Columnist Tony Johnson continues his reflections on the recent EU referendum, in which the UK voted to leave.
An overnight firing, a meltdown on the front benches. The Opposition were in turmoil.
Meanwhile, Leave after Leave campaigner was disowning individual bits of their campaign.
It had started on Friday morning, but by the end of Monday it was apparent that there was little, if any, unity among the leaders of 52% of the worst campaign in UK political history.
Did they lie to us?
Flashback to Tellyland and Evan Davis, Andrew Marr and colleagues hadn’t just done better, they’d done a lot better than Paxo’s “Final Debacle”. But some presenters, producers and participants hadn’t learned. Sunday evening’s Question Time repeated the debate, the rhetoric, the interruptions & the irrelevant spouting which didn’t actually answer the questions and genuine concerns from members of the public.
As Monday ground on, it seems that Opposition politicians were more concerned about their prospects for re-election than serving their leader. If Labour’s 2015 leadership vote is still anything to go by, it might just turn out that Jeremy Corbyn was more in touch with the grass roots than his fast-departing shadow cabinet colleagues were.
But it isn’t only Opposition politics that are in a tangle. In what may be a foretaste of things to come, calls for the resignation of Wokingham MP John Redwood were surfacing.
Whether or not you support Mr Redwood’s point of view, his propositions have been almost universally (as well as uniquely) well put. So, if one’s looking for a person to be on the EU Negotiating team, which would you prefer ?
Somebody who has thoroughly researched what they’re about ? – Or –
Somebody who neither respects nor remembers that bullets were fired on Thursday June 16?
Nationally, because the EU Referendum vote was counted Borough by Borough, it’s ‘a bit challenging to find which constituencies voted the other way from their MP. But it’s ‘quite a few’.
Further afield, in the morning some continental common sense came from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, “Britain now needs a certain amount of time”. This was met in the afternoon by President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker saying “citizens of the United Kingdom who are employees of the European Commission can keep their jobs”. A firm but fair statement from a man who hasn’t had anything good to say to us (or about us) since Friday morning.
Back here, some MPs are now talking about the constitutionality of the Referendum.
I’ve news for them – we don’t actually have a UK constitution. But I can loan them a copy of an American one to chew on.
The day ended with another “Brexit” and ’front bench’ resignation, this time from Roy Hodgson, England football manager. This followed the team’s crashing out of Euro 2016 after a 2-1 drubbing by Iceland.
Seems that it isn’t only politicians who are badly out of touch with the national sentiment after that 48/52 vote.
More on what that vote means later.
