Jacob Rees-Mogg as Minister for Brexit Opportunities: it really isn’t funny at all.
A lot of pro-Europeans have been enjoying themselves at the idea of the appointment of arch-Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg as Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities in the Cabinet Office. Surveying the queues at the ports, the crisis in Northern Ireland, the marginalisation of the UK on the world stage, the cost-of-living crisis of which Brexit is a root cause, the idea that there are opportunities arising out of this mess seems risible.
At a transactional level, that’s obviously true. Brexit is an economic disaster that has only started to unfold; the real damage hasn’t happened yet. The idea that it should bring “opportunities” is at one level almost beyond ridicule.
But if we take that view we’re making the same mistake we made before that Referendum, and in the campaign to stop Brexit and for a People’s Vote that followed it — the mistake of regarding Brexit as something that is something that exists in a the real world of daily life, and is about outcomes from rational (or in this case irrational) decisions.
But that’s not what Brexit is. Brexit — or, to be more precise, Brexitism, the ideological outlook that has Brexit as its bedrock — is something that exists principally in the minds of Brexiters; it’s a set of attitudes, an ideological view of the world. It’s how, during the tortuous years between the Referendum and the actual moment of exit, the phrase “Brexit means Brexit” became current for something that before the referendum was left undefined, and emerged in its final form as Brexiters pushed towards an ever more extreme view of sovereignty. Brexitism is about so much more than the actual process of departing from the EU: it’s about identity, exceptionalism, resentment, fear. And it’s why Brexiters continue to blame the inevitable consequences of Brexit on the EU.
And in that light, it makes complete sense to talk about “Brexit opportunities”. It is about pushing for the Brexiters’ agenda, for all it is worth, justified by mantras of “taking back control” and legitimised by that flawed referendum. It is about pushing an authoritarian, populist, nationalist agenda in the name of sovereignty and the will of the people, and Westminster exceptionalism.
It’s made more dangerous by the effective lack of an opposition in Westminster. Labour remains in a terrible, possible terminal, state of intellectual and moral confusion: committing the category mistake of claiming to want to “make Brexit work” without any apparent understanding that Brexitism is a state of mind that (leaving aside the pound-shop Pétainists of Blue Labour), is wholly opposed to what used to be its open, liberal and internationalist value system.
In fact, the appointment of the ideologue Jacob Rees-Mogg to Minister for Brexit Opportunities — with a cross-cutting role in the Cabinet Office — is precisely about “making Brexit work”. It is about the pursuit, not of Brexit, but of Brexitism. It is about reinforcing the Brexiters’ agenda at the heart of Government, and crafting its brand image. It makes perfect sense, and is something those who oppose this Government’s values need to understand if we are to stand a chance of change. We should be taking it very seriously indeed.
