30 Little Ministers

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30 Gov’ment ministers sent far and wide

Told to get the people on Theresa’s side

For 40 million voters they were given 2 days each –

A target unattainable; completely out of reach

The spectacle of 30 government ministers being sent scuttling around the UK over the weekend to drum up support for Theresa May’s Brexit deal is just the latest twist in the long-running farce which Brexit has become.  The stated reason is, of course, as disingenuous as everything else that the Prime Minister says.  Even if it were possible for 30 people in 2 days to win over the millions – Leavers and Remainers alike – who think that the deal is a bad one, she has no intention of allowing them to vote anyway. 

I saw a snatch of an interview with Michael Heseltine in which he said that sending them around the country was a good idea – not because they would actually persuade anyone, but because it would get them out of London and away from the London media, the plotters and the leakers.  It would, he said, get them out of No 10’s hair.  It’s a rather cynical view.

Perhaps the PM really believes that people in their masses will be motivated to contact their MPs to demand that they vote for the deal.  But if she gave the matter a moment’s thought and considered perhaps how many of her own constituents ever contacted her about a political issue while she was a back-bencher, she would realise that it would only ever be a tiny proportion – what might be called the ‘usual suspects’. 

It seems to me that the only credible target of this onslaught of ministers (have I just invented a new collective noun there?) would be members of the Conservative Party.  It is, just, conceivable that at least some of those members might be motivated to demand that their MP show a little more loyalty to their elected government.  In such a scenario, having to hear the message on news programmes is just collateral damage for the rest of us in what is really yet another internal party discussion.  I doubt, though, that even that would be successful.  The indications are that Tory members out in the constituencies are much more likely to support ‘no deal’ than the agreement that she has negotiated.

Maybe Heseltine really has hit the nail on the head, and it’s all just a glorified form of displacement activity.

Not mentioning the war

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In getting himself sacked for failing to change his mind over the UK’s membership of the EU, Lord Heseltine somehow managed to get himself projected as a man of principle whilst all around him in the Tory party have lost all theirs.  It turns out, though, that his views aren’t so very different after all. For years, the more rabid Brexiteers have been telling us that the EU was all a plot to enable the Germans to control Europe without resorting to force, and that we should leave to avoid falling under their domination.  From his latest pronunciation, it seems that Heseltine broadly agrees with the diagnosis, but feels that the best way to stop German domination is to remain within.  This is not some great disagreement of principle; it is a shared mindset in which the only difference is about the best way of achieving the desired end.

Perhaps it’s a generational thing; for Heseltine’s generation, the second world war was a defining period in history.  And it’s easy to see how such a horrific catastrophe for mankind in general and Europe in particular would leave a scar and shape people’s views for the rest of their lives.  But this obsession with ‘the war’ and the competition and rivalry which gave rise to it is still poisoning our relationship with the other countries of Europe 70 years after the event.  And it completely fails to recognise that one of the main objectives of those setting up the precursors of today’s EU was to replace that rivalry and competition with co-operation and unity of purpose; to ensure that the European family of nations would never again tear the continent apart as it did twice in the first half of the twentieth century.

It’s not that the rest of Europe is simply trying to forget the events of the past, it’s more like most of Europe has learned one lesson from the first half of the twentieth century, and one offshore state has either failed to learn it, or has learnt something completely different.  The majority have concluded that peace can best be maintained through pooling, sharing and co-operating, whilst the outlier continues to regard everyone else as a potential enemy, to be contained and controlled, and above all kept at a distance.  The ‘divide and conquer’ mindset lingers on long after it has ceased to be relevant or useful, and is now becoming a destructive force.

One of the clear outcomes of the referendum last June was the difference in voting patterns between young and old – the younger electors were overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU whilst it was the older age groups who voted to leave.  There is at least the hope that most of the younger generation are taking a very different view of our relationship with the rest of Europe than most of those born before, during, or in the immediate aftermath of the war.  Not for nothing will the Brexiteers continue to insist that we all fall in line and that there should be no second chance.  This could well be their last opportunity to impose their mindset on the rest of us; a last desperate attempt to return to the certainties of their past.  All the more reason to resist them.