Ah, Lord Carrington, where are you now?
It will come as no surprise to hear that I think this government has lost all credibility and moral authority. Other countries see us as living through a mental breakdown of our own making: probably not far from the truth, harsh though the metaphor may be.
How can it be that all the main protagonists of Brexit have been tested, found wanting and resigned? Of the leading Brexiters, only Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling, remain in the Cabinet. The variability of the former and the pointlessness of the second says it all. The performance of the last is covered below.
Surely, there has to come a point at which someone (brave) walks into Theresa May's office and says: Never mind the confidence of your MPs and Parliament: the government has lost the confidence of the country. You have to try a different tack.
A few cuttings from this week's media give one an idea of the state of the nation.
Brexit: sack Grayling over ferry fiasco, demand MPs - a Guardian headline after it was revealed that the mystical Seaborne Freight contract, in which none of us believed as they had no ferries, had been cancelled.
This came a few days after Chris Grayling was ridiculed by the Chairman of Calais Port:
'The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, is no longer welcome in Calais, according to the port’s chairman, who has been angered by British plans to divert some sea traffic in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
'Jean-Marc Puissesseau reportedly accused the UK cabinet minister of behaving in a “completely disrespectful” manner on Tuesday. “Mr Grayling came to us in November and asked us if we would be ready. We told him ‘yes’, though we did not know as much as we know today. He did not tell us that he wanted to reduce the activity [at Calais].
'“It is not fair at all, it is completely disrespectful. I don’t want to see him again,” Puissesseau told the Daily Telegraph.'One wonders how we are to get goods across the Straits of Dover in 50 days' time as this ferry link was apparently going to be the whizzo solution.
Mark Steel in The Independent focused on Donald Tusk's remark about the place in Hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan - I won't bore you with the Sun's outburst on the same subject which were predictable and totally ignored the incredibly rude headlines they have used about Donald Tusk in the past:
'So Donald Tusk is being absolutely outrageous when he says the promoters of Brexit had “no plan”.
'The plan all along was for the first and then second negotiator to resign, for both to oppose the deal they negotiated, and the foreign secretary to resign, followed by half the cabinet, and for no one to have realised there would be a border with Ireland, and votes to be lost by record amounts, and for rehearsals for when 50,000 lorries are stuck in Kent and businesses to stockpile toilet rolls and insulin, and the government to be dependent on creationists, and plans made for the evacuation of the Queen until it could now be announced we’re in a customs union with The Jungle Book and all have to dance with bears, or Britain has been reclassified as a beehive and Arlene Foster is our queen.'Well, he may overstate things when he comes to the Jungle Book but these fade into insignificance to this wonderful (anonymous piece which explains the Brexit process with staggering clarity:
David Cameron made a promise he didn’t think he’d have to keep to have a referendum he didn’t think he would lose. Boris Johnson decided to back the side he didn’t believe in because he didn’t think it would win. Then Gove, who said he wouldn’t run, did, and Boris who said he would run, said he wouldn’t, and Theresa May who didn’t vote for Brexit got the job of making it happen.
She called the election she said she wouldn’t and lost the majority David Cameron hadn’t expected to win in the first place. She triggered Article 50 when we didn’t need to and said we would talk about trade at the same time as the divorce deal and the EU said they wouldn’t so we didn’t.
People thought she wouldn’t get the divorce settled but she did, but only by agreeing to separate arrangements for Northern Ireland when she had promised the DUP she wouldn’t. Then the Cabinet agreed a deal but they hadn’t, and David Davis who was Brexit Secretary but wasn’t said it wasn’t what people had voted for and he couldn’t support what he had just supported and left.
Boris Johnson who hadn’t left then wished that he had and did, but it was a bit late for that. Dominic Raab become the new Brexit secretary. People thought Theresa May wouldn’t get a withdrawal agreement negotiated, but once she had they wished that she hadn’t, because hardly anybody liked it whether they wanted to leave or not.
Jacob Rees-Mogg kept threatening a vote of no confidence in her but not enough people were confident enough people would not have confidence in her to confidently call a no confidence vote. Dominic Raab said he hadn’t really been Brexit Secretary either and resigned, and somebody else took the job but it probably isn’t worth remembering who they are as they’re not really doing the job either as Olly Robbins is.
Then Theresa May said she would call a vote and didn’t, that she wouldn’t release some legal advice but had to, that she would get some concessions but didn’t, and got cross that Juncker was calling her nebulous when he wasn’t but probably should have been.
At some point Jacob Rees Mogg and others called a vote of no-confidence in her, which she won by promising to leave, so she can stay. But they said she had really lost it and should go, at the same time as saying that people who voted Leave knew what they were voting for which they couldn’t possibly have because we still don’t know now, and that we should leave the vote to Leave vote alone but have no confidence in the no-confidence vote which won by more.
The government also argued in court against us being able to say we didn’t want to leave after all but it turned out we could. May named a date for the vote on her agreement which nobody expected to pass, while pretending that no deal which nobody wants is still possible (even though we know we can just say we are not leaving), and that we can’t have a second referendum because having a democratic vote is undemocratic. And of course as expected she loses. Some people are talking about a managed no-deal which is not a deal but is not no-deal either.
Thank goodness for strong and stable government.
