Knowing when to admit defeat

When given a novel and complex task, it can be difficult to admit that it is either beyond you or the task is undo-able.

I recall one such task which started with the CEO taking me to one side and saying 'The Chairman wants this done. X and Y have already had a go but he did not like working with them. You are my next hope.'

I should have known that the project was nigh impossible. My team was unsuited to the type of work and so I would have to lead from the front and learn new campaigning skills I did not have. What I had not realised was that the Chairman was wanting to re-create his youthful past, expecting a large and complex organisation to act like a light-footed start-up.

The lessons I learned were profound:

• Know your skills and don't be flattered into taking a job for which you know you are unsuited, even if you are the last one standing. It may be the job that is wrong rather than the people
• Make sure you have your constituency behind you and that they are not watching you from the wings, seeing you banging your head against a wall and thankful that they are not involved
• The opposition can be your friend. My Chairman was more inclined to listen to the other big organisation involved rather than my organisation as they did not dare suggest that the project might be impossible
• Know when to go back to those who gave you the job and admit that you cannot do it. It is better to be seen as honest about your own abilities than a 'failure' to be disposed of

It all ended in tears, as you can guess, and I became another person 'found wanting'. It was irrelevant that this said as much, if not more, about the Chairman than the people involved.

Theresa May could learn some of these lessons.

A run-of-the-mill middle-rank administrator, she is totally out of her depth with Brexit but, having been given the task, is determined to see it through at whatever cost to herself and the country. Like me, she is trying to achieve a big notch on her CV, fully expecting to walk away the moment the finishing line is crossed, satisfied that she could look at the badge 'She delivered Brexit' on television captions and her study wall, in her retirement.

• She does not have the skills to lead and bring people together. Flattered to have achieved the top job almost by accident, she had to pretend to be an ardent Brexiter when she had campaigned on the other side 
• Because she failed in those early stages, neither her party, nor the country, has ever been united behind her. The abortive election simply underlined this. She promised a new approach which never happened
• She has singularly failed to engage with the 48% Remainers or the Opposition from the start (and is still not doing so in a meaningful way as she seems incapable of talking to anyone who did not vote Tory)
• Now she is trying to push something through in the teeth of opposition from her party and the country and is refusing to go back to the people who gave her the brief and ask if they still mean it now that the reality is clear(er)

It is time for her to be honest, not to be pig-headedly stubborn: to check the brief with the client. Ken Clarke was right: she is a Bloody difficult women indeed.

What so many Prime Ministers do not see at the time, is that they will be reviled in retirement for not having listened properly and acted honestly when in office: just think of people like Thatcher (Poll Tax), Blair (Iraq War), Brown (Spending) and Cameron (the referendum) ... All of them could have done with a seriously large majority behind them before taking a politically risky step. May is just going to be one more entry on this list.

How did we get here?

It is less than two months before we are due to leave the EU. Whether one agrees with the decision or not, it is almost impossible to understand the breath-taking incompetence of the journey, summed up by the fact that we will not know until 14 February (originally scheduled for October, then November, then December, then delayed until January ...) whether we will leave with a deal (the government's but not Parliament's preferred solution) or without one (abhorred by a majority in Parliament).

One can almost hear the headline-writers sharpening their pens for St Valentine's Night Massacre when the news of the vote comes in.

Any junior, middle or senior manager in business who left things this late would have been out on their ear long ago but the government is ploughing on as though the urgency were no more than where to go for one's late-booked skiing holiday.

We have less than two months to put in place a whole new border system and customs arrangements if we 'crash out'. Two months to pass a mountain of legislation which even Ministers now seeing as nigh impossible. By way of contrast, the patrol boats promised for the Straits of Dover still have not returned from the Mediterranean over two months ago.

Had we decided on 'no deal' two and a half years ago, the preparations might just about be ready by now.

The headlines report that riots will ensue if there is a hard Brexit, that the Queen will be evacuated, that people are stockpiling food, that decaying food will start piling up ... and this ignores the news coming out of business about investment being cut back and jobs being lost: little companies like Nissan, Airbus, Jaguar Land Rover have all warned of the danger of no deal - news that is stoutly denied on the basis of no apparent evidence by Brexiters.

All of which may well be Project Fear Mark VII (or is it VIII, IX or X?) but coming from the government spin doctors to get everyone to support their 'deal' which will ensure that nothing much changes for a couple of years (the 'Transition period') while we attempt the really difficult bit of agreeing a trade deal with the EU. Meanwhile, morale will continue to decline as the consequences of leaving become clearer by the day.

