Denial of Blame Where Blame is Due

No matter what anyone may think, the root of the Brexit problem is David Cameron and the Conservative Party. Cameron decided to excise the hard right in his party and the drift to Ukip by holding a referendum. So supremely confident was he of winning it that he mistakenly decided to use a simple majority formula, rather than the supermajority used in the vast majority of cases where referendums are used to decide issues.

A simple majority will always leave the question undecided if the win is by a narrow margin, as it was in the EU referendum, whereas a supermajority is decisive and leaves no room for doubt or argument.

No wonder he scuttled off. He promised that the referendum result would be honoured, but he also promised he would stay on as PM to see it honoured.

A General Election is no solution to the problem - politics is as divided as the country, as we have seen, and would only lead to more uncertainty. How anyone would be surprised by this is astounding. The only logical solution is another referendum on the question of continued EU membership.

When all's said and done, we're currently in a Soft Remain - all the benefits with more opt-outs than a country with a lot of opt-outs. The promise of all the benefits with none of the cost was never a realistic option and totally undeliverable, as has been demonstrably proven. Those who believed it was were either extremely naive or gulled by false promises from demagogues.

The question now is whether another referendum should again be based on a simple majority, or a supermajority. In my opinion, it must be the same rules as the previous one, as that's what got us into this mess. With that's happened over the last 3 years, the information that's come to light, the prosecution of the Leave campaign organisers for fraud, the exposure of Brexit lies, a sense of pragmatism, the debacle of Northern Ireland, the indication of successive polls, the lack of a plan to implement the undeliverable and the current uncertainty, it's a foregone conclusion which way it would go, even if by a slim majority, and then we can all get on with living our lives and moaning about the weather.

I recommend readers to read this piece on a No Deal Brexit by Rory Stewart who, despite being Conservative, has a formidable intellect that I respect. He has an incisive ability to cut through the bullshit and see problems for what they are.

Asserting that a statement about factual reality is untrue is literal (total, complete, factual or flat) denial. Implicatory denial concedes the facts of the matter and even the conventional interpretations, but their expected implications, emotional or moral, are not recognised. The significance of the reality is denied. A lot of this is going on with the denigration of experts by Leavers.

Ideology, whether extreme left or right, has at its roots denialism and truth suffers as a result. It also introduces some pretty weird bedfellows in the attempt to build walls of denialist protection from uncomfortable facts. Witness the videos filling Brexiteer Facebook pages of AfD politicians. Influential members of AfD have openly espoused the shooting of illegal immigrants. While the AfD is not openly Nazi, it does share a lot its ideology with them - a strange ally for those in the UK who accuse the German government of acting like Nazis and constantly harping on about winning WWII - a severe case of cognitive dissonance and clutching at any available straw in order to avoid facing up to reality and facts.