Those we haven’t loved. It’s been nearly a decade since the Brexit referendum and the main architects seem to have gone quiet. Boris Johnson has retreated into his own world having been rejected by the real one. Still wondering why David Cameron hadn’t left him detailed instructions of what to do if the UK left the EU. Nigel Farage is happy to talk about almost anything but Brexit. And where his money comes from and how it’s spent. The man who can’t be bought but used to do Cameos at £80 a pop for Hugh Janus can’t even admit the Boriswave was a direct result of Brexit.
But there are still a few believers. At least 120 of them. These were the men and women of the Freedom Association who had gathered in Westminster for their Brexit Unleashed conference. The weirdos. The misfits. The losers. The mostly elderly desperados who cling to the certainty they were right all along. Untroubled by all the evidence to the contrary. Unaware that many of their arguments contradict one another. That all that they want to be true cannot all be true. Entwined with one another in a death spiral. This church hall was a place where hope came to die.
The proceedings were opened by David Campbell Bannerman, former MEP and lifelong Brexiter. A man clinging to reality by a gossamer thread. He began by praising the UK for having had the integrity to leave the EU, despite knowing there would be some pain and cost as a result. So that’s what it was. I can’t remember anyone on the leave side talking about pain at the time. Rather it was that everything was going to be great. There was no downside. David Davis had always said the Brexit deal would be the easiest ever. Wrapped up in 24 hours.
Two minutes in and we got the first Brexit betrayal. A theme that was to be repeated every two minutes for the next six hours. Brexit had been a wonderful thing that had been undermined by a political class who had never believed in it. Even the ones who had believed in it, hadn’t believed in it in the right kind of way. “Brexit has not failed,” said Delusional Dave. It wasn’t a catastrophic failure. It was just a failure that had been a catastrophe. We were still waiting for the One True Brexit. And he was the Once and Future King.
Next up was another David. There would turn out to be more Davids than there were women at this conference. Apologies to any readers called David. This wasn’t your namesakes’ finest hour. Step forward Lord Frost. AKA Frosty the No Man. The Brexit negotiator who admitted that the deal he had negotiated had been shit. The man who loved free speech so much he had been an enthusiastic supporter of Viktor Orbán. How are the mighty fallen.
Frosty’s memory isn’t all that it once was. Now he wanted everyone to hold hands and remember that the Brexit deal was the best that had ever been done. The audience needed no second invitation. They were as desperate as he was.
“We need to revive the excitement of the day after the referendum,” he said. Clearly Frosty hadn’t been at the press conference Vote Leave had given on the morning after. Boris and Michael Gove had finally turned up 30 minutes late looking like death warmed up. It was as though they had spent the night tripping on acid and had come down to find they had murdered a friend. Ghosts of their former selves. They had no idea what they had just done. No idea what they were going to do. Both were entirely monosyllabic.
Inevitably it was not long before Frosty also moved on to the Great Betrayal. We were in dangerous territory. Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham were all minutes away from getting the UK to rejoin the EU. They had somehow sweet-talked the country into believing Brexit had been a disaster. This was deranged. The idea that the most unpopular prime minister in history had brainwashed the whole country. That people were incapable of reaching the conclusion that the Brexit they had been sold was one of fantasy and lies.
David Two was not finished. People had voted for Brexit because they no longer wanted to be governed by unelected politicians. This was a record level of delusion; Frosty appeared not to realise he was an unelected member of the House of Lords. Yet another addition to the upper chamber as a reward for failure. He ended by admitting that Northern Ireland was still not working properly. For that he put the blame firmly at the door of the EU. For not giving us what we wanted. No one could have expected that the EU wouldn’t give us everything we demanded.
There was just time for a hereditary peer to say how miffed he was at being silenced in the Lords – as with Frosty, accountability is only for the little people: sometimes this sketch writes itself – before we got get another David. David Three turned out to be former Tory minister turned Reform shill David Jones. Someone who is forgettable even round his own breakfast table.
It was hard to know quite what he wanted to say as the entire hall lapsed into a coma not long after he told everyone they needed to be more enthusiastic about Brexit. David Three has the unique gift of being even duller in real life than in your imagination. Mind you, Claire Fox – yet another unelected member of the Lords – declared this was the best Brexit speech she had ever heard. Kudos to her for having stayed awake.
Then the piece de resistance. A rant from John Redwood. Yes, you’ve guessed it, he too is in the Lords. What is it with all these Brexiters that they have no self-awareness? Or are they all just obsessed with their own self-importance and status? Redwood declared that all the economists were wrong. They had got their tables upside down. Far from costing us 4% in the fall of GDP, Brexit had actually been a net benefit. And if we all just encouraged people to buy diesel cars we’d be even richer still.
“Throw off the shackles, Britain can be great again,” he trilled. Streeting and Burnham had been gripped with a delusion. Remainers were part of a religious cult. They had no idea how difficult and expensive it would be to rejoin the EU. Had no idea of what a good deal we had had while we were in the EU. The Thatcher rebate. Other benefits we would never get back. It kind of makes you think Redwood must secretly wonder why we had ever left.
