More bad news on Brexit. The jig is up, my friends, and as Peter Hitchens said last week, it is not going to happen.
Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave, explains the Brexit quagmire in an open letter to Tory MPs and donors here.
Helpfully, Guido Fawkes summarises it here.
The seven truth bombs are:
1. Number 10 has botched the Article 50 process and made no serious preparations to leave the EU
2. The government’s promises on Ireland have made the negotiation impossible
3. None of the customs options on the table cuts it
4. Brexiter Tories have chickened out of forcing May to pursue a proper Brexit
Cummings sums it up thus: ‘Eurosceptics are full of sh*t and threats they don’t deliver, they say in No 10, and on this at least they have a point.’
5. The way things are going, Brexit is not going to mean Brexit
6. That is only going to help Corbyn become PM
Cummings: ‘Ask yourselves: what happens when the country sees you’ve simultaneously (a) ‘handed over tens of billions for f**k all’, as they’ll say in focus groups, which the UK had no liability to pay, (b) failed to do anything about unskilled immigration, (c) persecuted the high-skilled immigrants, such as scientists, who the public wants you to be MORE welcoming to, and (d) failed to deliver on the nation’s Number One priority – funding for the NHS, which is about to have a very high-profile anniversary? And what happens if May staggers to 30 March 2019 and, as Barwell [Gavin Barwell, No 10 chief of staff] is floating with some of you, they then dig in to fight the 2022 campaign? . . . If you go into the 2022 campaign after five years of this and the contest is Tory promises versus Corbyn promises, you will be maximising the odds of Corbyn as PM.’
7. Brexiters have only themselves to blame.
Cummings again: ‘Yes, it’s true that May, Hammond, Heywood and Robbins are Remain and have screwed it up but you’re deluded if you think you’ll be able to blame the debacle just on them. Whitehall is better at the blame game than you are, officials are completely dominant in this government, ministers have chosen to put Heywood/Robbins in charge, and YOU will get most of the blame from the public. The sooner you internalise these facts and face reality, the better for the country and you.’
The Brutal Truth.
Needless to say ‘that sodding bus’ – that £350million for the NHS Vote Leave chose to drive their campaign with – has not been out of the news since. Cummings’s train wreck performance under Andrew Tyrie’s Treasury Select Committee grilling saw to that.
Matt Chorley is right: ‘The problem with dressing the extra money up as delivering on the bus/coach pledge is that Britain isn’t yet getting any money “back” from Brussels.’
That’s the Brutal Truth too.
