This is your weekly installment of WTF is going on because, these days, a lot can happen in a week…
When we woke up on the morning of the EU referendum results, we knew this day would eventually come…the day when we became immune to the complete farce of Brexit. Brexit is the ex-boyfriend who repeatedly calls you drunk and mumbles nonsensical nothings down the phone. After a while, you can’t even be bothered to get angry and you become immune even to the inconvenience and emotional upheaval.
**WATCH NOW: The Debrief Speaks To Nick Clegg About Brexit **
This week Brexit was that ex, doing its best to make itself impossible to ignore but, ultimately, just sending us further into a state of ennui with its own absurdity.
It started on Tuesday evening the Prime Minister was interviewed by LBC’s Iain Dale. Being the cunning and canny journalist he is, Dale asked May whether she would vote to leave the EU if another referendum were held. Let’s all remember that she did, in fact, campaign for Britain to remain in the EU last time around. She didn’t exactly answer the question. Nothing unusual there. But, what she did say underscores what a farce Brexit has become as our country is marched towards something that nobody can quite agree on and almost half of those who voted don’t want to happen…
‘Well, I’ve…I don’t answer hypothetical questions but what I have…well, I voted Remain for good reasons at the time but circumstances move on and I think the important thing now is that I think we should all be focused on delivering Brexit, and delivering the best deal…’
That’s what she said. Do you remember what it was like when you were a child and your mum told you to go to bed at 7 pm and you said ‘but you get to stay up’ and all she had was ‘do as I say, not as I do’? That’s where we are with Brexit.
When pressed further by Dale, the Prime Minister said ‘I could say I would still vote Remain or I would vote Leave just to give you an answer to that question. I am being open and honest with you. What I did last time round was I looked at everything and came to a judgement and I'd do exactly the same this time round. But we are not having another referendum and that's absolutely crucial.’
In fairness to May that is an unusually honest answer for a politician to give. It will, however, please neither those who want to leave the EU nor those who wish the whole thing could be undone and is a testament to the farcical bind we, as a nation, now find ourselves in.
Sigh.
This debacle was then followed by Theresa May’s top aide, Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, appearing on Newsnight and saying, without a shadow of a doubt, that this country would be better off if we had voted to remain in the European Union.
Emily Maitliss asked him whether it would have been better for the UK if the majority of people had voted to remain. ‘It would have been’ he said.
It’s no secret that Green is pro-Remain. He was, after all, a very prominent member of the campaign. However, if it really was the case that our streets will be paved with gold and filled with people skipping along as Boris Johnson would like us to believe, you’d think that the Prime Minister and her Deputy would know that by now.
Sigh.
It’s like an episode of The Apprentice when comically mediocre salespeople are forced to peddle complete crap they don't believe in to people who don’t want to buy it because, well, they have to fill the airtime with something.
And, then, today President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said that Brexit is going take longer than anyone initially thought. Speaking in Luxembourg he said that talks cannot progress to their next phase until the divorce bill is paid. Earlier this week it was revealed that talks had, also, reached what negotiator Michael Barnier called ‘a disturbing deadlock’.
The Brexit negotiations are now in their fifth round. In case you weren’t paying attention during the first, second, third and fourth rounds, not much has changed. European leaders are still frustrated and confused about what exactly it is that Britain wants. The good news? Our politicians don’t seem to know what they want either so at least everyone’s on the same page. And, if it’s any consolation, it’s not in the interest of any of the EU’s 27 member states for Britain to come crashing out with no deal because it would, inevitably, affect them all in some way so it (probably) won’t happen. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, has warned that a cliff-edge Brexit would pose a serious threat to a global economy which is still recovering from the financial crash.
It seems that there is indeed a ‘secret Brexit plan’ after all guys, and that’s to bombard us with how crap it is until we stop caring.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.