Talk about a decision taken in haste and repented at leisure.

Meanwhile, back in the Duchy, the Cornish MP George Eustace, the Minister of Agriculture and a former farmer - better known as George Useless locally - was explaining the benefits of leaving to a BBC Radio 4 audience. He reassured Cornish farmers that 'modelling had shown' that the price of lamb would go down while that of beef would go up. He was sure they would re-adjust, although he did not mention any help in doing so. And fishing would once more be under 'our' control and we could work out or own fishing policy.

So he has not yet worked out a fishing policy and yet we have voted to dive off the deep end in the hopes that a more successful one will emerge from somewhere.

And as for the previous EU grant of £60m to help Cornwall as a under-performing Region, George was coy. He made no commitment to replacing this directly (as Boris had done quite directly during the referendum campaign) and talked of some new 'partnership fund' which might mean that Cornwall got the money, or a bit less, or even more. I see pink pigs flying past the window.

The future of Cornwall's industry is to be beef farming and fishing. No mention of the EU-supported creative industries, of the EU-supported UK Spaceport. Um ... which century are you living in George? Have you thought of re-opening the mines so we can send small boys down them to keep them out of mischief?

Meanwhile, in order to stitch up her Plan B - or are we up to E yet? - the PM intends to 'visit' Brussels to be told yet again - I forget how many times they have already told her, often publicly and directly  - that they have no interest in re-negotiating the withdrawal agreement or the backstop which she herself suggested, while her whips try to bribe Labour MPs with promises of future investment (and we know how reliable such promises are, don't we George).

The blame game has started too. It will never be the Prophets of Brexit's fault that milk and honey does not appear to be flowing in abundance. It will because the rest of us failed to support their act of faith in the Divine, Mystical and all-Providing Unicorn. It will be everyone else's fault. They simply cannot face reality

The EU is accused of being intransigent when we are the ones wanting to leave. Apparently they are meant to adjust the rules of their club so that we can have 'the exact same benefits' as David Davis promised us.

Lord Digby Jones originally said that there would be no job losses from Brexit. In another recent BBC radio show he accepts that now there will be. This does not show that he was wrong when he said there would be none, purely that by failing to get behind the PM to support a policy with which they disagreed, parliamentary Remainers are responsible for the job losses. How on earth does that logic work?

Nissan is withdrawing a new model from its Sunderland works stating that uncertainty about Brexit has made them review their investment programme. Jacob Rees-Mogg's reaction is to claim that this has nothing to do with Brexit, despite Nissan's statement and claims that just-in-time delivery will go ahead unhindered, against the views of the car manufacturers. What does he know that the entire car industry does not? I wonder if he knows that Chris Grayling's friends have not got any ferries.

All of which shows that there is actually no plan, no unity: no national commitment to a single solution. It is horrific to think that a matter of such national importance might be decided by one MP, beguiled or duped by the offer of investment, an honour or 'favourable treatment' rather than, given the uncertainty and lack of clarity, by a super-majority of the British people.

What a stinking, horrible mess. What incompetence. Heaven help us all.

You could start by saying sorry

It started with the news that Cathay Pacific had sold £12,450 Business Class tickets for a Hong Kong to Lisbon flight at Economy Class prices: £1,175 by mistake. We all laughed at the idea but it sparked a thought: why would anyone pay 10 times the economy price to fly on this journey. The beds? The food? The peace and quiet? The space? By contrast, the First Class cost is 20 times the Economy one.

Yes, we all know that the high fares in the front of the plane help to reduce the costs for those of us in the back. If airlines flew with only one class then we would all be complaining. But who has this sort of money and what do they really want?

The Swedes have long recognised that a country or business at ease with itself is one where the most well-off receive no more than 20 times the salary of the least well paid. So, they might argue, Cathay Pacific's prices reflect this. The First Class passenger can be separated from the Economy one on the basis of price.

That 20 times multiple salary ceiling was broken in the UK long ago. As Polly Toynbee recently remarked, inequality shot through the roof in the 1980s and the distance between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' - or 'just about managing' in modern parlance - has continued to widen. Cedric Brown of British Gas fame was awarded a salary of £475,000 (plus a bonus of £600,000) in 1995: 47 times that of his average employee. Now FTSE 100 CEOs now regularly earn £4m a year (with/without bonuses) when salaries have been frozen of pushed down for the vast majority.

