Thread by @jonworth

There's also a healthy amount of British establishment disliking anyone with any sort of ideology in this "Remainers should have folded to back Brexit" revisionism from Peter Foster and others

People in the circle of friends of people like Peter Foster should not believe in anything, or at least not believe in anything too strongly

The British establishment should demurely fold in behind the direction of the government of the day

On Brexit it didn't

This left people such as Telegraph and now FT journalists, and the likes of the CBI or Which? or the NFU lost and confused

When the state sort of muddled along, the rules of government and opposition were largely respected, and representative democracy (rather than direct democracy) achieved enough of a fudge, that was perhaps OK

With those systems creaking by 2016... I am not sure.

Ah, we stayed above the fray, stayed neutral, on a binary question of historical importance (even though the details of Brexit would disastrous), and now that means we are flexible enough to point out how you Remainers have not capitulated - because not folding almost un-British!

There are two problems with this

First, when you cannot take a position on a question of historical importance, you do wonder what issue a person *could* even take a position on?

Second, it doesn't even help in reputation terms anyway, because all Leave people bemoan that Foster is too Remain-y anyway, and Brexiters complain that the likes of the CBI are too Remain-y / Soft brexit-y too

The essential point is to know where someone's ethics are, so you know where you stand with them

And then that person must be able to be clear where opinion/ethics end, and analysis begins (as I hope I have been able to do with Brexit diagrams for example)

Rephrasing: being neutral on Brexit might make sense if one is genuinely torn about the issues. Being neutral so as to try to gain trust (or be able to point the finger) at both sides makes no sense, and looks like tactical chicanery

Do you think I cannot critique Remain because I voted Remain? Come on

This is also a real trap when it comes to assessing the post-Brexit landscape in the UK - there is no "what works" pragmatism in the Tory Party just now. It is driven by libertarian tear-down-the-state ideologues

Like it or not, UK politics is a place for strong views

As Aneurin Bevan once said, "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."

So it was with Brexit. So it is with regard to what the current UK Government is doing

The lesson must not be to bemoan strong ethics - even when they are expressed by the people a journalist or CBI or Which? employee might go to a dinner party with - but to carefully and respectfully engage with them - and to separate ethics from analysis as far as possible

That I wear my heart on my sleeve, politically, ought to be a genuinely *good* thing. I should not have to hide that. But likewise I ought to *also* be capable of decent analysis, and for that to gain some respect outside of my own side.

Is that too much to ask?

/ends