Thread by @marshall_proEU

I’m so angry about this ‘haute Remain is responsible for hard Brexit’ bullshit. When I stood for Parliament in 2017, I stood in hustings and said ‘Brexit is happening. We demand the Government deliver on the promise of no down-side, and the Opposition hold them accountable’.

Neither of those things happened. For four years, the Governments of May and Johnson have at best negotiated in bad faith and at worst actively pursued no deal. They gaslight us constantly that this is ‘the will of the people’, when anyone not insane or punch drunk can see that

... for what it is, the ERG’s Reichstag Fire. As for the Opposition, the decision of Jeremy Corbyn not to hold the government accountable for five years was catastrophically damaging. It handed the role of opposition to hard nationalists within and without the Tory Party.

That is why the ERG set the agenda during the May premiership, and why, despite an 80 seat majority for the Tories, they still seem to hold sway. It is why the Nationalists in Scotland will succeed in Secession (or Scexit - let’s call it what it is, not ‘Independence’).

Now, at the 11th hour, we endure accusations from such diverse luminaries as Peter Mandelson and Owen Jones that this was, somehow, our fault? We, who did nothing but demand that politicians live up to their promises. Well fuck absolutely every single one of them.

Here is who is responsible for Brexit: (1) David Cameron, for his casual hubris of lobbing the constitutional hand-grenade of a referendum into the marketplace with no intention of delivering on the outcome that won, or preparation whatsoever for that outcome.

It is impossible to overstate how damaging and arrogant that was. Just two years after almost losing Scotland, for that man arrogantly to assume things would go his way to the point where not a single thought was given to him losing is unforgivable.

Because Brexit was born of a fever dream. It was never a serious political project. It was simply a way for the United Kingdom’s various enemies like Putin, Farage and Sturgeon to attack the body politic for their own game. It was the vessel carrying all political lunacy.

So from the very beginning, Cameron’s failure to say ‘this is Brexit. This is what it is. This is your free choice between the status quo and this possible future’ made Brexit the maelstrom of lies it became.

(2) Theresa May. Her disastrous premiership, a two-year parade of errors, self-defeating idiocy and wasted time that left the EU unable to negotiate because their negotiating partner had collapsed into a failed state. The set herself a deadline to trigger article 50.

And triggered it. Again, like Cameron, she made this catastrophic, unforced error purely with her eyes turned inwardly to the Tory Party, despite the fact it made the country a hostage to fortune and shot us in the leg in EU negotiations.

(3) Jeremy Corbyn. A man who time and time again whipped his MPs to vote with the worst Tory government this country has ever seen, led by the Windrush Scandal Prime Minister, without an ounce of true opposition or holding the government to account. If the referendum fatally

undermined UK democracy, this was the coup de grace. Without an opposition to hold it to account, no government can avoid the descent into madness and factionalism.

(4) The dysfunctional British media environment we might call the ‘Murdochracy’, where Murdoch and Beaverbrook set the agenda and the BBC follows, supine. Where else could the fever dream of Brexit flourish if not in the stinking swamp of the British media, who emerged from

Leveson unscathed, and swiftly took their revenge on Cameron. Where the British people sought news and information, they found lies, fantasy and delusion, spoonfed to them by the most corrupt element of our corrupt public life.

How could British citizens even begin to monitor sensibly the progress of a complex and difficult negotiation for their country’s future when served a non-stop diet of jingoistic drivel?

(5) The Vote Leave and LeaveDotEu campaigns, whose corruption, lies and illegality has been exposed by brave whistleblowers @shahmiruk, @chrisinsilico and by one of the UK’s few remaining journalists @carolecadwalla to precisely no legal consequence, advancing the career of

The criminal Dominic Cummings. Which brings us to the next in our list: The Conservative Party. And now you start to see a theme. If the first part of our story was that of disgusting, craven, incompetent individuals, the second is that of corrupt institutions rewarding corrupt

Corruption. The Conservative Party has become a machine not just for systemic political corruption, but for denigrating the very basis of grrr, fair, open, democratic societies respecting the rule of law. How could any Brexit have been negotiated under such people?

Thus the Conservative Party became a cancer in our body politic. And that is what Johnson, Gove, Raab, Patel, Hancock, Williamson, Grayling, Sunak and all the others are: nothing more than the toxic tendrils of the malignant rumour itself.

You might plausibly add to this list. But who deserves no place on it whatsoever are those people, like me, a huge number of people across this land, who have warned about all of this from the very beginning, and who have been silenced with the lie that we did not accept the vote

That we were trying to overturn the will of the people or reverse the referendum. For four years, we have taken that abuse as part of the cut and thrust of politics, a sad irony that those who would fight for democracy and the rule of law would be so painted by its true enemies.

But we will not endure this. We will not take the blame for this. We, who have done nothing but warn of this disaster and demand it be prevented will not bear the blame for it coming to pass. They have done this. Now we must rebuild.

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