The world's 26 richest people now own as much as the poorest 50%. What a terrible condemnation of our world that we should have allowed such an imbalance.

Trickle down economics - keeping taxes low for the super rich and encouraging them to splash their cash to create jobs for the less well off - has not worked. Research shows that they simply add the benefit to their wealth.

Our local newsfeed reports that the number of paupers' funerals has doubled in recent years: 77 people in Cornwall could not afford a funeral in 2017/18. The difference between those Business Class and Economy class fares on Cathay Pacific would have paid for a decent funeral for at least three of those 77: the First Class fare would have paid for more than 6. Can we not even say goodbye to people with dignity?

You do not have to be steeped in left-wing propaganda, watch Ken Loach's I Daniel Blake or Jimmy McGovern's excellent Care on the BBC to be concerned about how the 'other half'' are treated: actually, if the figures above are to be believed, it is a lot more than half. Those films have done what Brassed Off did for a previous generation showing we have learned nothing in the interim.

Jobs advertised today across Cornwall suggest salaries of around £20k for responsible sounding jobs which are well above the capabilities of a person prepared to accept the 'minimum wage'. How do you bring up a family on a salary like that? How do you even begin to contemplate putting aside some money for the deposit on a house? Even the smallest affordable house is going to cost well over 20 times that salary, way beyond anything a mortgage company might consider.

People taking these jobs are not 'failures' that can be despised by Tory politicians. They are not relying on the state (the biggest Tory crime) They are decent people wanting decent jobs to help them live a decent life. They are, or will be, taxpayers. To precis Daniel Blake, they are not numbers, customers or service users: they are citizens. They are voters.

Thankfully, some Tory MPs are beginning to notice. Heidi Allen is on a tour of England with Labour MP Frank Field, looking at some of the most deprived areas. I've absolutely had enough she says, all too aware that her party's policies have caused problems. Will it make any difference? Will her experiences feed back into the Westminster policy bubble? I somehow doubt it.

The People's Vote people are trying to find emotional slogans that will resonate with people if we are actually allowed a second referendum on Brexit: something that will counter the We told them the first time, now tell them again: the vacuous, argument-free, thuggish slogan of the Leavers.

We all know that, amongst many people up and down the country, the original Brexit vote was a protest vote about austerity, about the centralisation of power in Westminster, about the easy life of the 'haves' in the South East, paying themselves eye-watering salaries, about the fact that 'the City' had carried on as though austerity had never happened.

The People's Vote campaigners have nothing to apologise for as they were not responsible for the failings of government over the years, but they could embarrass Parliament into an apology: into saying 'sorry'.

• Sorry for the easy win of blaming the EU for things that were all the time within the control of the government
• Sorry for wasting time on Brexit when they should have been doing something about the issues which we really face, which would really improve people's lives (rather than pandering to a pampered, over-wealthy elite)
• Sorry that economic trickle-down has failed and agreeing to do something serious about limiting fat cat salaries and insultingly large bonuses (a commitment made by the PM when she took office but which has sunk without trace) 
• Sorry that so many wealthy people were managing to avoid tax through the use of off-shore accounts when 'the people' were being screwed
• Sorry that salaries for the few had been allowed to mushroom way beyond anything realistic
• Sorry that austerity has been applied so unfairly
• Sorry for incentivising cost reduction: imagining that everything can be done to the same standards on less money, and enriching the wealthy on the proceeds
• Sorry that the social services system has been unable to cope and for managing them so inadequately with insensitive, unfair and ill-thought through procedures
• Sorry for constantly tinkering with, and under-funding vital public services like the NHS and Education 
• Sorry that there has been a need for food banks to become a main source of nourishment for so many people
• Sorry that Westminster has so concentrated power in the country, cutting budgets for local authorities and seizing all their powers of decision-making
• Sorry that the party political system has so signally failed to provide a country at ease with itself or any sense of representation for more than half the population

And, sorry, yes sorry, that we have created a society in which no one seems to turn a hair at the moral paradox that some people can afford a First Class fare on an airline when others are visiting food banks just to survive. As Thatcher might have said: if you are still travelling Economy then you have not been successful.

No MP has ever wanted to say sorry. They will avoid questions, offer fake news, twist the truth: anything to avoid the need to say that they got something wrong. They believe they are required to be omniscient and omni-competent. To apologise or admit fault would lead inexorably to the need to resign. It would fail every test they falsely set themselves. 

