choosing Brexit

When the sticking point of the protracted Brexit negotiations proved to be the Irish Border question, I commented that I did not recall this having been raised as an issue during the referendum campaign. I was told that no, it was an issue. But I didn't think so, and now I have evidence: a book called All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class by Tim Shipman (Collins, 2016). Despite being very long (630 pages) and full, this was something of an instant book, covering the referendum campaign and the subsequent race for Tory leader. The referendum was in June, May became PM in July, and the book is dated October. That means it was written with no hindsight whatever. No idea of the risible events of the following three years, nor of the even more risible events of the three years after that. Ends with the hope that May will prove a strong and decisive PM, ho ho.

And lots of retroactively interesting tidbits along the way. Seeking to line up support for the Stay position in the referendum among his own MPs, the book recounts, Cameron asked a rising young MP named Rishi Sunak to come and see him. Sunak declined: he was planning to vote Leave and he didn't want to subject himself to Cameron's arguments against it. This is, of course, the same Rishi Sunak who is now PM and who famously recently got Cameron to come and see him.

But there's not a word about Ireland or the border issue along the way. Nothing of it. The referendum campaign, we're told, was fought on two issues. One was the economy, by which was meant Brexit's potential effects on the UK economy as a whole. The other was immigration. Leave campaigners seemed convinced that Turkey was about to join the EU and that Britain would shortly be after subjected to an invasion of Turks. The bizarre xenophobia of this is not much discussed (there's also a few bits about hatred of Poles), but it's certainly there. What'll happen to Northern Ireland? Nary a drop.