J Freedland's article is worth reading in full as a summary of the case for abandoning Brexit, but here are the key quotes. Afterr a view that May is too weak [isn't this good for Remainers though?]:
[Leave's] central, winning claim – that exit would bring £350m a week for the NHS – lives on now only as a punchline and case study in Trumpian dishonesty... Leave’s other big pledge was a fall in migration, but this week’s UK population figures, with a 5 million increase in a decade, confirm that EU migration has only ever been part of that story. Meanwhile, farmers and hospital managers alike warn of dire consequences if they cannot bring in essential workers from the continent. Already the numbers, whether of fruit-pickers or nurses, are in steep decline..."The pound has lost 14% of its value against the euro"..the governor of the Bank of England says “weaker real income growth” cannot be prevented. Inflation is rising. Brexit has made Britons poorer...if Britain truly changed its mind, Europeans would open their arms. Donald Tusk, president of the European council, was asked on Thursday if it was too late for Britain to stay. The EU was built on impossible dreams, he said, before turning lyrical. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”' ... Labour may be able to embrace a more anti-Brexit position without paying too high an electoral price. That could, for example, be an insistence on staying in the single market... A paper calling for a new “continental partnership” has prompted much interest in pro-European circles: it envisages a two-tier Europe, with Britain sitting in an outer tier, enjoying a form of single market membership that nevertheless allows for limits on free movement.
The editorial has a similar line, including:
Mrs May likes to say that 85% of Britons have recently voted for parties committed to Brexit. But this is another clunky line she should stop repeating. The 85% of Britons who voted Tory and Labour on 8 June did not all vote for a Brexit that prioritises heartless immigration controls or spurns the European court of justice. They have certainly not, as Philip Hammond rightly warned this week, voted to become poorer, less secure, or to treat Europe in ways that risk the economy crashing if the talks reach impasse....The events of the past 12 months, and of the last 48 hours in particular, have provided a vivid lesson in the folly of Brexit. For a year, Mrs May has expended most of her leadership of the Conservative party attempting to forge – the word is appropriate – a new deal with the EU that will be worse than the one we now have in every significant respect: economically, socially and culturally. On 8 June, the voters pulled the rug from under her feet. The upshot is a Brexit process that was wrong in the first place, has been badly mishandled, and now lacks credibility at home and in the EU. There is an overwhelming need, and perhaps a burgeoning consensus, for Britain to change its Brexit priorities.
It is worth noting that Remainers have also revised their demands to just partial membership. The whole Freedland piece is full of ifs and slightly misleading if not exactly 'fake' arguments - -the decisive 'lie',engraved for ever on Remainer hearts; the view that immigration is inevitable and unalterable;the blurring together of EU and other migration, nurses and fruit pickers (the two categories luvvies worry most about); the strange view that the UK has already done a Brexit so the fluctuations are not the result of uncertainty but definite Brexit; a fantasy about Labour becoming more like the Liberals, a failure to grasp or reveal that the popular Labour national investment plans would be forbidden by EU rules; a belief that an EU Jesus will arise to save us with a compromise to avoid all this nasty confrontation.
Incidentally, the latest G Osborne attack on May is separately reported. Osborne, now magically transformed from a duplicitous and manipulative Chancellor into a journalist like Guardian staff , had his editorial quoted:
"Last June, in the days immediately after the referendum, David Cameron wanted to reassure EU citizens they would be allowed to stay,” the paper said. “All his cabinet agreed with that unilateral offer, except his home secretary, Mrs May, who insisted on blocking it.”
That editorial comment appears in the Guardian news section and is repeated in the Guardian editorial cited above:
George Osborne revealed that Mrs May had unilaterally prevented a fairer and more serious offer immediately after the referendum last June because that would strengthen her leadership election chances..
However, the news section attempts some sort of balance:
May, when asked about the Standard story, said: “That is not my recollection” ... One former senior minister told the Guardian they didn’t recollect any discussion of the issue around the cabinet table at the time..
These balancing comments are not repeated in the Guardina editorial though. Editorials become news which become editorials. So much for the sacred split between news and opinion.
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