Thread by @mikegalsworthy

Agree UK was driven into Brexit cul de sac.

I don’t attribute this to SW1 though.

Mess was started by Vote Leave campaigning with no written prospectus. “Leave SM/CU” was declared late. Messy. Then ERG nutcase pressures. Then Lancaster House speech baked inflexible positions.

https://twitter.com/dominic2306/status/1419432876718833664

For example, after Brexit vote, many of us accepted result (albeit w/ serious misgivings about behaviour in the referendum).

I, for example, wrote academic pieces about how to build UK-EU science after Brexit. Many of us up for discussion & co-work.

Lancaster House killed that.

We’d even been holding meetings about the UK as a “third pillar” (alongside EU & EFTA) within the Single Market- with advice from Norweigen reps.

But all such discussion got rejected out-of-hand by ERG/VL/Govt/BBC.

Felt like they’d won by an inch but felt entitled to miles.

This hostile “winner takes all” attitude drove Brexit away from any national compromise to one of open hostility.

For every 17 people who voted Leave, 16 had voted Remain. If just 1 in 17 Leave voters had changed mind - all wld be reversed.

But ERG crowed “biggest vote evah!”

Given the ERG-driven govt had absolutely torched the middle ground and cemented Lancaster House early on…

…those who had accepted the vote and thought there could be a mutual solution-finding then flipped into outright opposition to what we felt was a robbery of our nation.