Reading the latest coverage of the Brexit farce combined with the inter-related Conservative leadership contest, I am reminded of Oscar Wilde’s description of fox hunting:

“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”

Whichever candidate wins the Tory leadership race and, as a consequence, becomes the next UK Prime Minister, they will inevitably fail to deliver a satisfactory Brexit solution, simply because there is no consensus position.

But the underlying cause for this impasse is a series of flawed processes:

First, the promise made by previous Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on EU membership was flawed, if not highly disingenuous – because from the start, there were no terms of reference. Cameron chose to make it part of his manifesto pledge ahead of the 2015 general election campaign. Even at the time it felt like a desperate ploy to appease the mainly right-wing and Eurosceptic faction of the Conservative party. Despite being generally in favour of the UK remaining within the EU (but with “looser ties”), Cameron probably never expected that he would have to deliver on his referendum promise let alone lead the Brexit negotiations. Behind in the polls, the Tories were expected to lose the election. Instead, they won, but with a much reduced majority – which should have been the first warning sign that all was not going to be plain sailing with Cameron’s EU referendum pledge.

Second, the referendum question put to the electorate in 2016 was itself flawed. Cameron had originally talked about renegotiating the UK’s terms of EU membership, much like Margaret Thatcher had done with some considerable success in the 1980s. There was certainly no mention at all in Cameron’s January 2013 speech of a “No-deal Brexit”. However, the referendum question put to the voters was a stark, binary choice between “Remain” or “Leave”. As some have argued, the design of the referendum should have been enough to render it invalid: both because the voters were not given enough reliable data upon which to make an informed decision; and because there was no explanation or guidance as to what type of “Leave” (or “Remain”) outcome the government and Parliament would be obliged or expected to negotiate and implement. Simply put, the people did not and could not know what they were actually voting for (or against). I am not suggesting that the voters were ignorant, rather they were largely ill- or under-informed (although some would argue they were actually misinformed).

Third, the respective Leave and Remain campaigns in the 2016 referendum were both equally flawed. The Leave campaign was totally silent on their proposed terms of withdrawal (I certainly don’t recall the terms “Hard Brexit” or “No-deal Brexit” being used), and their “policy” was predicated on the magic number of “£350m a week“. And the Remain campaign failed to galvanize bipartisan support, and was totally hindered by the Labour leadership’s equivocation and ambivalence towards the EU (which has only deepened as Jeremy Corbyn refuses to confirm what his policy actually is).

Finally, the Parliamentary process to implement Brexit was flawed from the start. Cameron jumped ship and ending up passing the poisoned chalice to Theresa May. The latter had supported Remain, but now had to lead the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. However, rather than trying to build consensus and broker a truly bipartisan solution (this is not, after all, a simple, one-dimensional party political issue), May proved to be a stubborn, inflexible and thick-skinned operator. Now, there are threats to prorogue Parliament in the event that MPs vote against a No-Deal or Hard Brexit, if a negotiated agreement cannot be achieved by the October 31 deadline. May’s negotiation tactics have only resulted in deeply entrenched and highly polarised positions, while she ended up painting herself into a corner. Good luck to her successor, because if nothing else, Brexit is casting division and national malaise across the UK.

Next week: Pitch X’s Winter Solstice