Of Brexit hardliners on both sides, and "Stab in the back" myths ...
The transition from Britain as a member of the European Union to being a country outside that union was always going to be a process, not a simple one-stop change and unwinding 40 years of shared legislation was never going to be simple or quick.
Whether they voted Remain or Leave, people who live in the real world always knew that this process would require messy compromises.
One of the more tiresome aspects of the debate about Brexit in the UK, is that anyone who actually tries to engage with those difficult challenges and compromises necessary to protect Britain's economy and ensure that our relations with the rest of the EU will continue to work properly after we leave the EU is likely to get a barage of mutually inconsistent criticism from the most hardline portion of each side.
First, from the most hardline faction among the Remainers, who don't want Britain to leave at all and for whom no possible set of arrangements under which we cease to be EU members could possibly be satisfactory.
And, at the same time, from the most hardline faction among "Leave" supporters for whom any attempt to maintain a working relationship with our neighbours in Europe is instantly identified as something that both they and a majority of those who took part in the referendum were voting against, any compromise is treachery to the 52% and any deal is a sellout.
This absolutely does not apply to all Remainers or all Leavers and indeed, despite the bile which has been poured on the PM's Florence speech by the ultras on both extremes it does seem to have set out a position which both most Remainers and most Brexit supporters in her own government can go along with.
I am particularly struck, however, by the absolutist positions being taken by some - not all - hardline Brexit supporters whose behaviour I can only describe as doing everything possible to facilitate a future narrative of sell-out and betrayal.
A ludicrous article on the Breitbart website by former UKIP leadership hopeful Raheem Kassam,
"How May plans to blame Trump for the failure of Brexit and why the Tory party needs to remove her now"
is an example of the depths of paranoid fantasy to which some of them are descending and the kind of daft accusations being peddled.
To find an equivalent similar example of someone working so hard to prepare the ground for an accusation of betrayal from before the alleged sell-out even took place you, you have to go back almost a hundred years to the behaviour of General Ludendorff in the closing stages of the First World War when he was Chief of Staff of the German army
Ludendorff, realising that Germany had lost the war, advised the German government to make peace while German armies still stood everywhere on foreign soil and before their own country had been invaded.
Yet within a year Ludendorff was denying that his army had been beaten and accusing politicians who had actually been followed his own advice to seek an immediate armistice of stabbing Germany's "undefeated" armies in the back.
He is usually attributed with being the principal author of the myth of the "Stab in the back," a legend which bore little relation to the facts but which many Germans found easier to bear than the truth, and which in due time was to be exploited to great effect with horrific results by a group of people even nastier than Ludendorff was.
(Ironically the term was first used in conversation with Ludendorff by a British general who asked him, "Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back" but Ludendorff immediately seized on the expression, repeated it and popularised it.)
Britain's international trade with other EU countries amounts to about 44% of total British trade, give or take what the Office for National Statistics may be up to two percentage points for the so-called Rotterdam Effect. Hence both our trade with the EU and the 56% of our trade which we do with the rest of the world are vital to Britain's wealth, jobs and incomes.
Leaving the EU on terms which do not sabotage the trade position of either side is therefore vital to the interests of both Britain and the EU, and any British PM or Brexit negotiator would be incredibly foolish not to emphasise to the rest of the EU that we want to leave on terms which are in the interests of both.
Anyone who interprets comments from the British government like Theresa May's statement that
"The success of the EU is profoundly in our own national interest"
as an attempt to sabotage Brexit, as Kassim does, rather than something at any sane negotiator would say, is lost to reason, displaying a determination to promote a narrative of betrayal which is Ludendorff - like in proportion, or both.
Whether they voted Remain or Leave, people who live in the real world always knew that this process would require messy compromises.
One of the more tiresome aspects of the debate about Brexit in the UK, is that anyone who actually tries to engage with those difficult challenges and compromises necessary to protect Britain's economy and ensure that our relations with the rest of the EU will continue to work properly after we leave the EU is likely to get a barage of mutually inconsistent criticism from the most hardline portion of each side.
First, from the most hardline faction among the Remainers, who don't want Britain to leave at all and for whom no possible set of arrangements under which we cease to be EU members could possibly be satisfactory.
And, at the same time, from the most hardline faction among "Leave" supporters for whom any attempt to maintain a working relationship with our neighbours in Europe is instantly identified as something that both they and a majority of those who took part in the referendum were voting against, any compromise is treachery to the 52% and any deal is a sellout.
This absolutely does not apply to all Remainers or all Leavers and indeed, despite the bile which has been poured on the PM's Florence speech by the ultras on both extremes it does seem to have set out a position which both most Remainers and most Brexit supporters in her own government can go along with.
I am particularly struck, however, by the absolutist positions being taken by some - not all - hardline Brexit supporters whose behaviour I can only describe as doing everything possible to facilitate a future narrative of sell-out and betrayal.
A ludicrous article on the Breitbart website by former UKIP leadership hopeful Raheem Kassam,
"How May plans to blame Trump for the failure of Brexit and why the Tory party needs to remove her now"
is an example of the depths of paranoid fantasy to which some of them are descending and the kind of daft accusations being peddled.
To find an equivalent similar example of someone working so hard to prepare the ground for an accusation of betrayal from before the alleged sell-out even took place you, you have to go back almost a hundred years to the behaviour of General Ludendorff in the closing stages of the First World War when he was Chief of Staff of the German army
Ludendorff, realising that Germany had lost the war, advised the German government to make peace while German armies still stood everywhere on foreign soil and before their own country had been invaded.
Yet within a year Ludendorff was denying that his army had been beaten and accusing politicians who had actually been followed his own advice to seek an immediate armistice of stabbing Germany's "undefeated" armies in the back.
He is usually attributed with being the principal author of the myth of the "Stab in the back," a legend which bore little relation to the facts but which many Germans found easier to bear than the truth, and which in due time was to be exploited to great effect with horrific results by a group of people even nastier than Ludendorff was.
(Ironically the term was first used in conversation with Ludendorff by a British general who asked him, "Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back" but Ludendorff immediately seized on the expression, repeated it and popularised it.)
Britain's international trade with other EU countries amounts to about 44% of total British trade, give or take what the Office for National Statistics may be up to two percentage points for the so-called Rotterdam Effect. Hence both our trade with the EU and the 56% of our trade which we do with the rest of the world are vital to Britain's wealth, jobs and incomes.
Leaving the EU on terms which do not sabotage the trade position of either side is therefore vital to the interests of both Britain and the EU, and any British PM or Brexit negotiator would be incredibly foolish not to emphasise to the rest of the EU that we want to leave on terms which are in the interests of both.
Anyone who interprets comments from the British government like Theresa May's statement that
"The success of the EU is profoundly in our own national interest"
as an attempt to sabotage Brexit, as Kassim does, rather than something at any sane negotiator would say, is lost to reason, displaying a determination to promote a narrative of betrayal which is Ludendorff - like in proportion, or both.
Comments
Within that majority I believe that very few people do not want to have some sort of positive and friendly relationship with our neighbours in Europe. For that reason the language of divorce is not always entirely applicable.
There are two sides to every negotiation. It is unusual for the final outcome to be exactly on the terms first put forward by either side.