A country is entirely capable of pursuing policies that will cause it extraordinary harm. Some sort of vanguard, be it under the leadership of someone named Johnson or Blair, and usually claiming to represent 'the people' or 'progress', will stubbornly pursue a policy, even when it is obvious the devastation they are causing, because they believe it is the right thing to do -- morally and historically, a sort of secular providence. They did it with mass migration. They have done it repeatedly with foreign interventions. Other countries have certainly done it in pursuit of a communist society.
Brexit is not quite the same, but the same tendency is undoubtedly there. 'We must have a clean break with the EU,' we are told. 'We must follow the democratic mandate.' 'We must follow the will of the people.' As usually happens with democracy, a direct vote (i.e. the referendum) has empowered the most radical on the winning side. Indeed, it has turned people who once were infuriatingly moderate on or uninterested in the EU question into aspiring tyrants demanding complete political surrender to their 'clean' or 'true' version of Brexit. How fickle people are.
Brexit is not quite the same, but the same tendency is undoubtedly there. 'We must have a clean break with the EU,' we are told. 'We must follow the democratic mandate.' 'We must follow the will of the people.' As usually happens with democracy, a direct vote (i.e. the referendum) has empowered the most radical on the winning side. Indeed, it has turned people who once were infuriatingly moderate on or uninterested in the EU question into aspiring tyrants demanding complete political surrender to their 'clean' or 'true' version of Brexit. How fickle people are.
I want to the leave the EU. I think it is a worthy goal. As it stands, I see only one sensible, relatively safe compromise available. It's dull, half-hearted, will please almost no one, but the Withdrawal Agreement is the best way I see out of this crisis. I had an uncharacteristic spasm of hope upon hearing that the Kinnock amendment had passed (and moreover, was not rejected in the House of Lords). Our policy regarding Brexit should be to do as little as must be done (not sound policy in most important things, but politics is usually the exception). From that small first step many more steps towards exiting EU may come (I truly hope so).
It is much preferable to letting this country further ruin itself in yet another movement of ideological fervour. A society has possibly never changed so much as Britain has in the last half century. We should be increasingly careful in what policies we pursue; yet successive governments have shown the entirely opposite temperament. The foundations beneath us have been eroded, vandalised, surreptitiously replaced with money-saving short-life material; and with each stupid policy, with each economic and political catastrophe, we are nearing that final collapse, that Vesuvian disaster, when much of what we thought would always be is no longer.
It is much preferable to letting this country further ruin itself in yet another movement of ideological fervour. A society has possibly never changed so much as Britain has in the last half century. We should be increasingly careful in what policies we pursue; yet successive governments have shown the entirely opposite temperament. The foundations beneath us have been eroded, vandalised, surreptitiously replaced with money-saving short-life material; and with each stupid policy, with each economic and political catastrophe, we are nearing that final collapse, that Vesuvian disaster, when much of what we thought would always be is no longer.
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