A core problem with Brexit is that hardly any members of the
political class seem likely to emerge with any credit. Even worse, hardly any
of them seem to know how to extract a residue of credit from the situation. As
if they are new to the political game and don’t know how to play it, don’t know
what counts as winning or losing, don’t understand what spectators expect from
them and why.
It is not so much the intransigent bungling of Parliamentary
Remainers but the banal nature of the debates, the amateurish attempts to cling
to an unwinnable position. Because even if we remain within the EU, politically
Remain is an unwinnable position. Professionals would have abandoned it and
moved on.
The Brexit referendum turned certain political options into
blunders because the result is what it is and cannot be denied. Remain lost the
referendum and a lost game is a lost game. The only professional move is to
accept the loss and move on. Competent Remainers could accept the referendum
result, help implement whatever is the best option then work for a closer
relationship with the EU. Fair enough but this hasn’t happened and the only
conclusion one can draw is that the Parliamentary players are incompetent.
That is not to say that they are incompetent in the
pejorative mud-slinging sense, but in a basic professional sense where players
know which goal is theirs, understand what the lines on the pitch signify and why spectators turn up.
That’s the problem, the insufferably tedious nature of
Parliamentary incompetence. Everyone understands winning and losing but far too
many MPs appear to think like children where losing is deemed to be impossible
or the rules of the game must be altered to make it impossible. Most of them
shouldn’t be there. They can’t even play the political game to a reasonable
standard.
4 comments:
Yes, they just don't understand. It might be that we always had that class of idiot in Parliament, and they have only now been revealed by the difficult problems we face. Hitherto, they just bumbled along because nobody really disagreed and there was an unspoken consensus to keep the show on the road. I think the remainers are outraged and bewildered that people are seeing through the charade.
Sam - yes it certainly feels like a charade and as you say, maybe it always was. The EU feels much the same, as if government power has diffused away into an uncountable number of nooks and crannies.
Bureaucracy, laws and social norms are all so complex and convoluted nowadays that I don't think anybody knows what they are doing or exactly what is legal any more. Parliament is the top of the pyramid, our MPs are mostly all clueless about democracy, convention, honesty and probity and will use any loophole or pseudo-argument they can to persue their individual (and as you say, often childish) plans and throw tantrums without a thought to the unintended consequences.
Woodsy - yes it is too complex and to some extent what is legal seems to depend on power rather than the law. This was always the case of course but complexity seems to be making things worse.
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