IF the dust ever dies down – and Brexit has thrown up huge, toxic clouds of the stuff – it would be pleasant to imagine Britain going in a radically different direction away from the scenes of recent days: one in which an elected government gets on with running the country.
Alas, amidst the ferment, farce and chaos of yesterday – and last week, last month and last year – that seems an idealistic notion. But it is one that we would fervently wish to see re-enacted: a return to old-fashioned, pre-Brexit values, if you will.
Back in 2016, who saw this calamity coming? When Brexit was first mooted for a referendum, the assumption till near the end of the vote was that Remain would win comfortably and the country would just get on with running business. Since then, we’ve seen the ruling Conservative Party tearing itself apart, the spectre raised of renewed unrest in Northern Ireland, and businesses peering through the mirk for a chink of light and being greeted by nothing but repeated blasts of heat.
Even our own dear independence wrangle has been dragged along in the wake of a bigger constitutional conundrum, in which a bid to take back control has led to uncontrolled chaos. One single issue has dominated all our lives for two years, an issue that has been delayed, obfuscated, batted back and batted forth.
Last night’s momentous events offered us little beyond the sight of Conservative politicians making a spectacle of themselves, an evening of “pompous gesturing” (to quote one Conservative MP) in which one step was taken forward and not an inch of progress was made.
Theresa May, meanwhile, has been a Prime Minister made dizzy by having to face in too many directions at once: Brussels, Belfast, Edinburgh, Cardiff and, worst of all, her own Westminster backyard. Where the country goes from here remains unclear, as Brexit’s clouds of dust continue to swirl around the political landscape.
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