'Sorry' is not an easy word but it might start a new debate in the country and might do more to bring the country back together than any infighting winner-takes-all self-centred fighting in the adversarial bearpit that is our Parliament.

One can live in hope.

The (Brexit) debate rumbles on

Having delayed her 'meaningful vote' from before Christmas  into January because she was convinced she would lose it, Theresa May now faces the music on Tuesday 15 May.

A last desperate scramble for votes is taking place. To what end, we cannot know.

She threatens that to reject her deal will be 'bad faith' with the British people. Methinks she doth protest too much. Setting aside the fact that a majority of the British people did not actually vote to leave the EU, the vote actually said 'leave the EU' it did not say 'Leave the EU by St Theresa's deal'. There are lots of other ways of leaving the EU other than through her miserable deal.

The Norway model is back on the agenda. I wonder how long it will take for someone to point out that this will only give us control of fishing and agriculture and so far we have no idea what we want to do with either. We would be in the single market and customs union and would have to accept free movement (except in very exceptional circumstances); we would have no say in EU regulations and would thus be 'rule-takers.'. So much for 'taking back control'.

Meanwhile, the redoubtable Grayling says that we must do what the right wing yobs say or they will get really cross and riot. It is good to have someone like this in charge of appeasement.

As a little coda to his ferry fiasco, enjoy the attached grilling of one of his Ministers. There is nothing like a QC for being dogged and asking the same question three times.

In the debate in the House of Commons, David Lammy summed up his objections to Brexit.  

... We have a duty to tell our constituents the truth. Even when they passionately disagree.

We owe to them not only our “industry” but also our “judgement.”

We are trusted representatives, not unthinking delegates.

So why do many in this House continue to support Brexit, when they know it will wreck jobs, the NHS and our standing in the world?

This is the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the Brexit debate.

Most MPs now recognise it in private, but do not say it in public.

Brexit is a con:

• A trick. A swindle. A fraud.
• A deception that will hurt most those people it promised to help.
• A dangerous fantasy which will make every problem it claims to solve worse.
• A campaign won on false promises and lies.

Vote Leave and Leave.EU both broke the law.

Russian interference is beyond reasonable doubt.

And by now every single campaign promise made in 2016 has come unstuck.

Brexit will not enrich our NHS - it will impoverish it.

A trade deal with Donald Trump will see US corporations privatise and dismantle the NHS one bed at a time.

And even those promises on immigration – which has so greatly enriched our country – are a lie.

After Brexit immigration will go up, not down.

When we enter negotiations with countries like India and China, they will ask for three things. Visas. Visas. And more visas. And they will get them because we will be weak.

Then there’s the myth about restoring parliamentary sovereignty. The last two years have shown what a joke that is.

• The Prime Minister has hoarded power like a deluded 21st century Henry the Eighth.
• Impact assessments have been hidden. Votes resisted and blocked. Simple opponents of a government policy bullied and threatened to get into line.
• Even when we forced this meaningful vote, the Prime Minister cancelled it, certain we would reject her disastrous deal. And oh we will reject it. Because this is a Lose-Lose compromise, which offers no certainty for our future.

All it guarantees is more years of negotiation – headed by the same clowns who guided us into this farce in the first place.

--

Mr Speaker, we are suffering from a crisis of leadership in our hour of need.

This country’s greatest moments came when we showed courage, not when we appeased.

• The courage of Wilberforce to emancipate the slaves, against the anger of the British ruling class.
• The courage of Winston Churchill to declare war on Hitler, against the appeasers in his cabinet and the country.
• The courage of Atlee and Bevan to nationalise the health service -- against the doctors who protested it was not right.

Today we must be bold, because the challenges we face are just as extreme.

We must not be afraid to tell the truth to those who do not agree.

--

Friends on this side of the house tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns. The former miners, the factory workers, those who feel they have been left behind.

I say we must not patronise them with cowardice. Let’s tell them the truth.

“You were sold a lie.

Parts of the media used your fears to sell papers and boost viewing figures.

Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson exploited the same prejudice to win votes.

Shame on them.

Immigrants have not taken your jobs. Our schools and colleges failed to give you skills.

Hospitals are not crumbling because of health tourists, but because a decade of austerity ground them down to the bone.

You cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build -- not because Mohammed down the road who moved in.

And wealth was hoarded in London - when it should have been shared across the country.

Blame us, blame Westminster. Do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes.

