21st October 2022
Imagine, if you will, a Brexit “ring of power” – as magical and metallic a prop as you would find in any work of high fantasy.
This ring, however, has two qualities.
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First, the size of this ring is diminishing slowly over time.
In December 2019 its size could be measured as a majority of 81 parliamentary seats.
Now, in October 2022, its size can be measured as 71 seats.
And with by-elections and defections, its size will go down and down.
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Second, the shininess of this ring also is diminishing over time.
In December 2019 it was bright and glimmering.
But now it is somewhat faded and – by January 2025 – there will be no shininess left at all.
The shininess is time-limited.
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Yet, for both these qualities, it is still a ring worth seizing – or so its pursuers think.
For a parliamentary majority is worth having, especially for the Conservative party, as they are not that common.
After 1992, the Conservatives had to wait until 2015 before they had an overall majority, and they promptly lost that in 2017.
In 2019, they managed another overall majority against weak opposition and with the promise of “getting Brexit done”.
But this may now be the last Conservative overall majority for a political generation, if not for all time.
One can understand why so many Conservative politicians want to wear the ring and wield its supposed power before January 2025.
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The problem for those seeking to wear this ring and wield its supposed power is that the ring was itself wrought out of a deeper fantasy.
This were the fantastic notions that, first, the prospect of Brexit could be easily avoided with a mere referendum – and that, second, Brexit would be easy and inconsequential.
In 2015 the Conservatives avoided splitting the vote with Ukip with the promise of a referendum.
Then the Conservative government under Cameron nonchalantly assumed the referendum would be an easy win, and so they lost.
In 2019 the Conservatives promised that getting Brexit done would be easy, but it has not been.
Instead the clouds and forces of reality, as manifested in market forces and otherwise, batter and bruise the United Kingdom.
We have sluggish-to-no growth and have willingly cut ourselves off from the huge single market of our neighbours – a single market we helped fashion to our advantage in the 1980s.
We are getting relatively ever-poorer.
And there is nothing which any government can really do about it while we remain cut off from the huge single market of our neighbours.
All politicians can do is incant the same old lie about “taking back control” as the United Kingdom is increasingly at the mercy of global forces.
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No politician who puts on the ring is going to do well: there are just different forms of failure, different ways to implode, different reasons to resign or be sacked.
One national step forward, of course, would be to suddenly trash the ring of power, and to have a fresh general election.
To rid ourselves of the allure of this cursed artefact.
But there is no reason to believe that those craving the ring of power would voluntarily agree to lose the ring completely while it still exists and glimmers.
And they can toss the ring among themselves until January 2025.
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But, because the ring’s power is ultimately illusory, then no good can come to those who put the ring on.
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss have all come and gone, even if Johnson wants to come back again.
The ring, forged with lies, will destroy each politician who wants to wear it.
And after January 2025 – or some happier earlier date – the ring disappears.
The Conservative majority built on the back of Brexit disintegrates.
There will then just be a political void where the governing party used to be
And those who remember will wonder why any of it was ever thought worthwhile.
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Nailed it, sir!
Not one of them heeded or heeds Gandalf or Galadriel. Where can we locate Mount Doom?
It will all be explained in the next film:
“The War of Johnson’s Ring”
It will have a messy ending.
It’s the whole of UK, obviously
That is a brilliant analogy. I’m impressed: may I borrow it sometime?
Seriously, while Tolkien maintained until his dying day that The Lord of the Rings was story, not allegory, it would never have gained the hold over a generation or two of young(fish) people if it had not had allegorical power. Likewise, the story of Brexit has gained the power to explain all manner of ills (though not yet to cure them) and to bring many myths of the modern world into one framework. There’s a saga still to be written there, I think.
“Likewise, the story of Brexit has gained the power to explain all manner of ills ”
“Explain” in the sense of “cause” is certainly accurate.
Ridiculous really that, citing experience, Johnson could ‘mea culpa’, dust off his ‘Remain’ credentials and actually improve the future of the UK.
He won’t.
The outcome of Conservative failure will be common ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange. Does no one remember “We are the masters now.” and the triumphant march of nationalisation?
