No. 32 - A Climactic Week - Are you Ready to Change Horses James?

Dear James, 

We are approaching a series of climactic events in this extraordinary period in our post-war history. Everything is about to change. From her endless and fruitless voyages of discovery around the EU, Mrs May will report back to parliament that there is nothing new to discover. Yet she will continue down this blind alley until the bitter end. Of course, the EU will not budge and why should they? It is we who are leaving the biggest free-market in the world, not them.

As a career politician James, you have backed Mrs May’s deal from the start. You may soon have to change horses. Your existing party is already split. The ERG has been wagging the dog for the last twenty or more years. We hear about the Tory ‘Alternative Arrangements Group’ and now, the Brexit Delivery Group.  The latter are now threatening to vote against Mrs May’s reckless ‘no deal’ option next week. Such an option would be disastrous for our nation and the thought that it would be used to ‘scare’ the EU into concessions has always been the pure fantasy of the Brexiteers not to mention the wide-eyed horror of business leaders everywhere. At least some in your party seem to realise that. 

However, the British crisis is more profound and bigger than the Brexit debate and the polices of our moribund political parties are a reflection of this rather than a solution to it. The Tory urge to conserve and the Labour need to fantasize have long since exhausted their arguments. Through ever more extreme versions of their policies they feed off each other like self-destructing binary stars, locked in a process of mutual annihilation, generating more heat than light and exacerbating the ancient divisions of our nation. 

The vast majority of the young people of our country want us to go beyond the modern nation that we were pre-2016. They want a country where lobbyists are contained, massive undeserved bonuses are eradicated, where the uniquely British scourge of the private school system is dramatically modified and where workers must no longer be the unavoidable detritus of uncontrolled capitalism.  

This week we saw the first signs of guts in parliament. The three MPs who quit your party are being honest with themselves. Each has put their careers at grave risk. Rather than putting their parties first, they are thinking of the national interest. This, put at its most simple, is about maintaining or increasing the wealth of our nation and ensuring a proper distribution of the rewards. Mrs May’s ‘deal’ and any other deal will make us all poorer. That is the nub of the whole Brexit debate. 

So we are approaching some kind of crunch. Mrs May and her deal may soon be history and you will soon be left with a choice. When the wave breaks James, which way will you go? You could join the Tory party of the hard right or a moderate Tory party of the centre right.  However there is a further choice. A third party seems to be on the verge of emerging which may represent the long awaited reawakening of common sense in this country. Are you willing to become a politician with vision and courage? Like Anna Soubry, Sarah Wallaston and Heidi Allen? This is the challenge that you face. Will you be up to it? 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A first step out of this crisis should be to put the basic Brexit vote back to the people. Mrs May’s assertion that 2016 was ‘the largest democratic exercise in our history’ was almost right. It was also one of the narrowest. A confirmatory vote would be a natural extension of that democracy. Brexit may win. Brexit may lose. But at least the British people themselves would have spoken for once on the basis of real information? 

Isn’t that a common sense way to start back along the road to moderation and calm? 

I recommend it for your consideration.

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent