There's a special place in hell for the intolerant, arrogant politics that Donald Tusk represents

I wonder if it has ever occurred to European Council president Donald Tusk, that the brexiteers, who he has today claimed should have a special place in hell, didn’t have to have a plan. A referendum is just a campaign. The EU membership referendum of 2016 was an advisory referendum that asked the public one simple question: did we want to leave or remain in the European Union. That’s it, plain and simple.
The government promised to abide by the result and implement what the people decided, and so we are here now, locked in a messy fiasco to try and effect one of the most complex political changes in peace time.

Tusk may be sad or angry about the result. In that, he joins many remainers in Britain, me included. However, it is astonishingly arrogant and disrespectful to speak in such a manner about those who campaigned in a democratic contest, in most instances with a sincerely held conviction. You don’t need to have a good argument, you just need to have one that wins votes. And in the end, if leading brexiteers are worthy of such sneering contempt, so are the millions of leave voters up and down the country.

The cabinet was allowed to split on the issue, as had happened during the first referendum under Harold Wilson. The remaining brexiteers consisted of Vote Leave and an assortment of other groups, MPs and figureheads from a range of political parties, and some in the business community. They were not a rival government. They were not in a position to make spending promises, such as the infamous claim of £350m extra week for the NHS. They are perfectly entitled to argue that a government willing to call a referendum, ought to have had some plan to deal with either outcome.

What really won it for the brexiteers was that they twigged something that the remainers didn’t. They realised that the accuracy or plausibility of anything they promised wasn’t of supreme importance. They realised that threats of job losses, a slump in the value of the pound and the economy dipping and rising a few points here or there wasn’t what was motivating voters. They realised that the vote was about identity, and people’s sense of what Britain’s place in the world should be. It was a vote about emotion, pride, patriotism, hope and self-belief. But rather than present a competing vision of Britain standing tall on the world stage and being a great power as a major influence within the European Union, the campaign to remain was unrelentingly bleak, joyless and ludicrous. The ultimate in establishment jobs. It was at best dismissive, at worst snobbish and disdainful of leave voters and their legitimate concerns.

Those who support Tusk’s comments may argue that he was referring to those who led the campaign, not the millions of ordinary voters. Even if that is true, I’m not sure that being thick and gullible is really that much better than being irresponsible and selfish. Us remainers have to accept that we were outsmarted, and that voters consciously and knowingly chose the uncertainty of a world outside the EU in place of the certainty of continued membership, for a complex set of reasons. When attitudes like Tusk’s dominate political discourse, it’s our politics that is dragged to the hell of division, mistrust, fear, bitterness and anger. To me, there’s a special place in hell for the intolerant, arrogant politics that Donald Tusk represents.