It’s sad to see an intelligent and talented man such as Rory Bremner (who I genuinely used to be a big fan of and in some ways still am) making a bit of a fool of himself with a hopelessly contradictory attack on the pro-independence movement. He claimed on Twitter that Yessers need to accept the result of the 2014 independence referendum, stop demanding a rerun, acknowledge that Brexiteers are now the real enemy, and…er…join the campaign for a rerun of the 2016 EU referendum. Quite why the 2014 result must be regarded as sacred for all time and the 2016 result must be immediately set aside isn’t entirely clear. Perhaps it’s because the Leave campaign only won in 2016 by telling voters a pack of lies, which is completely different from how the No campaign won in 2014 in absolutely no way whatsoever.
Elsewhere, I was one of several people who “profoundly saddened” the leading anti-Brexit campaigner Professor Tanja Bueltmann yesterday. There was an awful lot of “profound sadness” emanating from that direction, mainly because SNP supporters were challenging her view that any failure to support a UK-wide rerun of the 2016 referendum (a unionist project if ever there was one) constituted harmful “division”. She pointed out that “until a couple of hours ago” she had been a supporter of Scottish independence, which begs the obvious question of just how meaningful or thought-through that support had ever been if an argument on Twitter was capable of ending it in the space of a single afternoon. I mean, if arguing with people on your own side was enough to do the trick, James Mackenzie and the Richard gang would have converted me to No years ago.
I’m a bit puzzled by the whole “People’s Vote” schtick in any case. It seems to be intended to contrast with the 2016 referendum, which must have been some kind of “Elite Vote”, in spite of the fact that 33 million people took part in it. Yes, OK, it was a deeply unsatisfactory process because of the fact that the Leave campaign broke the rules, but how do you prevent that happening again? Rules can always be bended or broken and nothing is likely to be done about it until long after the vote is over. What else could be made different from the 2016 People’s Vote? Theoretically the franchise could be widened to include EU nationals and 16 and 17 year olds, and yes, that should be done as a matter of principle. But in practice it would simply mean that Brexiteers wouldn’t accept any narrow Remain vote as valid, and would immediately start campaigning for a third referendum.
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