SHERELLE Jacobs, the Telegraph’s assistant comment editor, has crept up on us. She’s been writing political comment for only about a year, making her mark with this courageous article. She has quickly emerged as one of the most cerebral and hardline Brexiteers of the DT’s columnists, who deserves soon to be a lot more than assistant comment editor – and no doubt one day will be.
Her columns take us to different levels of thinking about politics, as this one did a couple of months ago when, calling on game theory, she demonstrated why No Deal was inevitable. What a pity the perhaps-less-cerebral-than-we-thought, wavering Jacob Rees-Mogg wasn’t taking note.
However all is not lost, if he reads her most recent advice. Yesterday she told Leavers that, to stop Brexit betrayal, they must play a ruthless final hand to the appreciation of her readers here:
Great article by Sherelle Jacobs. Brexiteers must hold their nerve & vote against May’s sell out. Parliament doesn’t have a clue & remain MPs are cowards, too scared to be seen as voting to stop Brexit. Force them to dig their own political graves. https://t.co/YVyyYBRgl7
— Voice of Reason (@brexitblog_info) March 26, 2019
and from our own Michael St George here:
Fascinating Sherelle Jacobs piece at @Telegraph.
Rather than folding for the sake of their party, as per JR-M, Brexiteers must hold their nerve, not blink, & prepare for the biggest showdown of their lives.https://t.co/iCx6wsk1BN— A Libertarian Rebel #StandUp4Brexit (@A_Liberty_Rebel) March 26, 2019
Tracking back through Brexiteers’ past muddled thinking and misjudged responses, she writes that she ‘frets about their strategic nous’, as we all do: ‘They’ve always worried me, with their day-dreamish demeanours, redolent of a person pondering whether they’ve left the gas on at home. Several times now, they have been duped by our poker-faced Prime Minister. And rumours are swirling that Theresa May has promised that, if MPs vote for her deal, she will resign (like the butcher who tells his turkeys that, if they vote for Christmas, on Boxing Day he will retire). With reports of squabbles in the ERG also breaking out, and panic rising about the MPs “taking control” of Brexit through indicative votes, I fear Brexiteers will soon fold.’
To stop their malfunction proceeding further, she reminds them of a simple truth (whatever the BBC and overweening but underwhelming Matt Hancock have to say on Today), which is that leaving without a deal is still the default.
With ‘Operation Brexit Betrayal’, what TCW’s Peter Gardner called Mrs May’s Plan B, now under way (enabled on Monday by Mrs May’s ‘surrender’ to the Parliament’s ‘anti-democratic remainer creep’, Jacobs explains that the choice once again becomes No Deal or No Brexit.
Why? In her judgement it is down to the long term and ‘absurd paradox of the Remainers who are too risk-averse to embrace Brexit, but also too risk-averse to stop it outright’. If Brexiteers ‘hang tough’, they can call their bluff.
For this much-needed shake-up, dust-down pep talk to the dithering and squabbling ERG, she wins a high place indeed on our roll of honour.
