Brexit, And The UK’s Future

An explainer:

More Conservatives voted Leave than Labourites, but Labour represents the most passionately pro-Remain constituencies in the country and the most passionately pro-Leave ones. This means both parties have taken to destroying themselves internally rather than dealing with the vote’s implications.

The Tories are more culpable because they formed government during this period. They stuck with Theresa May, a leader who lacks every leadership quality apart from perseverance and who managed to lose a 20 per cent poll lead against an antediluvian Marxist after calling a completely unnecessary general election. This election produced a hung parliament and forced May’s Tories into a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a Northern Irish outfit that is, to put it mildly, full of strange characters.

…In days gone by, superannuated elites refusing to accept defeat on existential questions of this type finished up with their heads on pikes. Democracy put a stop to that by doing what democracy does best: facilitating the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. But democracy means you elect a new parliament, not a new people. That, in truth, is the only deal that matters.

Link via Iain Murray, with whom I had lunch last week in DC, and who personally knows Boris Johnson, and most of the other candidates. When I noted that Theresa May has probably been the worst PM since Neville Chamberlain, he replied, “Since Lord North.”

5 thoughts on “Brexit, And The UK’s Future”

  1. Brexit is blowing up Parliament where Guy Fawkes failed.

    Love this quote from the Helen Dale article linked to by Iain Murray from your link.

    1. FYI, WordPress’ inability to allow one to edit one’s comments to remove what is obviously a redundant link is infuriating.

      1. Complain to WordPress. The only way to do that would be to give you editing capabilities. I wonder if I can do that just for your own comments? It would require you to log in as a subscriber, though. Anyway, I fixed it.

        1. No idea if it’s any good, or if you want to use it, but there’s a plugin called “simple comment editing” that gives you a 5-minute window to edit comments.

  2. “North’s reputation among historians has swung back and forth. It reached its lowest point in the late nineteenth century when he was depicted as a creature of the king and an incompetent who lost the American colonies.”

    That is incompetence! How could anyone lose something that big?

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