Can a secret summit on Brexit fix Britain's delusions?

Pro-Brexit supporters at Parliament Square on Brexit day, in London, on January 31, 2020. Reuters

Every society enjoys its myths and legends. I grew up fascinated by the stories of the feuds between the Greek gods who lived on Mount Olympus. My favourite for some reason was always Poseidon, the god of the sea. It was only much later I discovered that the Greeks thought Poseidon was also the god of earthquakes. He came to mind this week for obvious reasons.

Humans always seek some kind of explanation for things that otherwise are inexplicable, including the horrors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The ancients blaming an angry Greek god to account for a natural disaster was in its time just as useful an explanation for believers as being told nowadays about fault lines and tectonic plates moving under the Earth that have led to such misery.

Modern societies also have myths and legends to explain what most of us can barely understand.

One of the great enduring myths in modern Britain is the idea that the UK is a stable democracy and that our political system guarantees stability. Our democratic principles are indeed ancient. Historians trace them back 800 years to Magna Carta and the rights established when powerful barons forced the king to concede some royal powers. But only the most deluded believer in myths and legends would pretend that in the 2020s British democracy is particularly stable. We have had five prime ministers in the past seven years since the Brexit vote.

And so I was cheered by news that, as one report put it, an “extraordinary cross-party summit bringing together leading leavers and remainers has been held in high secrecy to address the failings of Brexit”.

The idea, with top-level members of the government meeting leading members of the Labour party opposition, was to try to find out how to “fix” Brexit in the national interest. Other reports said the secret conference was to discuss “why Brexit is not delivering”. A few leading business people and top civil servants were also in the mix at Ditchley Park, a venue known for hosting private discussions where leading thinkers can speak their minds in confidence.

My first thought was – at last. Somewhere in Britain there are people of goodwill getting together to try to fix problems rather than create them. But the moment soon passed. That’s because however worthwhile the exercise there is something very odd about trying to decide in 2023 what is meant by Brexit – something that was voted upon in 2016, without anyone knowing what it meant.

Imagine holding a conference in 2023 because you and your extended family and friends all decided to go on holiday together in 2016 and then had seven years of arguments about where you would have the best time. Rome? Hawaii? Disneyland? That would be foolish. The Ditchley Park summit, therefore, may be welcome. It may even be useful as an attempt to rescue us from even more arguments in the future, but it comes at least six or seven years too late.

I hope the Ditchley Park talks ensure some kind of consensus to make the best of what can be made of Brexit, but I am not hopeful

The good news is there are plenty of talented people of goodwill in British politics, even if they are sometimes shouted down by extremists and less talented people on both sides. Perhaps some sanity in British public life will be restored and we can make the best of what is undoubtedly a bad job.

Since Brexit, the UK economy has been seriously under-performing. We have yet to recover in the way other major countries have done from the economic shocks of coronavirus. The governing Conservative party is in such bad shape that opinion polls suggest if a general election were held tomorrow, it would not even be the second-biggest party. That would be the Scottish National Party, and the idea of a party whose principal idea is the break-up of the UK becoming the official opposition must surely focus some minds at Westminster.

Anti-Brexit campaigners at a procession to the Scottish Parliament on the third anniversary of Brexit on January 31, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Getty

The truth is that the Conservative party has become its own worst enemy. They are so divided among themselves that the new deputy chairman, an MP called Lee Anderson, had to be slapped down by the party leadership for suggesting that the UK should bring back the death penalty for murder. His argument, that an executed criminal cannot offend again, makes him a political outlier in a country where the last executions were held almost six decades ago.

As a citizen I hope the Ditchley Park talks ensure some kind of consensus to make the best of what can be made of Brexit, but I am not hopeful. That’s because Brexit itself was always a myth. It’s a false story, a false god, like assuming Poseidon is controlling earthquakes or storms at sea. The belief that by separating ourselves from our nearest neighbours, the UK can become liberated and more prosperous was always a delusion.

And the problem with myths and legends is that once you see that they are just made-up stories, trying to turn a myth into some kind of reality is merely keeping the damaging delusion alive.