EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Editorial Westminster's hall of mirrors is about to shatter Rachel
Sylvester 24 October 2017

While voters demand more honesty in politics, leading Tory and Labour
MPs argue the opposite of what they believe

Politics is stuck in a hall of mirrors, where nothing is quite as it
seems and nobody means exactly what they say. Theresa Mayis presiding
over Brexit, a policy that she opposed in last year's referendum
campaign on the grounds that it would make the country poorer and less
safe. Even now the prime minister cannot say whether she believes it
is right for the UK to leave the EU but she is taking the country out
anyway.

Damian Green, the first secretary, goes so far as to say that he would
vote Remain again if there were another ballot tomorrow, yet he is de
facto deputy of a government committed to breaking with the rest of
Europe in a harder than necessary fashion. Philip Hammond faces calls
for his sacking from Brexiteers who accuse him of being too
pessimistic —ut still the chancellor has endorsed a departure from the
single market and the customs union that the Treasury fears will do
devastating economic damage. The home secretary is sitting in a
cabinet that has approved a plan which only a few months ago she was
arguing could make the country more vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Another cabinet member wishes the transition period would last for "50
years".

Across Whitehall, ministers are holding their red boxes with one hand,
and their noses with the other, as they see the biggest change of
their lifetime unfolding on their watch, even though this is a
revolution they do not believe in. No wonder the government seems so
anxious and uncomfortable. "We are trapped in a box," admits one
minister. "Parliament feels frozen by the referendum but people voted
for a fantasy we can't deliver. They can only have Brexit if they're
prepared to suffer the pain." It is an extraordinary situation. In the
past, ministers have resigned from the government in principle over
much less. This is not so much a constitutional mess as an ethical
one, with ambiguity on all sides.

Those who have seen Mrs May privately in recent weeks describe her as
stricken and stunned. On one occasion she sat in silence for almost
ten minutes while the visitor she had invited to see her waited for
her to lead the conversation. He left the meeting deciding she no
longer wanted to be prime minister. The internal contradiction of her
position must be taking an emotional as well as a political toll.
According to reports in the German press, she appeared "tormented" at
her dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker last week.

There is an institutional as well as a personal incongruity in
Whitehall, with most senior civil servants opposed to Brexit. Even in
the Department for Exiting the EU many officials believe they are
masterminding a policy against the national interest. In the Commons,
MPs voted for Article 50 which started a process towards an outcome a
majority of them want to prevent.

Anna Soubry, the pro-European MP who resigned from the government last
year, admits she is relieved at no longer being a minister. "I don't
believe the majority of people in the government want the hard Brexit
they're now pursuing," she says.

The Brexiteers will claim this is the dreaded "elites" closing ranks
against "the people" but there is of course a clash between the
representative democracy of parliament and the direct democracy of a
referendum. In any case, it's not only the former Remainers who are
internally torn between political expediency and economic reality.
Michael Gove and Boris Johnson both campaigned for Brexit but now seem
uncertain about what it should mean. They wanted to shake things up
but never expected to win. Like the robbers in The Italian Job, they
were "only supposed to blow the bloody doors off". Although friends
say the foreign secretary now has the "zeal of the convert" about
leaving the EU, he has always been in favour of immigration. He is
also nervous about the short-term impact of Brexit. He once told me
that the economy would follow the path of a Nike tick if we voted to
leave, going down before soaring up. He knows that those in the
poorest parts of the country who voted for Brexit to improve their
lives can ill afford even this short-term dip and there is no sign of
the £50 million a week he promised for the NHS. Mr Johnson's
effervescent optimism has the feel of Peter Pan telling the children
to clap to keep Tinker Bell alive.

David Davis and Liam Fox may be true believers but even their dreams
are slowly adjusting to the reality of Brussels negotiations. The Tory
Party is so dysfunctional that the Conservative voice on Radio 4's The
World At One yesterday was Suella Fernandes, who happily laid into the
Confederation of British Industry as leader of the European Research
Group of Tory Brexit-supporting MPs, although she is also
parliamentary private secretary to Mr Hammond, who presumably takes a
rather different view about Britain's leading businesses. In the hall
of mirrors, images ricochet around and identities become confused.

Labour is in its own gallery of glass. Jeremy Corbyn, an instinctive
radical who has for years seen the EU as part of a capitalist
conspiracy, now looks in the mirror to see himself attempting to
preserve the status quo for a transitional period at least. John
McDonnell has floated the idea of staying in a reformed single market,
even though the left has always resisted the controls on state aid
that belonging can bring. Meanwhile the Labour moderates sit meekly by
while their leader takes the party in a direction with which they
totally disagree. One MP told me that Mr Corbyn's leadership was a
"moral" question for him. He was so opposed to his policies on
defence, national security and public spending that he did not want
him to become prime minister. Yet he and many others remain on the
Labour benches because they hope one day to reclaim their party.

None of this is black and white. It would be easy to accuse the
Remainsupporting cabinet ministers, or the Labour moderates, of
hypocrisy, but that would be a cheap hit. In both cases, decent people
believe they must respect a democratic mandate, whether that is the
Brexit referendum or the Labour leadership election. They are staying
in their positions because they hope to make what they see as a bad
situation better. Yet the profound lack of trust in politics will only
be exacerbated by the perception that so many politicians are doing
the opposite of what they believe.

The voters demand honesty and authenticity, yet the reality at
Westminster is dissembling and ambiguity. There will be more than
seven years' bad luck when this hall of mirrors comes crashing down.