Precisely none of that will happen, Geoffrey.
To mix metaphors, we’re throwing away the UK’s very “seed corn” in pursuit of the Brexit fantasy.
One of the costs of Brexit rarely mentioned is the new difficulty for UK workers – and the generations succeeding them – in growing multi-national careers.
We live in a world of trading blocs (eg the EU) and satellite countries attached to those trading blocs. If you don’t have the treaty-derived rights to work in those trading blocs plus the appropriate education, qualifications and workplace standards, then your progress to the top jobs will be blocked off.
The professional institutions training you will gradually become less able to offer the education and work placements you will need to work internationally and to compete for promotion within the multi-national companies.
The UK will gradually become a place where its most senior managers and professionals are limited to a locality-restricted, economically declining jobs market. As the generality of UK candidates will be of lower skill levels than those in the nearest big trading bloc, it will be more difficult for UK companies to compete for export business against those employed by those located in the trading blocs.
Ah, but all the Brexit voters knew what they were voting for, Linda – including, apparently the ruination of their children’s future prospects in the wider world – because “taking back control” and all that…
Knew, right.
As per this brilliant dictionary
Brexit (n)
The undefined being negotiated be there unprepared in order to get the unspecified for the uninformed
There’s a fair possibility you have that bang on. Is it grounds to chuck ’em all down a volcano?
Thank you DAG. An instructive and grim fable (except it is a horrible and painful reality) as terrifying as anything written the brothers Grimm. We have further to fall.
Brilliant! Thank you!
Or perhaps, we bought some magic beans and planted them. They grew into…
…stunted little beans.
Liz Truss became Gollum with this Ring. It was their precious Brexit. They should cast the Ring into the fires of a General Election and all parties should then live free of its influence.
“Then the Conservative government under Cameron nonchalantly assumed the referendum would be an easy win, and so they lost.”
“And so they lost”.
For so many reasons, if not all of them, this is exactly right.
It was an easy win, so he didn’t need to prepare in case he lost.
Because he didn’t prepare, we could see that he wasn’t sincere in his promise and people voted against him secure in the knowledge that it was an advisory vote…
It was an easy win, so he didn’t argue when they demanded that ex-pats be denied a vote.
It was an easy win, so he didn’t mention the EU’s new anti-tax avoidance regulations, because that would have been unsporting…
But destroying the ring requires heroic bravery – since (political) death for the Ring Bearer, since there are no eagles one can count on.
Whilst I appreciate the power of the ring analogy, I prefer sphere of power, not least because Brexit is, in my view slightly more complex than a ring plus it, along with other sphere’s have gravitational effects.
Here’s the rub – I don’t think Brexit ( ring or sphere ) can sensibly be viewed in isolation.
Yes, it’s no doubt had a deleterious effect on our economic well-being ( hands up – some of us predicted that).
What most Brexiteers & nearly all anti Brexiteers failed to take into account was COVID 19 & a £400bn (bn!!) loan to pay for it plus, most/all commentators didn’t quite spot the Ukraine/Russia war & its consequent link to energy prices & inflation.
I do genuinely like these posts, just a tad surprised that other ‘power rings’ such as Covid & Ukraine not specifically cited.
“ I do genuinely like these posts, just a tad surprised that other ‘power rings’ such as Covid & Ukraine not specifically cited.”
The most obvious difference is that no one CHOSE the Covid or war ‘rings’ (at least, not in the UK). No one said “A good dose of a novel highly infectious virus is what this country needs to get us back on our feet again”. But people did say that, and more, about Brexit. They did choose to pick up and put on (as it were) the Brexit ring.
Unfortunately the gravitational force of Brexit ( as a ring or any other analogy) combined with Covid & Ukraine have made a complex melee just a bit more complex.
Disentangling the rings and/or the spheres really feasible – far easier it seems is to simply blame Brexit.
And, the simplistic nostrum that going back into the EU or even the Single Market will right things is for the faires.
“And, the simplistic nostrum that going back into the EU or even the Single Market will right things is for the faires.”
