A casual observer seeing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn exchange rhetorical blows over Brexit in the Commons today might imagine that they stand on opposite sides of this totemic issue. But veterans of the debate know they are equal in determination that Britain should leave the EU. They are separated from consensus by small technical matters that can, for theatrical effect, be inflated into irreconcilable differences. That process is testimony to the hold that the two-party system exerts over English politics and to much of what is wrong with it.
Brexit keeps promising to break party lines and then failing to do so. That is partly because pro-Europeanism and the British left stand on overlapping cultural ground. The remain proposition goes well beyond attachment to EU membership: it is driven by revulsion at the nativist spirit of Brexit’s marauding generals – Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg – and shock that they have hijacked Britain’s political identity. But that dismay is not exclusive to Labour. It is felt by liberal Tories and swing voters who just pine for competent, rational government.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2BwKF3M
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