And do not be angry at us for telling you the truth.

Be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie.

--

As Martin Luther King said long ago “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”

So just as I speak plainly to the government this time around, let me also speak to the opposition about some home truths.

There is no left-wing justification for Brexit.

Ditching workers’ rights, social protections, and ending environmental cooperation is not progressive. This is a project about neoliberal deregulation. It is Thatcherism on steroids, pushed by her modern day disciples.

Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.

Socialism confined to one country will not work.

Whether you like it or not, the world we live in is global.

We can only fix the rigged system if we cooperate across border-lines.

The party of Keir Hardie has always been International.

We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them on the biggest issue of our lives.

If we remain in the EU, we can reform it from the top table.

Share the load of mass migration, address excesses of the bureaucracy, and fix the inequalities between creditor and debtors.

We can recharge the economy.

We can re-fuel the NHS.

We can build the houses we need, after years of hurt.

Hope is what we need.

Remain in the EU.

Give Britain a second opportunity to decide.

Sadly, there were few MPs around to hear him as they simply could be bothered and had gone home for the weekend.

A Happy New Year?

It is always good to start the year with some good uplifting news and this has been no exception.

With the Prime Minister's deal likely to appear before the House of Commons in a week's time, Pravda has been in full flow, trying to convince us that a 'no deal' would be a disaster so that we all roll over and buy her deal. We are warned there are more messages to come in the next few days.

Meanwhile, with the PM now on borrowed time, it has been fun watching the leadership contenders all trying to stake out their claims to be 'the chosen one' to succeed her. The vanity of Ministers knows no bounds and many have been keen to show they are 'back at their desks', 'being active' or 'making an announcement' (generally ill-thought through). It gets them brownie points at No 10 and with the faithful. Needless to say they have mostly fallen over in the process.

Jeremy Hunt has been off to Singapore: oh the advantages of being the Foreign Secretary and therefore being allowed to travel whenever/wherever you want. Boris missed an important Heathrow vote using precisely the same trick.

His message was that the UK could become another Singapore: a view which was rather spoiled by the Prime Minister of Singapore who said their model would not work for the UK.

One suspects that the residents of Hartlepool and Bournemouth would agree with the Prime Minister if they saw the conditions in which people live, and looked into the political structure of Singapore: We decide what is right, no matter what the people think. Yes, that is just what Brexiters want.

He was keen to tell us that Britain's role after Brexit should be as an invisible chain linking together the democracies of the world ... yatter, yatter. What on earth is this meant to mean? Has he asked them if they wish to be bound by an invisible chain or has he been reading too much Harry Potter with his mince pies?

Gavin Williamson has been throwing his diminished weight around by suggesting that we could open military bases around the world. Why? Oh yes, we used to have them back when we had an empire.

Um, Gavin, the armed forces are way under strength and much smaller than they were in the past. Heavens, we cannot rustle up enough patrol vessels to manage the straits of Dover.

Has he even checked that the host countries want us?

Sajid Javid has been the most prominent, boldly cancelling his 'luxury safari holiday in a £800 a night lodge' in order to be seen managing the 'migrant' 'crisis' (it was neither) with 'swarms' (well a few) people trying to cross the straits of Dover in small boats.

Having played all the 'right tunes' to the Torygraph faithful, including questioning whether they were genuine asylum seekers anyway, he was then taken to task by the 'liberal elite' who pointed out that under international law he should not pre-judge their status.

He was also taken to task for suggesting that the way to manage migration was by working closely with European partners: precisely the people from who we were about to cut ourselves off and who would no longer have an EU duty to co-operate.

'Bold action' followed with two vessels being withdrawn from the Mediterranean where they were dealing with large numbers of boats, to bolster the defence of the homeland. It will take one of them several weeks to arrive by which time the 'crisis' will be over. What price it never actually bothers to return? The media will have moved on long before it gets here.

It did not take long for headlines to emerge suggesting that Javid and Williamson were scoring points off each other.

I suppose we should be grateful that Caroline Nokes was not left in charge.

The star of the show, as usual, has been Chris Grayling. He had two strings to his bow. He blamed the unions for the 3.1% rail price rises. Um, Chris, that sounds so terribly 1970s and how would you feel if you had been squeezed by the government into having no pay rise for years and then, when you did get one (perish the thought), the government blamed you for the price rises.

And after a year when he had manifestly cocked up the whole rail system with a series of gaffes like changing the national rail timetable and forgiving a whole host of franchisees who were patently incapable of running a railway.

