John Harris laments that so few of our politicians admit that Brexit has been a disaster, and that until they do so, conspiracies and myths about “betrayal” will become more entrenched (The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial?, 1 January). I fear that this has already happened. Those politicians who can see the tragedy are too afraid to speak out lest they are also condemned as traitors. The Conservative party has been infiltrated by hard Brexiters, while Labour is slavishly in thrall to its largely pro-Brexit “red wall” voters.
The real problem is that Brexit is an article of faith, based on emotions, feelings and nostalgia for a mythical golden age. Many of its most faithful supporters are impervious to any evidence and facts, and immune to logic or reason. They are contemptuous of experts and thus easily exploited by rightwing populists. Harris quotes an apposite Pink Floyd lyric to encapsulate the disastrous Brexit delusion. May I, in homage to the late Vivienne Westwood, quote an equally apposite Sex Pistols lyric from God Save the Queen: “There is no future in England’s dreaming.”
Pete Dorey
Bath, Somerset
• John Harris is one of the most honest commentators around and his warning of ongoing “betrayal myths and conspiracy theories” is welcome. But even he draws back from confronting the historical realities. Why is it that numerous liberal voices are now suddenly accentuating Brexit’s economic disastrousness, while still declining to frame it as a rightwing ideological project, or to properly foreground the mendacities of its promoters and of those who accommodated these for their own end?
During the period between the referendum of 2016 and the general election of 2019, when a second, more informed, referendum was a real possibility, it seemed that many on the left thought it better to tolerate Jeremy Corbyn’s muddled approach to Brexit and strategic blunders than to make common cause with those centrist politicians who showed principle in confronting the dishonesties of the Brexit campaign, even though that meant soft-pedalling on confronting media lies and xenophobia.
Michael Ayton
Durham
• John Harris rightly exposes political parties’ denial of the incontrovertible costs of Brexit, but sidesteps the reality that politicians almost never change course on the basis of facts or evidence. Almost daily there are credible reports on the failure of the government’s policies and management, and yet it responds by ignoring the evidence and simply asking an official to pump out an inane statement indicating how much it has already invested to improve the effectiveness of that particular service area or policy.
Politicians’ actions of are primarily driven by ideology, populism or lobbying by powerful interests. Successful organisations thrive on critical thinking, challenge and diversity, but political parties survive on groupthink, resulting in irrational and dysfunctional decision-making and avoidance of critical evaluation. Additionally, collective cabinet responsibility results in creating a perverse consensus and ministers (and shadow ministers) advocating policies even when they know them to be wrong. Meanwhile, we, the electorate, desperately cling on to the wreckage, waiting for a group of brave and honest politicians to proffer a coherent and truthful route out of this post-Brexit morass.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
