Charles Moore

If the EU grants us a long extension (and let us pray that M. Macron’s malice towards Britain leads him to prevent this), Remainers are worried. They want the extension, but not the European elections, since there is a real chance that ‘the wrong people’ might win. Ken Clarke, I gather, is working out a plan to head off this unpleasant potential outbreak of democracy. He seeks to persuade the EU high-ups to concoct a new rule by which countries which have already triggered Article 50 but have not yet left would not be allowed to take part. They will surely oblige. This article is an extract from Charles Moore's Spectator Notes, available in this week's magazine.

There is a logic in Mrs May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in 2017 that they wanted to leave the customs union, now both are working to stay in it. It is the same logic by which Mr Speaker Bercow has arranged for Sir Oliver Letwin to become prime minister on roughly alternate days. None of the main players really wants Brexit, but none can really say so.

There is a logic in Theresa May’s late move to Labour. It is the same logic by which both parties, at the last general election, put forward very similar policies about Brexit. They need to stay together (while feigning disagreement for party reasons) to frustrate what people voted for. Just as they both said in 2017 that they wanted to leave the customs union, now both are working to stay in it. It is the same logic by which Mr Speaker Bercow has arranged for Sir Oliver Letwin to become prime minister on roughly alternate days. None of the main players really wants Brexit, but none can really say so.

There is an obvious solution to the Brexit problem. It is based on a recognition that we want out and that the EU leaders want the moral high ground. Give it to them. Get them to expel us from the European Union. It cannot be too hard for them to persuade the ECJ, or some new body invented for the purpose, to declare the United Kingdom in breach of ‘European values’, and kick us out. Then we would leave with nothing at all, except our liberty. We might even bribe them for the privilege. As it is, we are committed by Mrs May to paying £39 billion, but that is over several years, and involves much ‘doubt, hesitation and pain’. Why not offer them, say, £10 billion on the nail, in return for them punishing us?

The trouble with Mr Speaker, even when he makes the right decision, is his motives. Fame is the spur and so is his love of hurting the Conservative party which nurtured him. However natural these feelings, they are completely wrong for the Speakership. The occupant of the chair is supposed to be a pillar of the constitution, not its talking gargoyle. A sad feature of the Brexit story has been how so many people with important official roles have not seemed to understand or, in some cases, even to care, what those roles entail. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England are supposed to assist the British economy, not invest in its collapse.

Angela Merkel says disdainfully, ‘I admit I was not on top of the British parliament’s 17th-century procedural rules.’ Her implication is that they are absurdly out of date. Yet the old rule invoked by Mr Speaker Bercow is surely one that can hold up its head in the 21st century. It is that the executive should not keep putting the same question to parliament until it gets its way. Therefore Mrs May cannot just keep reheating her terrible withdrawal deal. If there were no such rule, there would be no end to the bullying. Isn’t there something quite impressive about the fact that we have an elected assembly which had already thought of this more than 400 years ago? Habeas corpus is a pretty old idea too, and jury trial is even older. Does Mrs Merkel mock them?

The trouble with Mr Speaker, even when he makes the right decision, is his motives. Fame is the spur and so is his love of hurting the Conservative party which nurtured him. However natural these feelings, they are completely wrong for the Speakership. The occupant of the chair is supposed to be a pillar of the constitution, not its talking gargoyle. A sad feature of the Brexit story has been how so many people with important official roles have not seemed to understand or, in some cases, even to care, what those roles entail. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England are supposed to assist the British economy, not invest in its collapse.

A besetting sin in this process has been over-cleverness. As so often in our history, the ‘stupid’ people are right. The Brexit question is a classic example of something which is simple but not easy. It is ‘Do you want to be ruled by those you can choose, or by those you can’t choose?’ Voters understood this, and gave a clear answer. Clever people keep complicating it. Three leading examples of this, I am afraid — Oliver Letwin, Nicholas Boles and Michael Gove — are good friends of mine. Precisely the qualities which endear them to me in private conversation are proving a menace to the public weal.

Obviously the Prime Minister herself bears chief responsibility for Brexit mistakes, but she must have been terribly badly advised throughout, not only by political staff — who always get it in the neck when things go wrong — but by the professional civil service, which tends to escape censure. I have been genuinely surprised by the bureaucrats’ uselessness in the negotiations. In my Thatcher studies, now drawing peacefully to their close, I find that the mandarinate, though out of sympathy with Mrs Thatcher, did, on the whole, do its best for her. It was excited by the possibilities she opened up, and enjoyed surmounting the various crises.

I feel particularly sorry for Michael Gove, because there is psychological torment here. His understandable reasoning for not resigning over Theresa May’s Chequers proposal was that he had been accused first of betraying David Cameron, then of betraying Boris Johnson. He could not face being accused of a third betrayal by walking out on Mrs May. This meant that he unintentionally betrayed the cause of Brexit. He is now the government’s media apologist for whatever piece of contortion comes out of Downing Street, and is humiliated when the line he has just peddled collapses a few hours later.

A kind billionaire called Jeremy Hosking, whom I do not know personally, has invited us to join the Britannia Express, a steam train, on 30 March, the day after Brexit. The train will traverse Wales and England, starting at Swansea and ending in Sunderland. In an unspoken rebuke to the metropolis, it will not travel via London. The train will, says the invitation, commemorate ‘the UK’s exit (or non-exit) from the European Union’. This is the opposite, I suppose, of the European train which people like the late Sir Geoffrey Howe constantly exhorted us to climb aboard. What to do? The most likely situation on the day is that we still will not know our country’s fate.