Blair and Major’s Brexit interventions: trashing democracy

It would be asking too much from me to write with enthusiasm about former Prime Ministers now seeking to tell us how daft the majority of us are to have voted to leave the European Union. Their interventions over the past two weeks are unwelcome but not unexpected.

Let me first turn to John Major. On the plus side and to his enormous credit, he delivered a welcome Conservative win in 1992. Do look once more on YouTube at Neil Kinnock’s Sheffield Rally of 1^st April 1992, a week before the general election, and it becomes all too clear that perhaps the win wasn’t so unexpected.

John’s enthusiasm for the European project was obvious. As chancellor, he took us into the disastrous European Exchange Rate Mechanism which we crashed out of, most thankfully, on 16^th September 1992. As PM he pushed through the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

These things were perhaps my gain. Had it not been for these events, I’d be merrily enjoying gainful employment in the profession I trained in, as a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser, possibly enjoying a few weeks away somewhere hot, rather than being the Member of Parliament for South Thanet. I am, however, enjoying the fruits of over half of my life’s work: that of the exit of the UK from the EU. The seeds sown by John made Brexit, over twenty years later, an almost certain event.

Whatever his faults and strengths, it would seem that the country merely passed to a new caretaker on 2^nd May 1997, from one EU enthusiast to another—who looked that bit shinier at the time.

The two former PMs, intertwined by historical succession, both now use the similar language of “historic mistake,” claiming that Britons voted “without knowledge of the true terms of Brexit.” I can attribute the first quotation to Major, the second to Blair, but feel free to interchange: you’d hardly know the difference on this issue.

What of Blair’s position on the EU? The PM who managed to massively increase our contribution to the EU budget just as domestic finances were falling off a cliff, did not impose transitional work restrictions on citizens of the eight countries joining the EU on 1^st January 2004, and if he’d had his way, would have ensured that the coins in our pockets produced a euro jingle. I’d never thought I’d say it, but thank you Gordon Brown for saving us from euro membership. What Major had sown, Blair germinated and grew, making Brexit even more certain.

The two involved themselves in the referendum debate, and I’m pleased they did. The media reported widely the “wise words” of the elder statesmen, the public listened to a full six months of debate and analysis. They heard “Project Fear” from the Remainers and also the “Leave” side’s perspective. The public were as armed with information as they ever could be. Many citizens said that they were over-burdened with facts, opinion and hype, but lack of information can never be argued as a deficiency of the referendum period. The Remain campaign, with the added benefit of the government’s referendum leaflet, delivered to millions of homes, outspent the Leave campaign by several million pounds.

On 23^rd June, the public had assimilated the reality of EU membership. They’d looked at the promises that came with our membership of what was originally the European Economic Community and compared them with the reality. They found that being in control of our democratic institutions, money, borders and international destiny was preferable to membership of a failed institution heading for an unwanted destination.

I would rather see ex-prime ministers using their (not inconsiderable) experience as part of the team, helping to make a success of Brexit. Trashing a democratic decision, denigrating voters and undermining the government is unbecoming behaviour. They were the future once.