That looks like a straw man argument. Who is saying that this is at all possible, never mind a solution to UK’s problems? The rot goes too deep, into class, education, politics, and post-empire delusions. That’s the tragedy of Brexit: a country has thrown itself off a cliff, with a concrete block padlocked to its feet. And thrown away the key. There is no “simplistic” way back – deliberately so. Because “Great Britain” can defy gravity.
I think the point was that Brexit was a *choice* which left the UK less well-positioned to deal with external shocks such as Covid, the invasion of Ukraine, etc.
And while nobody could reasonably have predicted those particular external shocks, everyone could say with absolute certainty that external shocks would occur. Brexit was a choice to be less able to cope with external economic and political shocks.
It’s true that realignment with the EU will not “right things”, if by that is meant “put the UK in the position it would be in if it had never brexited”. There is no “with one bound he was free” move for the UK here. But it will tend to make things better than they would be if the UK persisted with Brexit isolationism.
“I do genuinely like these posts, just a tad surprised that other ‘power rings’ such as Covid & Ukraine not specifically cited.”
I imagine that’s because nothing about where we are today started with, and because of, Covid and Ukraine – which is the gist of David’s comments.
Ah the Covid and Ukraine rings that only brought problems to the British bearers….
No John Jones. It’s Brexit that is the exception, the ring chosen by exceptionalists all over your islands.
I remember your fictional uncle Indiana, who witnessed the demise of a man picking a chalice he thought to be The Holy Grail.
According to the Story “he rapidly aged and crumbled to dust after drinking from it”
That man chose not wisely.
I think you have to be a Lord of the Rings aficionado to fully get the point. The whole of Middle Earth and the Elven life beyond it were in thrall to the One Ring, which corrupted from within and had to be destroyed to save the world. The task of destroying it was one of selfless endurance pitted against overweening, destructive power. In the book the concept of the one overriding ring is like your encompassing sphere.
The ring story is your latest contribution to the list of benefits of Brexit.
The arts old and new, media, blogs, podcasts, twitter have all be enhanced thanks to the brilliant decision of David Cameron, who must go down as the most substantial and influential prime minister of the 21st century.
In two years or less of likely even further chaos, there will be an opportunity for others to attempt to grasp the illusionary ring.
However, are any of those others willing to shout out “The King has no clothes”!
Or will they also continue with the illusion that the financial difficulties and hardships, apparently worse felt in the UK, are all the cause of Covid, the Putin War in the Ukraine, or the Saudis not playing ball and make no mention of that unspeakable word – Brexit?
The “unspeakable word” is becoming slightly less unspeakable, recently …
DAG: “No politician who puts on the ring is going to do well: there are just different forms of failure, different ways to implode, different reasons to resign or be sacked.”
or…
Labour Party: ‘Throw the Ring of Brexit into the fire! Destroy it!’
Starmer: ‘No… I can “Make Brexit Work”‘
Yes – Starmer is cos-playing Frodo, believes he can wield the Ring of Brexit for good. Though at least Frodo didn’t succumb until he stood on top of Mount Doom!
Labour party needs a Sam Gamgee…
(late catch-up on newsletters in my inbox, glad I checked the comments b4 making basically the same point as you!)
Gollum is, let me guess, Dominic Cummings?
Yes the Brexit ring may disappear by 2025 and all Conservative leaders who wear it will fail as Brexit is built on a tissue of lies and delusions about the role and place of Britain in the world and lies about the EU & Europe.
However the Brexit ring will have permanently changed the UK and for the worse.
Certainly it’s doomed the UK Union and Scotland and NI will take their respective paths out it the UK and back into the EEA and EU but in England and Wales it will have destroyed all trust and belief in constitutional government and the rule of law.
One aspect of the importance of Brexit is shown up in DAG’s insistence on the lies that facilitated it.
The Conservative Party has had to repeat these, and avert its eyes from realities, for seven years. This process has simply wrecked that Party’s ability to think. The latest economic chaos and waste are entirely of a piece with this Brexit-induced incapacity.
This distinguishes Brexit sharply from both Covid and Ukraine, in addition to the important and obviously linked question of choice.
Unlike that portion of the people in Scotland who wish to dissolve the Union of the Parliaments and the Union of the Crowns, those outside Scotland who fear it often speak in doom-laden voices as if it is both imminent and inevitable. That’s not how it looks from here.
