Let’s cast our minds forward. Parliament has ruled out the ‘no-deal Brexit’ and we’ve had a People’s Vote on Mrs May’s final Brexit deal. She lost: the people support the status quo. Then what happens?
Well, the next morning, Mrs May is still PM and she says: ‘I delivered on my promise to get the best possible Brexit. I have served the people well. I shall continue to do so as your Prime Minister and I will deliver the best possible status quo ante. My first step is a reshuffle. Bye-bye BoJo.’
Then, of course, the riots in the streets promised by UKIP fail to materialise. Instead, companies bring forward investment plans, trade blossoms with countries where the EU has been completing new treaties (Japan; India; Canada), UK growth returns to the G7 average, staff shortages in the NHS vanish, the national budget deficit diminishes, austerity ends and so on. EU flags start to flutter again alongside the Union Jack.
The Brexit nightmare has ended. The Brexiters are defeated and slink off. Corbyn’s ‘ambiguity strategy’ is revealed as a tin-eared pretence to occupy the centre ground of politics. The One Nation Tories gain a slim majority in 2022 on what is largely Ed Miliband’s platform. Bye-bye Jezza. Momentum splits over some arcane issue and the fragments slink off to their allotments and anti-imperialism study groups.
Is this an unlikely scenario? No. Madness must eventually end and sanity must resume. All it takes is the People’s Vote.
Martin Yuille, Manchester
Now that a People’s Vote is on the agenda, it will be necessary to target thoughtful people who voted Leave in 2016 to ensure that they are aware of the issues. Demonstrations in London are not going to influence people in Sunderland, neither are articles in The New European or the Guardian.
What is needed are simple but telling slogans such as ‘Ever wondered why those who shout loudest for Brexit are all multi-millionaires?’, ‘No more immigration, no more NHS, no more social care, no more cheap food’ or ‘A UK-friendly trade deal with Trump’s America? Dream on’.
These messages need to be posted in places where people will see them as they go about their daily business – flyers on lamp-posts, stickers in buses and trains, on local noticeboards. Something more positive than ‘Bollox to Brexit’, at least.
Mark Howard, Oxford
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