A STUDY of history is never time wasted. This is because such a bewildering amount of history actually repeats itself. Given the staggering amounts of money, time and effort spent on attempting to foresee the future, it pays to see if what may well yet happen has already occurred in the past. The chances are – it has.
Theresa May has been outwitted and outmanoeuvred at every turn (Image: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty)
Look at the past and certain threads seem to run through it over and over again.
And one of those threads is this: at the root of just about every disaster is a single human fault – that of self-delusion.
And it was an original self-delusion that has led over almost three years to the humiliation of our dear country these past months and the fiasco created out of a simple word, Brexit.
David Cameron got it wrong when he presumed the referendum, which he never wanted, was a foregone conclusion – the majority would wish to remain in the European Union.He thought the referendum would finally end all that popular (the nobs called it populist) complaining about the Himalayas of EU bureaucracy that were costing a fortune and making ordinary lives a misery.
If he had presided neutrally over the vote without revealing his preference he could have accepted the will of the people and remained PM.
But no, he had to delude himself, reveal his passionate desire to stay subordinate to Brussels, lose and crash out of Downing Street.
His successor was far, far worse.
She elbowed out the most skilful negotiators in the world (offered by the City of London) and thought she could do better.
As a negotiator, she proved an unmitigated disaster.
She surrounded herself with half a cabinet of eager “stayers”, a personal team of equally passionate-to-remain civil servants and would listen to no one else.
Never have I seen a prime minister so utterly isolated, by her own choice, from her political colleagues.
Finally she made the biggest judgmental mistake of all – she thought the Brussels-based team under Michel Barnier were this country’s friends.
Seething at the referendum decision, they cannot stand this country and are avid to inflict crippling revenge.
Guided by the in-country fifth column, she stepped into every trap, pitfall and snare prepared for her.
The Irish Backstop could and should have been rebuffed within minutes of being proposed.
She accepted it (on advice) and has been trying to revoke it ever since.
From a gleeful Brussels came a single response: No Chance.
It still does, which is why delay will change nothing.
It is tempting to feel sympathy for her in her misery and much of the media are expressing exactly that.
But sympathy should be reserved for those who did nothing wrong and on whom a malign fate has visited misery.
There is not one fiasco that has been inflicted on her, and thus on us all, that she did not bring on herself.
And us.
Her so-called tenacity is simply obduracy, the recourse of the foolish, weak and self-deluded when the totally predictable occurs.
She has to go – and fast.
But who to succeed?
Where is our Churchill, our Thatcher?
Whoever it is can succeed providing he or she puts a final end to self-delusion.
Our country has nowhere else to go but out of the EU next Friday and into national and economic freedom.
If we work like Trojans, using all the skills we have, all the dynamism and determination we can bring to bear when we decide to; if we go for rich free-trade deals where they are offered in an expanding rest-of-world as set against the crumbling EU; we can by Christmas be prospering again as not for many years.
Then we should hound the fifth column out of office.
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/1103734/brexit-winston-Churchill-european-union-no-deal
