Remain (Inside) vs. Leave (the House) - the faultline in British politics

It's not a novel observation to say that the debate about lockdown measures is a rerun of Brexi, with the same people lining up on each side. But why should that be? In this article for the Telegraph, I throw a few theories around...

On the face of it, the two issues have nothing in common. It may be that Brexiteers are less risk averse. No Deal Brexiteers, in particular, embrace risk almost by definition. Remainers, by contrast, feel safer with the status quo, and once lockdown became the status quo, any loosening of it felt like a risk.

Or it could be about settling old scores. Some pro-lockdown campaigners are more or less explicitly anti-Tory activists who oppose any relaxation so they can say ‘I told you so’ in the future when there is a second wave of (hello, ‘Independent SAGE’).

Others are still smarting from the referendum. I swear there are political journalists in this country who will go to their graves convinced that the biggest news story of 2020 was Dominic Cummings driving to Barnard Castle. It is difficult to imagine them getting quite so upset about a special adviser possibly committing a minor breach of a regulation if he had not run the Leave campaign. 

Similarly, it is hard to imagine Sir Ed Davey reporting someone to the police for going to the pub two weeks after travelling to America - and therefore possibly not having quite done the full fourteen day quarantine - if his name wasn’t Nigel Farage (or as Carole Cadwalladr dubbed him, in typically understated fashion, ‘Typhoid Nigel’). Farage’s response was to tell Davey, not unreasonably, to ‘get a life.’

Do read it all.