Faith versus passionate reason as the Northern Irish just get on with their lives

W Hutton again in the Observer reports from the People's Vote march, and sums up the classic Remainer view. Brexiteers just have unreasoning faith in their opinions

For them, Brexit is a religion, a reason for being, a lifestyle. Brexit is not a policy or a feasible strategic direction for the country, as we have learned. You can’t reason with them, when they argue, for example, about the number of independent trade deals that they imagine can be done to substitute for what we will lose. These deals just don’t exist. 

Then the usual apparent mea culpa,rapidly reversed by blaming other Fleet Street dogs:

it’s clear that the greatest weakness of the pro-EU cause has been an inability to find ways of fighting Europhobic faith with passionately argued reason. The capacity to compensate with vivid argument, speaking from the heart, has been absent: why, despite everything, Remain commands only a small majority in the country even now.

Well, they've done their best, surely, over the last 3 years? All that crisis stuff ranging from the threat to cheap British strawberries, through soggy tomatoes in JiT BLTs, diabetics not getting insulin, house prices crashing, criminals roaming the streets unmolested (implying European ones but pass on),the solemn reassurances that economists can make accurate predictions 10 years in advance.

Pathos to end:

But for all that, Saturday’s march left me hopeful.. Britain will one day again make common cause with friends and allies in Europe – we millions who marched are not going away.

 Ah yes -- the march. The usual stuff:

hundreds of thousands of very real people determined to march once more in London told a very different, more inclusive, island story. One that cuts across borders of politics and circumstance and region...good-natured and well-mannered...

Brexit has become an assault on the salt of the earth....Dave Blackburn, 62, a support worker for autistic adults...Sheila Connolly, who works with young homeless people...Emmanuelle Brook, a teaching assistant in her 40s with two children [who was] born in France, has lived in the UK for 24 years....Judith Spencer, who spent her career as a psychologist on the civil servants’ appointment board[who was] "born here half-Japanese in 1940,” ...Martyn Cattermole, a retired management consultant [Oh and one] warehouse worker from Warwick

They might [be a bit petty bourgeois but]...reflect on the fact that, in three-and-a-half years, the most notable collective showings of Brexit voters has been the 29 March “Brexit Day” gathering, dominated by the intelligentsia of the Football Lads’ Alliance and their arthritic desire for a ruck in the name of Engerlund.

 
Hutton and all the others will soon be onto some other crusade, marches for Climate Change or whatever, of course and it will be social distancing and moral hectoring as usual.

W Keegan continues to develop Project Fear:

the independent National Institute of Economic and Social Research is to be congratulated for its imminent publication of Beyond Brexit: A Programme for UK Reform, a product of the newly formed Policy Reform Group....[there will be] challenges facing the country regardless of what particular form of exit from the EU will ultimately be chosen”.

Keegan's take on this remarkably uncontroversial statement is 

There is now abundant evidence that no form of Brexit would be chosen by any sane administration, and many of us – as is clear from public demonstrations – have not yet given up hope that in the end the best Brexit is indeed no Brexit.

There is an interesting quote from an unknown source, although D Gauke is implicated:

all reputable studies point to a severe knock to the economy’s tax base from any form of Brexit. The dissident former cabinet minister David Gauke, having had access to all internal studies, points out the damage that would result from abandoning more than 70 trade agreements we already have via our membership of the EU. With regard to any new FTA (free trade agreement) we might negotiate with a non-EU third country, “for every pound gained to the UK economy by being able to enter FTAs with third countries we will see a loss of up to £33”.

I love economists' forecasts, and insist we take them entirely literally -- so if we get lots of FTAs we will soon see the economy wiped out by all those lost £32s until there is nothing left? 

Even if some of the argument is suspect, we can trust Keegan's political insight -- he knows it is all a plot by Tory deregulators:

superficially the present government recognises the need for a huge repair job on the British economy, with lots of regional and infrastructure spending. But much of this is pie in the sky and incompatible with the not-so-hidden agenda of the Brexit paymasters, which is for a deregulated, low-tax, “offshore” island.

We can always vote out such a Government of course, at least in principle. Who could vote out the EC, not even in principle?

Meanwhile, a curious piece for the Observer  on the reaction to the Johnson deal in NI itself. You would expect predictions of renewals of armed conflict and all that, but their reporters have actually interviewed some people

Peter Shirlow, a director at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies and an authority on unionism, said there was little appetite for disruption. “A lorry sitting in Larne having its contents checked won’t drive them back to violence. The narrative is changing. Northern Ireland is not as dysfunctional as you think.”...there seems little appetite for mass unruly protest....Few thought the union with the UK was imperilled.... "Betrayal? It’s ridiculous, inflammatory language. Let’s just get on with life.”...It was a common sentiment: customs or no customs, do a deal and move on.

A terrible day indeed, when you can't trust the Irish to do armed rebellion on behalf of the chattering classes. They probably need vivid argument, speaking from the heart.