the official remain campaigns from the terrible plight this country now finds itself in. From the very beginning, there should have been an acceptance that our side – remain – was defeated in a democratic election.’
This was the dilemma facing Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour throughout negotiations. Most Labour members desperately wanted a second referendum. However, many of their core supporters did not. Demands for a referendum very often ignored the obvious fact that Britain had voted. As Donald Trump is currently learning, whether you like the result of a vote or not you still have to accept it.
Yes, it felt unfair and yes, the Leave campaign lied through its teeth, but that’s hardly unusual during elections. Right or wrong, the people had decided. The clock was ticking on making a deal and opponents of Brexit had to make a choice. Do they continue to rail against the result or do they try to make the best of a bad situation?
However, as Jones recalls, anyone who made that argument could be in for a whole lot of abuse.
“All attempts at compromise were maligned by the official remain campaigns,” he wrote. “Whatever Labour’s failures, its position on Brexit was genuinely driven by a fear of alienating leave voters who were disproportionately concentrated in marginal seats that the party needs to keep and win to have a chance of forming a government. Every possible option other than a second referendum – or even stopping Brexit altogether without consulting the British people – was toxified.”
The reaction more or less proved his point. Remainers spent the day piling in on him. Some even likened his article by blaming a victim for being raped. Nuance went out of the water.
It was an all too familiar sight. During the election, the remain side all too often found itself in civil war. Some seemed more preoccupied with finding ways to blame Jeremy Corbyn than the government whose idea this all was.
Such an intransigent attitude might be one reason the referendum was lost. And it’s one reason why no deal, something which almost nobody in the country wants, looks to be the last option standing.
During indicative votes in parliament, remainers had their chance to push their claim for a second referendum. They lost, several times. Meanwhile, other votes designed to secure a less toxic exit also failed thanks to hostility from remainers.
“MPs who backed the Norway option voted for a second referendum, too,” writes Jones “but many People’s Vote-supporting MPs refused to return the favour.”
Jones called for a sensible debate on Brexit among arch remainers, but the experience of the last four years shows that never happened. Positions are dug in, battle lines are drawn and anything but a pure remain vision makes you somehow complicit.
However, both sides in this debate find themselves giving the Tories a free pass. This is their catastrophe. They campaigned on false promises. They denied the obvious and did everything in their power to make a deal less likely. The return of the internal markets bill served to remind the EU and any potential partners that this is a government who can be trusted about as far as you can spit out a rat.
So if you were one of the people throwing hate towards Owen Jones, you can perhaps take time to look in the mirror and throw a little of that bile towards the people who are truly responsible.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)