Keeping the faith

Within two minutes of the Freedom Association’s “Brexit Unleashed” conference starting, we had been told that the dream had been betrayed. Five minutes after that, we heard that in fact, True Brexit had never been tried. I guess you’ve got to play the hits. 

The event, round the corner from Parliament, had the air of a civil war reenactment society, using carefully-restored arguments to recreate just how it must have felt to sit in an airless room listening to someone bang on about sovereignty, way back in 2018. There was even a small band of pro-European protestors outside doing their best, with the aid of a loudspeaker, to remind us that in this particular battle there were terrible people on both sides.

Like a lot of battle reenactments, it was quite hard to understand what was happening unless you already knew the history. For instance, you would never have guessed from the way that the speakers complained that their side had achieved total victory, winning a referendum and then a subsequent election that left them with a majority allowing them to negotiate whatever deal they wanted and implement it as they saw fit. 

Within the same speech, former Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman described that deal as the greatest thing that negotiator David Frost had ever done, and also “the best of a bad job”. Both those things could be true, I suppose, but they’re not massively complimentary to Frost. 

So reluctant are the Great Men of Brexit to discuss their triumph that none of them had turned up on Tuesday

Campbell Bannerman had sensed that out there in the country, Britain’s departure from the EU isn’t viewed among the finest moments in our national story. He had a theory about why this was. “No one has been supporting Brand Brexit,” he complained sadly. Neither his own Conservatives nor Nigel Farage’s Reform seemed to be terribly keen to talk about it. He couldn’t understand why this was.

Indeed so reluctant are the Great Men of Brexit to discuss their triumph that none of them had turned up on Tuesday. There was a time when an event like this would have featured at least one of Farage, Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg. The best this lot could do is John Redwood. It was like one of those reunion tours of 1970s bands that, following a court case, feature only the members whose names you had forgotten.

Frost spoke after Campbell Bannerman. He too was baffled by Farage’s lack of enthusiasm for discussing whether making it harder to sell things to France had been quite the economic triumph we were promised.

He recalled the morning after the 2016 referendum. “We need to recapture some of that sense of excitement,” he said. He was clearly not at the Vote Leave press conference I attended, where Johnson and Michael Gove had the air of men who had never expected the cursed monkey paw to actually grant their wish. 

Brexit, Frost told us, had been about one thing and one thing only. Not immigration. Not sticking two fingers up at Westminster. No, this: “When the people who make the rules get it wrong, you can sack them.” We paused to consider that Frost has a permanent seat in the House of Lords. Although those too can be precarious: a little later a hereditary peer stood up at this festival of democracy to complain that he had been deprived of his seat in the chamber. 

David Jones (the former Welsh Secretary, not the former Monkee) made a very long speech in which he assured us that Farage’s passion for Brexit was undiminished. “Nigel’s very raison d’être is…” To collect houses? To avoid answering questions about his bank account? “…to ensure that Britain does stay out of the EU.” Although, Jones went on in a puzzled tone, “he hasn’t talked about it much lately.” 

Claire Fox, another democrat so committed to accountability that she took a seat in the Lords, responded to Jones. “I’ve heard a lot of Brexit speeches over the years, and I have to say that was one of the finest,” she said, damningly.

And then John Redwood, yet another peer, strode to the front to offer a rousing reassurance to the crowd that they were right about everything. It roamed across many of the prejudices of the modern right. Brexit had made us richer, the North Sea was full of gas, electric cars are more harmful to the environment than petrol ones, solar power was bad. 

Why, someone asked, was it so difficult for opponents of Brexit to change their minds, now that the evidence of how it had turned out was clear for all to see? Redwood considered. “I don’t think anyone will persuade them,” he said. “I think it’s a religious belief. So irrational.”