To quote my last post: ‘…the …outright lies which fuelled the Leave campaign….’

One of those who lied is the new Foreign Secretary. The French Foreign Minister recently referred to the lies of the Leave campaign. When asked for a response Boris Johnson referred to ‘the inevitable plaster falling off the ceilings of a few European chancelries’ in the aftermath of the Leave vote. I love the phrase, it’s glib, it’s fun, it’s evocative – and it doesn’t justify for a moment the mendacity of the Leave campaign, and Johnson’s own battle bus. Lies are lies.

Liam Fox and David Davis were always good for quotes in the Leave campaign. The former especially. Mainly of the ‘that’s wrong’ variety, when some hard truth came from an expert source on the Remain side. My guess is that Theresa May in giving them key positions (heading up Brexit negotiations and international trade) has said to them – ‘now deliver’. And it will be they, not the middle-ground compromisers who the Tory right would have slated in the event of a soft Brexit, who take the flak. It’s a the highest risk strategy imaginable. But otherwise her party will remain split. And for them Europe as an issue will never go away.

A resolution, maybe, of decades of Tory party divisions. At whose expense?

‘Take the flak.’ Someone somewhere sometime soon the line is going to find themsleves facing some very hard truths.