Pragmatic moves include, today, a proposal to delay the vote. There could be longer delays -- delay to March 29th. Some sort of delay would be inevitable for any new referendum.
Channel 4 News was pushing an older proposal, a GNU, where sensible people of all parties unite -- and keep us in, maybe by unilaterally withdrawing our Article 50 without further debate? C4 presenters ended each interview with a question to the politician about whether they would serve under a GNU, as if it were all a foregone conclusion and one were being set up. It seems there is a simple national interest for C4 News after all. Scratch a supporter of Parliamentary democracy...
It all comes against a background of loss of confidence in a People's Vote. L. McClusky says it is unlikely that there is total support for it in the Labour Party, and the article goes on:
There are also fears that a significant minority of Labour MPs would not back the policy, even if it was backed by the frontbench.
Those MPs include Brexiters, such as Dennis Skinner, John Mann and Frank Field, as well as MPs in strong leave-leaning seats, such as Caroline Flint, Gareth Snell and Laura Smith.
Similarly, in the Times, J Russell develops her earlier reservations about a PV. Opinion has not changed she thinks.Apparent small majorities for Remain declared in recent polls do not exceed the margin of error (fancy literary bourgeois knowing about them!). Above all:
Remainers assume that the errors and disasters of Brexit are becoming so apparent that they are self-evident, and that the voters have only to be asked for a second opinion to turn against it.
I am afraid they are making exactly the same mistake that they did in the first vote, thinking the electorate will be swayed by facts, official predictions, economic self-interest. That confidence is horribly misplaced. The deep and emotional loyalties that people have developed over Brexit have become tribal, reach into their sense of self and are almost impossible to shift.
How amusing that so many nice middle-class advocates of emotions in politics are having their arses bitten.
Russell quotes her 'friends' talking to people (eg their employees or fellow church-goers) in the Midlands:
Dire predictions from the Bank of England about a shrinking economy or warnings about no fresh food in supermarkets within days of no-deal are just shrugged off, either disbelieved or dismissed. Leavers are emphatic, enthusiastic, gleeful about having affected something for the first time in their lives...[As I have been predicting all along]...Some are so angered by Remainer criticism or ostracism that they have doubled down and now prefer no deal to any soft Brexit. When you ask them why they are misty-eyed. Sovereignty. Independence. Control.
Such political objectives are a surprise to the new petit-bourgeois, I imagine, who have assumed all along that threats of poverty would work better -- as if we haven't had that for the last 10 years. Luckily they must be irrational, 'misty-eyed':
“They just want out, nothing to do with Europe at all, it’s all worth it as long as we’re not a slave nation any more. They’ve swallowed all that propaganda about Europe as the enemy, they’re completely entrenched.”
Can we expect rational counter-argument dispelling these sentimental and idealistic views? Apparently not -- all Russell can do is invert and oppose them, a classic form of distanciation where the correct values are just the opposite of anything that the masses want:
What matters to me — interdependence, prosperity, influence, the freedom and security that comes from being part of a greater European bloc — simply doesn’t resonate with them. My priorities aren’t theirs.
That lack of resonance has been a source of smug virtue-signalling in the past, no doubt, but now the plebs might have a vote. Let's not risk it after all.
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