EU Says No: May’s Test: Break the ERG

As expected every authority in the European side of the Brexit drama have said no to May. Around her, people tell her hold fast and the EU will crack. But the EU is not her enemy. It is the ERG. This hard core Brexit whatever the cost nationalist wing of the Tory party is little better than an ideological gang of wreckers, who have fed a diet of lies and imaginings into minds of ordinary people, made fertile by years of austerity and a widespread feeling of being left behind by an economic model that makes the rich richer at the expense of the poor. They were told they will be better off. This, whatever the shape of Brexit, is not going to happen. The ERG have taken a dose of realism and they know that.

So they are looking for a way out of what could be either of two equal calamities. Calamities especially for the ERG and all who support them. The first is that Brexit is lost altogether because people are fed up with it and vote in a second referendum to dump an historic blunder of national self harm. The second is that through their opposition to anything vaguely sane and achievable, we crash out in a no deal Brexit. The consequent economic, social and logistical shock, the likely unification of the two Irelands and the real prospect of a Scottish breakaway, will not only break up the United kingdom but also break up all our existing trading arrangements across the world, now legally constituted through our membership of the EU. To suggest this is a moment of national renewal and upgraded living conditions is tripe and they know that too. And their fingers will be on the disaster, they will own it, and  a tsunami of anger of the cheated will surge towards them.

On the other hand a softer Brexit based on a Customs Union solves all the intractable problems and delivers the best outcome of a bad job. They should be told what again they know already in private, but will now become public. Back a workable Brexit plan or see it carried by Labour votes. Either way, it is over for them. They did their best to wreck their country but their country is bigger than they think.