Where have all the Remainers gone? You must remember the Remainers – they formed 48% of the voting population in the UK, 56% of the voting population in North(east)ern Ireland (NEI) and 62% of the voting population in Scotland. That’s a lot of people. As B Johnson grabs the tiller wheel of HMS Britannia, we should be looking around for life-boats.
One notion that was strong for several years since 2016 was that there should be a re-run of the referendum, now that people could see what they had voted for. I would have supported that movement. Alas, it has been swept aside. Brexit is done. We’re all done.
Certainly that’s the line that many have taken – notably Fintan O’Toole. Not that we’re all headed for disaster –when he’s not in Princeton Fintan is in Dublin, so he’s not tied to the mast of Britannica. But he has talked about Brexit as ‘funereal’ and ‘a moment of finality’. Which shows that if you keep repeating a slogan (‘Get Brexit done’), people will accept your depiction of the choice.
But Remainers haven’t gone away (oh all right, Virginia – ‘you know’ – happy now?). There is no way that Scotland is going to settle for life in the hold of Britannia as it heads out to the high seas. Check the bookies – they don’t see 2021 as the year for a Scottish independence referendum but after that they’re hedging their bets. And thanks to the way both the EU and the US stood by Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement is intact and it’s a question of when there’ll be, not if there’ll be, a border poll on Irish reunification. In Wales too, even though a majority voted for Brexit, there are nationalist stirrings. I won’t be surprised if there is a surge in Plaid Cymru seats to the Welsh Assembly, particularly if Scotland votes to leave the UK.
And even in England, which is really where Brexit happened, even there, some people have begun to say “Let’s experience the pain for the next 5-10 years, and then we’ll see.” B Johnson may predict a brave new world, but I don’t know anyone who shares his fantasy. When reality bites, you’d be surprised how many English people will be knocking on the EU door begging for re-admittance.
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