The blame game started long ago.
In truth any number of people could justifiably be forced to take their share.
So let me go through the list
. How long have you got?
.
1. The Conservative Party.
A fundamental starting point as without their internal and long standing divisions on Europe I doubt we would have ended up with the 2016 EU referendum ever being called in the first place by David Cameron. The party divisions festered to a point where a Tory PM caved in to select a moment in time to ask the fateful question in an expectation the electorate would vote to remain. In typical British fashion Joe Public defied expectation to open the can of worms.
The said can of worms has been kicked plentifully and repeatedly down the road to a destination unknown. Cameron called it quits having gone all in and lost.
2. Referendum Campaigns on BOTH sides.
In short campaigns riddled with disingenuous, speculative scaremongering.
And lies and deceipt and bogus statistic trading.
An opportunity to inform and educate as to the meaningful advantages and disdavantages of EU membership was spurned to allow a decision to be made without sufficient quality of information to hand.
Some might claim more has been learnt about the consequences of staying in or exiting. I however am not convinced on the arguments of either side in this respect.
3. Theresa May.
To coin a phrase from Sir Humphrey in Yes Prime Minister..........
"Well it's your job and you wanted it Prime Minister"
Do I doubt she tried to get the best deal she could in good faith? No I don't doubt that for a moment.
But she took an unnecessary gamble in calling an election in 2017 in a complacent belief an increased majority would ensue. In short she took the British electorate for granted. A most unwise thing to do, even more so in hindsight with the loss of her Commons majority and the subsequent requirement to have an arrangement with the DUP that ultimately has scuppered her negotiated deal and may well see her depart number 10 sooner rather than later.
Once the election was over Brexit secretaries came and went but the disagreenents within the parliamentary party never went away and forced her hand.
The complexity of trying to strike the balance between reaching a deal to be approved sufficiently by both her party and by the EU seemed to completely overwhelm her.
Alas the backstop created problems for the most fundamental part of the whole thing.
The withdrawal agreement. The one thing that was legally binding and the one thing that the EU would ultimately, repeatedly say they were not willing to renegotiate once the deal was agreed with the EU.
She reached what she believed to be a compromise deal with the EU but ended up upsetting the large majority within both flanks of her own party with the said deal. Once believing her 'compromise' was the only one in town and the EU assertion to the same effect the attempts to ram through the deal began and repeatedly failed.
This has led to claims of inflexibility, intransigence and lack of willingness to compromise on the type of Brexit deal to be pursued.
These claims have some degree of justification but my own view is to give relatively short shrift to such claims when they have been made by MPs of other parties within the Commons. This brings me on rather conveniently to the next firing line targets.
4. Jeremy Corbyn and his front bench team.
Guilty of setting 6 tests by which they intended to judge the credibility and quality of any deal Mrs May returned with. Guilty of wilfully and deliberately constructing such tests in such a way they could never be passed by Mrs May.
This by virtue of effectively setting a series of red lines i.e areas on which they were not willing to compromise.
Guilty of hypocrisy and double standards by slamming the PM for her red lines (caused by divisions within her party) while at the same time not taking responsibility for Labour red lines and divisions within the parliamentary Labour party.
Guilty of endless flip flopping with their policy on Brexit and how to handle it. Corbyn and Starmer knew exactly what they were doing.
They have played politics with this from the start and have shown neither coherence or consistency in their approach to a sensible way forward.
Advocates of rejection of the PMs deal and no deal without an alternative proposal that can allow the legally binding withdrawal agreement to pass WITH a meaningful solution to the blocker that is The Backstop.
5. The SNP.
Guilty of an inability to accept that the Scottish Independence referendum was lost and guilty of a refusal to accept that the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would COLLECTIVELY decide the future of the UK membership or not of the European Union.
Whatever Scotland decided on Brexit many towns or cities within England or Wales or Northern Ireland may have taken the same view.
But the overall majority of the electorate within the union disagreed.
The UK will was established.
I happen to agree with the SNP in never wanting Brexit in the first place but that is hardly the point. I lost and so did they. Twice.
I accepted the outcome in good grace.
They have failed so to do and seemingly from the start have been angling for a second EU referendum as a cynical means to then demand a second Scottish Independence referendum. Once again playing politics for their own ideological ends by virtue of all Brexit votes cast.
6. The Liberal Democrats.
Never wanted Brexit and still don't.
Whether by accident or by design their voting patterns on Brexit have done the very same as so much of the Commons.
To stifle and scupper Brexit at every turn.
I feel a sense of shame in our politicians.
Collectively guilty of breathtaking, eye watering complacency, hypocrisy, double standards, dishonesty and disreputable insincerity.
It is politicians that presented two of the most negative questions that could ever be asked of folk.
Do the Scots want to break away from the rest of the UK.
Does the UK want to break away from the European Union.
Questions that have done nothing more than create and intensify bitter division and hostility between folk. Resentment that will never die.
Questions that do little but promote a mentality akin to that of an isolationist clone of Donald Trump. Scotland first or UK first and everybody else can sod off.
All this at a time when our social system has reached a damaging state near beyond repair when a need to stick together has to my mind never been clearer.
I can never forgive either referendum being called in the first place and I won't.
I can never forgive the political class for the way in which the referendum campaigns were run. And I won't.
My faith in the political classes has been shot to pieces.
They have put the final nail in the coffin by not being willing or able to execute the will of the electorate that I disagreed with.
For that I hold them all in eternal contempt.
Parliament. You have failed. Failed totally and utterly.
Hang your heads in collective shame.
Forgiveness, from me at least is now a forlorn hope..
