Time to Recall Article 50?

It is three years since the Brexit project began; a simple in or out concept which would be, according to its promoters, the easiest negotiation in history, if out were the choice. It was. And here we are, three years on in political, constitutional and Brexit chaos. Positively nobody knows what is going to happen. Government has ground to a halt. Against all precedent, a governing party has taken time out to allow its membership outside parliament to choose the new prime minister, the third since 2016. This electorate is small, white, elderly and hell bent on a kind of Brexit backed by less than a third of the electorate in the country. This process is a democratic affront and a constitutional abuse.

The candidates competing, vie with each other for victory by making outlandish promises, combining an impossible menu of tax cuts and spending increases. They promise new negotiations with an EU which has made plain there can be no such thing. They offer solutions for Ireland which are already rejected. They hazard the Union by potentially forcing out of the EU on catastrophic terms two nations, Scotland and Northern Ireland, who voted to Remain. They claim a mandate for Brexit which was never given because it was obtained by lies. Nobody voted for the mess we are in. There would have been no majority for this historic act of self harm, if the fiasco which unfolded could have been predicted.

Even if we were insane enough to go for a crash Brexit, it would not be over. Reduced as we would be to the same trading terms as Mauritania and ungoverned spaces, we would face years of negotiations to set up new trading agreements, even to get ourselves back to square one. The simple truth, which polls confirm, is that the majority is now fed up with Brexit, it is a failed project, a phantom ambition, the cost far exceeds the benefits and the only thing in the true national interest is to recall Article 50, which will end this national trauma once and for all.