That Debate: What It Revealed

The format of last night’s BBC leadership debate was wrong. It was clever but it did not work. A debate without an audience becomes an argument and arguments are frustrating things to watch. Emily Maitlis did her very best, but too often everybody was shouting and nothing could be heard. Superficially Hunt, Gove and Javid scored some points and at times appeared genuine and passionate, while Johnson and Stewart fell short of their teams’ hopes. None however suffered a knockout blow.

But the overriding conclusion must be this. Here we had members of the Tory party, four in the current cabinet, so at odds about what to do and so in denial of realities that it was clear above all else that the Tory party is presently unfit to govern. Whoever is leader will make no difference to that crippling state of affairs and either we must have a general election or a second referendum to give voters a chance to express the current state of their thinking.

Brexit as originally sold by mainly Gove and Boris is undeliverable and a fantasy. What is available in any format will leave the country worse off. That much was clear last night. It is also clear from opinion polls and from both the local and EU elections that while a minority in the country want Brexit at any cost, the majority have had enough and want to end this terrible self inflicted trauma which has befallen our country.