Whatever happened to the über wet Matthew Parris? Brexit seems to have driven him to the brink but he’s back, disinterred like Salvadore Dali and he’s in fighting fettle as he sees Brexit on the ropes, his mind may have gone but like Dali’s famed moustache Parris’ arsehole is in perfect working order pumping out the same old bile that it always did as he sees HMS ‘Transition’ sailing to the rescue in swirling muddied waters aided and abetted by the BBC collaborators.
Maybe he’s been on the weed…there has to be some explanation for his ludicrous, rambling ravings….
Why does the Spectator still employ his services? Who knows, he’s well past his prime and his bilious outpourings turned very sour, very bitter and twisted as Brexit loomed but he has bounced back as he thinks Blair & Co will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and Brexit will be shelved….the Remain MPs will thwart the whole dastardly project…huzzah!!!
Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake
In a spirit of candid friendship I write this letter to die-hard Leavers, of whom a small — but vigorous — colony survives on these Spectator pages…
Dear Leavebugs, You know I am not of your number, but I understand you. I even feel for you.
As an understanding friend, therefore, though never an ally, I write to warn you that your project is in deep trouble.
I know what you really want. You just want Britain out of any entanglement that spans the English Channel. For you this is as much an emotional longing as a practical calculation — an antipathy whose roots go deep, back to the first and second world wars, to the Napoleonic wars, to England’s fear of the French Revolution; back (though some of you may disown this root) to Protestant England’s detestation of Rome.
Be honest with yourselves. Though you’re ready to assert the material benefits you say could flow from leaving Europe, you know in your heart that such calculations are secondary and speculative. They are not what drive you, but a posteriori arguments for an impulse that came, first, from your heart: an impulse that would survive the demolition of any argument of economic advantage. Admit it. For you this isn’t about money.
Shut your eyes and make a supreme effort to confess your inner motivation. What is your immediate, instinctive, unguarded answer to the question: ‘What if Brexit made us poorer?’ You know, don’t you?
You’d be disappointed, of course, and sorry. Impoverishment isn’t what you expect. But you’d still think it was right to leave. Your reasons are almost spiritual. They relate to our whole identity as a people; our nation’s soul; our place in history. They do not (you believe) sit easily on any spreadsheet of material gains or losses, but are about destiny. Perhaps only secretly you could contemplate the idea of being poorer yet prouder: of exchanging a bit of take-home pay for that greater prize: independence and national self-respect. You find haggling about GDP, chlorinated chicken and Toyota’s tariffs beneath the argument.
We have to remind ourselves there was never a majority, never will be a majority, and was certainly no majority at the European referendum last year, for impoverishing ourselves in pursuit of national self-respect.
Voters have understood we’ll take a hit. Few now believe we’ll be richer. People are coming to fear we would be poorer. You do surely know this is the way the mood is turning. You know, too, how the same mood is growing within the Lords and Commons. You may think this faintheartedness is misplaced, but you cannot think it is temporary.
And you know MPs run with the breeze. Can you still believe the ‘hard’ Brexit you favour, requiring Britain’s departure from the single market and the customs union, will ever get through this parliament, still less a new one under a new government? Your version of Brexit will either break or be broken by government.
Beware, too, Remainers bearing ‘transitional arrangements’ for the single market, customs union, and jurisdiction of the ECJ. Suspect a plot by my lot to procrastinate until you lot slip out of vogue. Deadlines for any ‘transition’ can be put back until kingdom come. Allow us to lure you into these thickets, and you lose.
You speak for millions, but unfortunately not tens of millions. We who are not about to die, salute you.
Isn’t 17 million in the tens? And I think there was a majority to leave the EU. In fact I’m sure of it. Nice to see he admits we can’t trust the MPs as far as we would like to throw them and that the transition period plan is a ploy, a plot to delay Brexit until conditions change in some shape or form so that Parris and Co can move in to sell us out once again to the EU idiocracy.
Parris deludes himself if he thinks duplicitous MPs and contemptuous, arrogant, sneering Remainers like him will be left in peace if they successfully block and betray Brexit by their scheming. Careful what you wish for Matthew for as you say yourself ‘Civil wars are always bitter; wars within ourselves the most bitter of all.’
