"Let's get going" and Brexit's message drift /1

Brexit was sold on an implicit (and occasionally explicit) promise: that it was a solution to a problem. The root problem was inequality and the destitution that resulted from austerity. The pot from which social and welfare spending might be ladled was smaller and shrinking /2

Brexit was a solution because the public were sold the idea that we were exporting cash to the EU whilst importing people who wanted a share of our public spending. /3

Brexit would replenish the pot whilst whittling down the queue. You can see the logic even if, as I believe, it was a grotesque and dishonest picture. But that's not what this little thread is about. /4

Once the *costs* of leaving the EU came into focus talk of benefits began to drift. The challenge to identify "real benefits" was a favourite poke at Brexiteers. There was a grim satisfaction in the failure to answer. /5

As each proposed tangible benefit proved falsifiable, the Brexit argument, predictably, focused instead on the unfalsifiable. The "benefit" shrank to "sovereignty", which in turn came to mean not being part of any arrangement that imposed any limitation on domestic politics /6

In other words, leaving became its own benefit. The means was the end. But the problem with a policy that is entirely based on an misunderstood abstract concept is that it does not prevent reality from continuing to eventuate. /7

Sooner or later our flag waving arms grow tired and people begin to remind themselves that they had been promised they would be better off. /8

The tide of dawning dissatisfaction pulls the drifting Brexit message a little further along the shore. A thought experiment: If you were cynical enough to think that the Brexit campaign may have been built on empty promises what would you expect to happen now? /9

First, you would expect the politicians to backtrack on the promise of benefits. All talk of deliverable benefits would cease and the least honest would simply assert to camera that *disbenefit* (or harm as we would normally refer to it) had always been the likely consequence /10

They would stare down the lens and tell you that everyone always knew it would be tough and no promises to contrary were ever made. Have you seen that happening? /11

Second, they would need to find someone else to blame for the failure of the benefits to appear. Perhaps the EU are intransigent? Is that something you have heard suggested with increasing vehemence? /12

Has the institution that was going to crawl on its knees in search of a deal proved less desperate than we were promised? /13

But precisely because they promised we could push the EU around in negotiations, there is a limit to how much blame they can lay at the feet of Barnier and his colleagues. So what can you do? There are three options. /14

The first is to come clean, admit that people were cynically misled and make negotiations more about averting harm and less about performative patriotism. There's no chance of this. They still hope to get away with it. /15

The second is an option only for the true believers. Like every cult, religious or political, salvation lies in ever greater purity. Any deliverable version of Brexit is a sell-out. Only an impossible and ever more extreme Brexit can make those elusive benefits manifest /16

So what is left is a third way: promised benefits dilute into mere "opportunities". They are not identified or defined any more than the benefits were, but the point is that an opportunity is a benefit you have to generate for yourself. /17

Brexit is not a home delivery service for economic and social benefits, it's a pen-knife and a hunting licence. Why are the new ads in the form of an exhortation? Because the government wants you to understand that the responsibility for avoiding harm is now yours. /18

So good luck everyone and let's get going. /end