Rory Bremner once advised visitors to stately homes and national portrait galleries who admire the portraits of (particularly, at the time of speaking) the Scottish nobility, dressed in their lavish and lace-trimmed fashionable clothes, to look more closely at the eyes, where they would read a hardness of character which warned: “Back off! What we have we hold, and woe betide anyone who even thinks of taking one penny or one square inch of it it from us.” (Not his exact words.)
The latest tragi-farcical antics of Oor Pals in the South may possibly spell the end of the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain, for ever or for a generation, who knows? But while those eyes continue to glare at us, whether in oils or in the living flesh of their genetic/economic/”spiritual” descendants there will always be a market for some brand of conservatism in politics in these islands, as elsewhere. Since my late teens and early twenties, which coincided with the purchase by Rupert Murdoch of first “The Sun” (ex-“Daily Herald”), then “The Times”, I have watched that brand evolve and its mask of gentility slip away.
Never mind the Ring. Débâcles like Brexit come and go leaving, I grant, a wake of damage which seems at the time like irremediable devastation. There will be another one along after that, and another, and another. Think long-term. Think of the Hydra. Polish that shield.
Without a single, overarching message – one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them – such as “Get Brexit Done” – it seems to me that the Conservative parliamentary party is essentially ungovernable at the moment. Each faction has enough support to prevent any PM from achieving much. As you’ve previously said, notwithstanding the ostensible majority, there is essentially a hung parliament. Perhaps Johnson is the only person who could bring the party together through sheer force of personality, but perhaps the Tories have forgotten why they defenestrated him just a few weeks ago. Others certainly haven’t.
I recently heard a commentator likening Brexit to the UK imposing economic sanctions on itself. From the events of recent months, the present government seen determined to pile fiscal and political disruption on the pile. Like arrogant Númenor being cast down and utterly destroyed, after centuries of success.
What message will the Tories take to the electorate, when we eventually get the general election we so deparately need to see a new course – to forge a new ring of power. “Make Brexit Work”? “Make Britain Great Again”?
“Don’t Make Me Send My Children To That Dreadful Comp., Pleeeeeeease!”
I like your analogy. The ring is indeed “forged with lies, will destroy each politician who wants to wear it.”
But the ring doesn’t ‘disappear’ in 2025, or sooner. We are stuck with its curse.
I think things will begin to look up for the country when we have the first government able to admit that it is a curse, and who look for ways to diminish its capacity to harm us – initially by aligning on SPS regs, to ease the NI pressures; and by signalling to business that they will stop indulging in performative divergence. Later, by re-joining the SM and CU. And, perhaps, but probably not in my lifetime, by reapplying for EU membership.
It’s looking more and more likely that Boris is going to get his job back. David, I feel for you. It must be hard to keep up. Since September, not a day goes by that isn’t politically more interesting than the day before. But mainly I feel sorry for us all.
If Brexit were in possession of a “One Ring”, then it would be fair to say that David Cameron took the role of Sauron the Deceiver, who forged the Lord of the Rings to have dominion over those rings that had been given to Men, the Elves and the Dwarves.
But the power of One Ring was too great – and it consumed Cameron/Sauron. It was lost, for a time, to the eyes of man, dwelling for a time as it did with Teresa May.
Eventually, however, it was picked up by Gollum the Greased Piglet, who despite loud claims to the contrary, was singularly unable to wield it in a condstructive way.
That, however, is where these two tales part company. Sadly there is no Bilbo Baggins on our horizon – and certainly nobody as wise as Gandalf the Grey to guide the Wielder of the One Ring in the right direction.
Off to Mount Doom it is, then…
Certainly no two as humble as Frodo and Sam and therefore not off to Mount Doom but to annihilation right here.
However dimished its gleam, the brexit ring will continue to glow until the Labour Party dumps its “make brexit work” paradoxical slogan.
Recently their shadow chancellor told the world the UK would never rejoin the SM, CU or EU. If this is how well the shadow cabinet are clued up on the future prosperity of the UK, I fear the deathly glow will persist for some time to come.