Trains are still not arriving or departing on time and there are suggestions that the ones that do appear will soon be running at 200% capacity. Yes, I know the London Undergound does, but that is for short journeys, not for five and six hour ones.

But this was simply a warm-up to his explanation as to why he let a contract to a 'ferry company' that had no money, no ferries and had never actually done anything in its short life.

Only later did it emerge that the company's terms and conditions were copied and pasted from a pizza delivery company's website. And Grayling re-assured us that the 'due diligence has been thorough'.

But we can relax as he has also assured us that he is expecting the channel ports to operate normally in all Brexit circumstances. So that's all right then. There is no need to believe the government's own warnings about turning the M20 into a lorry park. JR-M was right that unicorns can nod lorries through in 6 seconds.

Honourable mentions should go to Matt Hancock who is something to do with Health who has been claiming that the NHS will be the best place in the world to have a baby. We have some way to go, apparently but that does not stop a Minister making a bold claim (with no money attached).

If we are the best place in the world to have a baby, might that not just lead to a greater demand for migration?

And to James Brokenshire, our worthy Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for so diddling the figures that the £17m extra promised to Cornwall by central government will not actually be coming to Cornwall at all but will have to be provided by Cornwall Council.

It is so good to know the government of the country is in strong, stable, safe and reliable hands.

Where next?

It seems to be common ground that the government's withdrawal deal will hit the buffers early next week if the PM does not withdraw the proposal before then. Unprecedented times follow with all sorts of options as the Independent sets out.

We seem to have a choice between:

• No deal: chaos at ports, shortage of food and medicines, economic meltdown ... 
• The PM's deal - semi-permanent rule-taking with no say in the content of those rules unless we want to ditch Northern Ireland (who would be closely followed by Scotland) and a long-drawn out process of negotiation on a new trade agreement (which has not even started yet) 
• Norway (with as many pluses as you care to add) - which solves none of the migration problems and leaves us as a rule-taker ... lifebelt being thrown into the mix and likely to be rejected by Norway 
• Canada (ditto pluses and minuses) - which no one much understands 
• Remaining in the EU

And, to make things merry at Christmastime, there is no majority in either the country or parliament for any of them.

Fun eh?

Not that we know why we are doing it of course.

We are being told that 'we should get behind the PM to reflect the "will of the people"'.

As a democrat, should I change my views because the majority has said that they want to leave the EU or am I right to stick to my views and allow others to make the compromises?

If I do change my mind then who will make the case for remaining?

If I supported the deal, would I be merely colluding in declaring:

Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line! 
The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether 
The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen. 
These eyes of mine at once determined 
The sleeves are velvet, the cape is ermine 
The hose are blue and the doublet is a lovely shade of green 
Somebody send for the Queen ... 
... who would then to dissolve parliament and make Theresa May dictator-for-life.

What are you for?

As we reach the climax - or is that nadir - of the government's attempt to get us all to sign up to their dodgy Brexit deal, a few wisps of sanity are wafting around. One came from a tweet, via the Guardian and asks:

Is it possible that I’m the only British person alive today that has no clue as to what we’re meant to be fighting for? I literally have no idea what you brexiters want.

I know what we’re meant to be against, but not one positive thing we’re meant to be striving towards in this new non European Britain. It seems to be something to do with Churchill but other than than not a clue. It also seems that as I don’t know what this shared dream is meant to be then somehow you believe I’m now a traitor, why?

So brexiters please tell us all what you’re for, what you want? What is this “control” you claim to want so badly? What is it control over?

I’m not sure you actually understand yourselves. I think it’s a feeling you’re craving, a feeling of control over a world that is passing you by. I don’t think it amounts to any more than that. You want our country to bend to feelings and that’s it. You’re after obtaining the intangible and ephemeral by dismantling the real and permanent.

So please brexiters if you want me to pronounce shibboleth can you please have the decency of saying it out loud first. Give me a clue as to what you want us to be?”

Raphael Behr picked up the theme a few days later, saying:

We conspired to hold a referendum on leaving the EU without a serious conversation about what the EU even is, let alone what it does. Then, a year later, we got through a general election campaign with little mention of Europe at all. Another year has passed and, despite the urgency of the article 50 clock running out, politics still manages to distract itself with arguments other than the only one worth having, which is this: given what we now know about Brexit that we didn’t know then, should we still do it?

Should we indeed?