The author and academic Anthony Seldon was one of the most eloquent opponents of Brexit, writing in 2020 how \u201call my working life, as a school teacher, and running a university for these last five years, I have been with young people, and they have been overwhelmingly pro EU\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He went on: \u201cThey have no problem at all in identifying as English, or Welsh\/Scottish\/Irish, as European, and equally as global citizens. Not for them the fantasies of sovereignty, but the reality of global concerns and multiple identities.\u201d<\/p>\n
And indeed, as chief chronicler of the inhabitants of Downing Street \u2013 he has penned insider accounts of the last six of the last seven prime ministers \u2013 Seldon painted an extraordinary and deeply troubling, if not really very surprising, picture of the Brexit campaign.<\/p>\n
His book on Boris Johnson tells how, having thrown in his lot with the Leave campaign, and having helped lead it to victory, a \u201cdistraught\u201d Johnson was \u201cashen faced\u201d when he heard the referendum result. \u201cOh shit,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got no plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet bizarrely, now \u2013 despite mounting evidence that Brexit has been an utter disaster \u2013 Seldon has reassessed his views on it and seems to have decided that it\u2019s gone fine after all.<\/p>\n
Under the headline \u2018I regret my intolerance over Brexit\u2019, Seldon this week used a diary column in the Spectator \u2013 edited by Vote Leave co-leader Michael Gove \u2013 to tell its readers how, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Brexit is a \u201cscore draw\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth about Brexit is that neither the disaster predicted by Remainers nor the benefits hoped for by Brexiteers have transpired. At best, it\u2019s been a score draw,\u201d he writes. \u201cI remain sad we left the EU, for all its flaws, having taken 50 groups to hear the Last Post ceremony performed under the Menin Gate at Ypres, and believing the EU our best bet to prevent future war. But I regret still more my anger and my intolerance over Brexit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sadly for Seldon, his column arrived a day before news that a group of experts, including a senior Bank of England economist, has told the Office for Budget Responsibility that it was wrong to say that leaving the EU has reduced GDP by 4%. Instead, its research concludes, Brexit has cost the country between 6% and 8% of GDP per person over the last decade, a hit of \u00a3180 billion to \u00a3240 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, not quite a score draw. A bit more like the sport headlines that say \u2018Blues lose out in seven-goal thriller\u2019 and when you read the story you find out you\u2019ve lost 6-1!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The author and academic Anthony Seldon was one of the most eloquent opponents of Brexit, writing in 2020…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-584905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115588269762404769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}