Project fear to project reality

Posted on August 3 2017

This video was shared on the Progressive Pulse blog yesterday. I thought it too good not to share again here:

Sane voices need to be heard. Michael Dougan is a sane voice on an issue where such voices are too rarely heard.

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2 Responses

  1. James says:
    August 3 2017 at 3:47 pm

    What an almighty mess we find ourselves in.

    I’ve been thinking quite a bit today about the absurdity of the following situation in which we may easily find ourselves with ‘Soft Brexit’ (retaining single market and customs union membership).

    For the sake of argument, let’s assume ‘Soft Brexit’ and ‘No Brexit’ are equivalent in terms of the economy i.e. no substantial advantage for one over the other.

    All (or at least the vast, vast majority) of Remain voters would prefer ‘No Brexit’ to ‘Soft Brexit’ politically. They voted Remain after all. I think it is fair to assume that given the choice between the two, the majority of Leave voters would also prefer ‘No Brexit’ to ‘Soft Brexit’ as there would be no meaningful movement on the political issues that drove them to vote Leave in the first place (freedom of movement, authority of the ECJ, etc), but ‘Soft Brexit’ means having no say in the rules and decision-making process, whilst ‘No Brexit’ means having a seat at the table.

    Then we are left with a substantial majority of referendum voters preferring ‘No Brexit’ to ‘Soft Brexit’ and ‘No Brexit’ offering clear advantages to the UK over ‘Soft Brexit.’ Yet the alternative position to ‘Hard Brexit’ taken in parliament, and one that could easily become Brexit reality, is ‘Soft Brexit’ because it would be politically unpalatable for MPs to say ‘No Brexit’ is better than ‘Soft Brexit’ given the significant number of Leave voters who would never acccept that ‘Hard Brexit’ is off the table even if ‘Soft Brexit’ has parliamentary support and ‘Hard Brexit’ does not. I understand the predicament MPs find themselves in, and have no simple answer, but it seems ludicrous that reality may well turn out to be lose-lose for Remain and Leave voters alike, because of potential repercussions at the ballot box in the next election.