Are you a reasonable person? Do you get up in the morning at a reasonable time to have a reasonable cup of coffee while wearing a reasonable outfit? Then you are a morally good person – a moderate. What you are, in fact, is someone who voted to Remain in the EU, and now your time is up.
You are just like Rachel Sylvester at The Times, or the new BBC roving correspondent Nick Clegg. Just reasonable people trying to find out what’s wrong with all the headbangers out there.
In a piece on Tuesday, Rachel went heavy on the scare-mongering, in a reasonable fashion.
What would Theresa May do after Article 50 was triggered and Britain crossed the Rubicon, she worried? “Even after their victory, the Conservative Eurosceptics still see every compromise with Brussels as treachery.” There are the pragmatists (the reasonable people) and the purists (evil Ukippers). There are the ‘hardliners’ who, according to Ken Clarke (aka reasonable Ken), who ‘are like crocodiles swimming around the boat.’
So not just hardliners, but hardline crocodiles – which we are told in the next paragraph are HUNGRY! Hungry hardliner crocodiles are out for blood, or buns, as Rachel said at one point. I couldn’t follow it all – I was too scared of the hardliner, hungry bun-eating crocodiles.
Reasonable Rachel was worried that eventually, maybe not now, but soon “there will be actual proposals on the table and if they do not satisfy the Tory rightwingers — and the tabloids — they will gobble her up.” All we will have left of Theresa will be her carcass – perhaps only her lovely long legs will survive.
The ridiculousness of it all continued. Reasonable Rachel took issue with how liberal leave campaigners relied on those worried about immigration, when in truth all they (the liberals) wanted was “to take back control of the country’s borders, in some vague constitutional sense.”
You know that idea of constitutional democracy and its vagueness. It is all so vague this democracy stuff – best not to bother at all. Why even attempt to restore representational constitutional democracy? It just seems so hard to Reasonable Rachel – what with the hardline crocodiles and buns and stuff.
The truth is that for too long the Remainers have presented themselves as the reasonable ones, but they are not. It is not reasonable to try to scupper the will of a democratically held referendum. It is not reasonable to say that people should be happy to be ruled by the bureaucrats, for the elite and of the Europhiles. It is not reasonable constantly to undermine a process whereby eventually we will return to democracy by the people, for the people and of the people.
It was Abraham Lincoln who spoke of democracy in this way at Gettysburg. Reasonable Rachel no doubt would have deemed old Abe a very unreasonable man indeed.
Abe went to war (an actual war as opposed to Rachel’s war of attrition we must have with Brussels) to free the slaves. This was an unreasonable thing to do. At the time Abe could have agreed – let the slave states be slave states and the free states be free. For a long time he would have settled for gradual, voluntary and compensated emancipation of the slaves. But Abe, was an unreasonable man, thank God (he also thought God was on his side) and eventually he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation immediately to free the slaves. He got a bullet in the head for his trouble, did Abe. By an actor I believe – a luvvie in other words.
Or what about Churchill – another very unreasonable man. After the evacuation of Dunkirk Britain was weak. The population did not want war, the civil servants did not want war and Hitler wanted a negotiated peace. But Churchill knew Hitler was an evil man – he did not know the specifics but he knew enough to understand that reasonable compromise was not an option.
Reasonable Rachel declares, ‘governing depends on reason and compromise.’ Sure, sometimes, but not when democracy itself is on the line. And it is on the line with Brexit like it was on the line during the US civil war and was on the line during World War II. Churchill was an unreasonable man so he declared we shall never surrender.
And neither should we – not until democracy and the supremacy of Parliament are returned in full once again. And if that makes Theresa May an unreasonable woman, then so be it.
