This hilarious short history of Brexit will mess with your head
The UK is moving closer to what some call national suicide. Companies are leaving. Medicine and food are being stockpiled. Wealthy Leavers are purchasing EU citizenship. It is easy to forget how ludicrous this situation has been from the start.
What has Brexit actually cost Britain? This drawn explainer adds up the bill line by line.
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Very Finnish Problems
An anonymous writer has crafted a short history to put the events into perspective. If you are still able to sit comfortably despite the situation, here is how it happened.
The beginning
David Cameron made a promise he did not think he would have to keep. He held a referendum he did not think he would lose. Boris Johnson backed the side he did not believe in because he did not think it would win. Michael Gove said he would not run but did. Boris Johnson said he would run but did not. Theresa May did not vote for Brexit but got the job of making it happen.
The election
Theresa May called an election she said she would not. She lost the majority David Cameron had not expected to win. She triggered Article 50 when it was not required. She said trade and the divorce deal would be discussed at the same time. The EU said they would not. They did not.
The divorce
People thought she would not get the divorce settled. She did. This required agreeing to separate arrangements for Northern Ireland after promising the DUP she would not. The Cabinet agreed a deal but they had not. David Davis was the Brexit Secretary but was not. He said it was not what people voted for. He could not support what he had just supported and left.
The resignations
Boris Johnson had not left then wished he had. He eventually did. Dominic Raab became the new Brexit secretary. People thought Theresa May would not negotiate a withdrawal agreement. Once she had they wished she had not. Hardly anybody liked it regardless of their stance on leaving.
No confidence
Jacob Rees-Mogg threatened a vote of no confidence. Not enough people were confident that enough people lacked confidence to call a no confidence vote. Dominic Raab said he had not really been Brexit Secretary either and resigned. Someone else took the job. It is likely not worth remembering who they are. Olly Robbins is doing the job instead.
The concessions
Theresa May said she would call a vote and did not. She said she would not release legal advice but had to. She said she would get concessions but did not. She became angry that Jean-Claude Juncker called her nebulous. He was not but probably should have been.
The promises
Jacob Rees-Mogg and others called a vote of no confidence. She won by promising to leave so she could stay. They said she had lost and should go. They also said people who voted Leave knew what they were voting for. This is impossible because we still do not know now. They said we should leave the Leave vote alone but have no confidence in the no confidence vote which won by more.
The outcome
The government argued in court against the ability to change our minds. It turned out we could. May named a date for the vote on her agreement. Nobody expected it to pass. She pretended a no-deal was possible even though we can simply say we are not leaving. She said a second referendum is undemocratic because having a democratic vote is undemocratic. She lost as expected. Some people talk about a managed no-deal. It is not a deal but it is not no-deal either.
David Cameron.
The man whose incompetence was so utterly crap, he had to resign…….twice!
Remember duding the election when he said the uk “had a choice, stability with the conservatives or chaos with Labour”
As he gambled with a referendum just to win a few measly votes off UKIP!
Stability!!!
He was a reckless, incompetent halfwit.
Cameron will go down as the most incompetent Prime Minister I’m my lifetime, so far!
In your lifetime? Are you 198 years old…?
This is such idiocy. The party put the referendum in the manifesto, not just him. A massive cross party majority approved it in Parliament, ditto with Art50. To blame Cameron alone demonstrates a pitiful ignorance of procedure and a woeful prejudice. Blaming Labour alone for supporting the referendum would be just as silly.
That is what Cameron says. He thinks he had no choice because it was in the manifesto. So why wasn’t there in the first place?
Surely he just gave people a choice? He didn’t want Brexit so why would he stick around when the country voted to leave? Give him a break.
He should have stuck around and done his job! He put the entire Britain in this mess, he should have had the cajonies to stay.
He will be remembered for tearing the United Kingdom/Great Britain apart.
Britain never fully recovered from WWII. Britain was not great before the EU, why would you want to go back?
Cameron rivals Lord North (lost America) as the UK’s singularly most incompetent PM! Now living in a £25k Hut writing a book that should be avoided!!
Yes a Brian Rix farce but our government embrace farce and are all about themselves. Lets get out of the farcical UK and become an adult independent country.
This is actually both clever and accurate.
It would be comic if it wasn’t tragic!
Its a NO Deal …Best result ever …Democracy has won .
Cameron never thought he was going to lose, and the Leavers never thought they were going to win , therefore no proper plans by either , that’s why we are in such a mess now.
‘Laughing just to keep from crying…’ I’ve been feeling for some while now that I might somehow have strayed though Lewis Carroll’s looking glass, and reading this brilliant summary finally confirms it! Not even the writers of ‘Yes, Minister’ could have dreamed up a plot like this. (Brian Rix, just maybe?)
The problem with declaring No Deal a victory for democracy is that Leavers only voted to leave, not how to leave. More than a few envisaged a Norway-style relationship. Remainers at least knew exactly what they were voting for.
This masterly explication of Brexit is still far too little known, though I’ve done my best to promote it among my family, friends and acquaintances, and I know some of them have passed it on. Time for an appendix though, I feel, since recent events make it clear that we are still on the wrong side of the looking glass. Plenty of material, surely:
– Mrs May achieving the largest parliamentary defeat of modern times with her proposed withdrawal agreement, and then courting humiliation if not ridicule by doggedly reproposing it twice more, and meeting defeat again – twice;
– Mrs May repeatedly maintaining the UK would definitely leave on March 31, and then requesting an extension – twice;
– The next prime minister being chosen by a tiny and totally unrepresentative fraction of the electorate, some of whom can apparently vote twice;
– The choice then being between one man of doubtful seriousness who criticised the very process he is now seeking to benefit from, when it related to the elevation of Gordon Brown; and another who over a period of three years has serially embraced remaining in the EU, Mrs May’s widely unpopular withdrawal agreement, and leaving without a deal (clearly a follower of the Vicar of Bray’s approach to politics);
– The mechanics of the conservative change of leadership, parliament’s summer recess, and equivalent holidays in the EU turning a six month extension into about one week of useful time.
And one could go on. Only the author of Brexit Explained can truly do justice to it all.