Just over a week after Tony Blair’s speech attacking Brexit, another former Prime Minister bobs up. Sir John Major says the decision to leave the EU was a “historic mistake”.
Just as the present prime minister, Theresa May, prepares to enter negotiations Major engages in a calculated attempt to undermine her. Are these attacks coordinated? Is there some sort of Remoaner grid run by Sir Craig Oliver? Perhaps we have Gordon Brown to look forward to next week.
Both Blair and Major refused to accept the referendum result. Blair was straightforward in calling for a second referendum. Major was more weasly – he conceded the Government “cannot ignore the nation’s decision”. That’s big of him.
However that comment falls a long way short of accepting the result and that Brexit must now be implemented. He talked about wanting to “heal divisions” of the referendum. The best way to do that would be to shut up and accept the verdict of the people.
Major went on to demand that the UK should remain a member of the Single Market – which would make a nonsense of the vote to be an independent self-governing nation with control of our own laws, borders, money and trade. He spoke of his “growing concern as the British people have been led to expect a future that seems to be unreal and optimistic”.
A “hard Brexit” would be “high risk” said Major. It’s a bit late for Project Fear – especially after the claims of immediate disaster after a vote to leave have already been so resoundingly discredited.
The absurd rhetoric of conflating Europe and the EU was used: “The anti-Europeans won their battle to take Britain out of Europe…”
Next Major offered a defeatist talk about the cost of Brexit, talking up the “legal obligation” to pay billions over as part of the divorce settlement. He said it was “extraordinarily naïve” that we would get what we wish for out of the negotiations without offering anything in return.
Yet the central objective is free trade – for which surely Sir John can understand would be in the interests of the remaining EU members. He repeated his tired attacks on Brexiteers as “isolationsists” who favoured “total disengagement”. Who are these Brexiteers who favour a siege economy and oppose trade with the continent? Major doesn’t name them – probably as they don’t exist.
There was a section encouraging Parliament to overturn any deal. A demand of Theresa May that “at some time, she will have to face down” the Eurosceptics. He attacked the Government’s tone saying “the atmosphere is already sour. A little more charm, and a lot less cheap rhetoric, would do much to protect the UK’s interests.”
In other words, every paragraph of the speech was intended to weaken the UK’s negotiating position. It was all about talking Britain down.
The extent of the hypocrisy can be judged against another speech from Major two decades ago, when he said: “Whether you agree with me or disagree with me; like me or loathe me, don’t bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British nation.”
Those were the words of John Major when he was Prime Minister in 1997. He said that ruling out abolition of the pound and of joining the Euro would send him “naked into that conference chamber with nothing to negotiate, with nothing to wring the best deal out of our partners.”
Of course, Major was most indignant at the expressions of Eurosceptic opinion by his predecessor Margaret Thatcher.
These indignant interventions from Blair and Major are aimed at sabotaging Brexit. They will not succeed. In the case of Blair the only impact was the astonishing one of strengthening Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. If a former PM gives more than a couple of speeches a year they tend to lose impact. In seeking to
weaken Theresa May, the sad thing is that John Major has simply harmed himself.
