Janet Daley
is a Boston born columnist with The Sunday Telegram in the UK. Today’s quote is from her piece on July 27, which ran under the headline
“The defeatist establishment has got it wrong – nothing is impossible in politics.”
The article dealt with the question, will Boris Johnson really be able to take the UK out of the EU? We’ll get to that and other specifics in a moment. What particularly struck us was the above insight, which she packaged in this paragraph:
“So let’s get one thing straight: nothing is impossible in politics. There is no equivalent of the law of gravity which cannot be broken or reversed. There are only agreements and disagreements. There are no immovable objects or concrete bodies in permanently fixed orbits. There are just people.”
To state the obvious, Ms. Daley was writing about Brexit, and we’ve been away from Brexit for a while. So before turning to Ms. Daley’s argument, here are a few very recent dates in the tortured chronology of the UK’s efforts to leave the European Union.
March 29
For the third and final time, the British Parliament votes on the withdrawal agreement Mrs. May had negotiated with her counterparts in the EU, rejecting it this time by a vote of 344 to 286.
May 24
Prime Minister Theresa May announces she will be stepping down as prime minister, pending the outcome of a Conservative Party contest to replace her.
July 24
Having won the contest in the Conservative Party, Boris Johnson is asked by the Queen to form a new government. As the new prime minister, Mr. Johnson promptly names hard-line Brexiteers to Cabinet positions and ramps up planning for a no-deal Brexit.
August 1
– A by-election (special election) in Wales leaves Boris Johnson with a single vote majority in Parliament and something of a muddled message from the electorate.
Jane Dodds,
the Liberal Democrat (read “remain”) won, defeating the Conservative incumbent,
Chris Davies.
But on the leave-remain scale of British politics (arguably the most import metric these days), the issue was clouded by the over 3,300 votes won by the Brexit party candidate. As one observer has noted,
“If just half of the 3,300 voters who backed the Brexit Party in Brecon had backed the Conservatives instead, Mr Johnson the Prime Minister would have been toasting an unanticipated victory.”
In short the result can be read either as a rejection of a “no-deal” Brexit, which is certainly Ms. Dodds’ view, or as a push in that direction.