More mood swings among Guardianista faithful

 Several ups and downs for the Remainerati in the GHraun.

First a headline

UK may shelve controversial Brexit protocol bill in show of goodwill to EU

But don't get too excited because: 

a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) source denied the law was being paused. ..

the UK government said on Friday it would further delay calling an election in Northern Ireland in order to to give Brexit talks a chance. But senior EU sources said only “slow progress” was being made, with both sides warning there were still significant differences.

Next:

As leave voters’ Brexit regret rises, will political parties dare to follow?

Even leavers might be changing their minds, but there’s little incentive for opposition to revisit issue, say analysts

UK voters’ scepticism about the project has increased through the past 18 months, as the economic outlook has darkened.

As the elections expert Prof John Curtice put it in a blog post last week, “rather than looking like an unchallenged ‘fait accompli’, Brexit now appears to be a subject on which a significant body of voters has had second thoughts...the shift has been mainly driven not by changes in the makeup of the electorate – with younger voters coming of age, for example – but by leavers changing their minds....support for rejoining the EU had increased to 57%, against 43% preferring to stay out, according to a poll of polls by NatCen social research

But discontent appears to politicians rather ambiguously:

“It tends to come in two forms: one sense is, we’ve got all this trouble and we could do without it; and then there’s another sense, which tends to be a bit grumpier, which is that it could have been done well but politicians have fluffed it,” {and] after living through the unedifying political turmoil of 2016-19, when Brexit preoccupied the country’s politicians to the exclusion of almost everything else, many voters were reluctant to see Brexit return to the top of the agenda.

Even the Lib Dems, whose hearts lie firmly inside the EU, believe there is little to be gained from using up precious airtime attacking Brexit, when the public is more focused on more immediate crises – and already very receptive to the argument that the government is to blame.

Ford, who is the co-author of the book Brexitland, about the politics of leaving the EU, argues that any plan to rejoin now would be likely to hit a brick wall in Brussels anyway.

So what do the fuckers want?

 

J Freedland may have the answer...

 

 

New year, new depths of paranoia for the GHuardianistas

 Amid the continuing mystery of what Remainers actually want to do now (apart from whinge endlessly),  new reasons for despair emerge,partly from recent polls showing no surge to Labour, and large numbers of don't knows.J Harris in the Graun today: 

The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial? 

If both parties ignore the uncomfortable facts, politics will be flooded with dangerous conspiracies and betrayal myths

The wreckage of Brexit bit is the same old stuff, blaming selected measures of economic lack of recovery on Brexit:

the wreckage of Brexit is all around us but our politicians will still not acknowledge it. The evidence now encompasses reduced trade, diminished investment and the fact that the UK has been the only major economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size.

He even wants to blame Brexit, and not Greenery, for "a malaise that has caused annual UK car production to fall by more than half since 2016."

The government responds to such news with its usual ludicrous evasions... Meanwhile, even now, Tory zealots cling to the belief that life outside the EU could still deliver all the promised prosperity and general magic, if only ministers would try harder. [and] the English political right – by which I mean a cacophony of voices, including Conservative MPs, the Mail and the Telegraph, and the kind of pundits now given a megaphone by GB News and TalkTV – has become steadily more eccentric and unhinged.

He cites the campaigns against wokery here, including stuff criticising Meghan Markle

And Labour? The tensions of Keir Starmer’s position are translated into denials of things that are self-evidently true. ...Amazingly, he and his colleagues also rule out any return to the EU’s customs union....The reason this once-devout remainer doggedly sticks to these lines is obvious: even if opinion polling suggests that residual popular belief in Brexit is now ebbing away, the Labour party has to secure the support of people who voted leave in 2016, switched from Labour to the Tories in 2019, and would supposedly greet any talk of revisiting the basics of Brexit with anger and dismay.

 A slight problem,then, nothing for Guardian journalists to worry about of course -- the electorate have been wrong for a long time, the racists. Parliament should ignore them and seize control?

The grifters and chancers who took us out of the EU are still around [and a few voters], threatening their usual mischief ...even darker forces may also fancy their chances...[Citing the 1930s -- in the UK?] betrayal myths and conspiracy theories – which have a much greater purchase on public opinion than anyone in politics and the media currently seems to realise ...do not ignore uncomfortable facts. When mainstream politicians indulge in denial, demagogues often make hay.

The clincher for this farrago [sic] of half-truth and paranoia is that some lyrics from a

Pink Floyd album evoke the essential problem “Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time / Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.” This is what Brexit has done not just to politics, but our sense of the future.