Brexit: Leavers reap referendum whirlwind

Could it be true that some of those who led the Leave campaign so enthusiastically never really thought they would win? And the greater cause they were pursuing was really their own political careers?

I know that is cynical, but the hasty urgency of the campaign has been replaced by indolence and lethargy when it comes to ‘what happens next’.

The mechanism that will start Brexit is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. But now that the Leave side has wrested control of that weapon, nobody seems willing to pull the trigger. Boris Johnson is saying there is no hurry, as is Michael Gove.

Theresa Villiers, a prominent Leave campaigner, has even warned against triggering it, saying Britain will be excluded from important meetings. Well, boo hoo.

The prevailing mood seems to be: Lord make me leave, but not yet.

I don’t think anybody is naive enough to interpret all that as Leave really means Stay, or that a second referendum is in the offing. A lot of it is to do with the Leave side’s uncertainty and nervousness about what to do next and the impact it might have.

And there is a lot to be nervous about. The result has led to the tectonic plates moving alarmingly. David Cameron is gone, and a full-blooded challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's insipid leadership of Labour has been mounted. There is an increasing likelihood that Scotland will begin the process of holding a second referendum on independence. And the British economy is moving as elegantly as a chicken whose neck had a recent encounter with a cleaver.

Here is our lead story on it today.

After the moderate Cameron, it now looks like the new leader of the Conservatives will come from the Eurosceptic wing of the party. At this moment, the Boris Johnson and Michael Gove team (Bogove) looks unassailable. The strongest challenger from the Cameron wing of the party would have to be Theresa May.

With half his Cabinet gone, and further departures this morning, Corbyn is under his greatest pressure since becoming Labour leader. His support for the Remain campaign was never more than half-hearted. And that has not been helped by the claim that his allies suppressed overly pro-EU sentiments in speeches, and ensured that Corbyn did not appear alongside former leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Hillary Benn has led the charge. Corbyn has vowed he will contest any leadership contest before the party's full membership. That is a calculation he still commands the support of ordinary members that he lacks among the party's MPs. If he does survive this time, it will be by the skin of his teeth - and he will only survive until the next election, when he will do for Labour what Iain Duncan Smith did for the Tories when he was leader.

The Irish exit

We had our own exit from Europe yesterday, or Géalú, with the defeat to France.

On any other Sunday in late June, you would never expect politics to compete with soccer, or rugby, or the GAA as a talking point.

The Brexit campaign may have been a little under the radar for a lot of Irish people, but there’s no doubt we have all grown wise to it over the past 72 hours.

The ricochets of what has happened in the UK have been felt here, with a fair level of concern that we will suffer collateral damage, with the decision impacting on the Irish economy and on the common travel arrangements that have existed for almost a century.

Pat Leahy gives a detailed run-through of the different considerations and anxieties that are currently preying on the Irish political mind. The Cabinet has convened to begin setting out a contingency plan for Brexit. In addition, the Dáíl has been recalled for today to allow statements in response to Brexit.

I think the likelihood of Ireland holding an exit referendum anytime in the short to medium term is next to zero.

But we might see some more critical engagement with Europe. We have always portrayed ourselves as good Europeans. That has been translated as goody-goody Europeans, and the EU is seldom criticised. When Fine Gael, in particular, comments on Europe the pom-poms invariably come out.

There is a lack of accountability and an opacity to the EU that has never seriously been addressed. Like any mature oligarchy it has become very smooth at self-perpetuation. One of the assertions put forward by the Leave campaign was that there were 10,000 EU employees in Brussels who earned more than the British prime minister (about €180,000 per annum).

If that is true, it is a disgrace. The tax system for administrators in Brussels (as far as I can ascertain, the net situation is that many work tax free) is also a disgrace, but with all the self-interest involved, nobody has every seriously challenged it.

A handful of Irish MEPs - Luke Flanagan, Nessa Childers and the Sinn Féin members - have tried to expose some of the shortcomings of the EU. But, unlike other issues, there is rarely critical engagement about Europe from mainstream political parties nor - for that matter - from the media.

Perhaps the Brexit decision is an opportune time for Ireland to re-examine its role in, and relationship with, the EU.