Isn't this risk worth running for the chance to correct a historic error -- if that's what it was? I doubt it. Suppose a second referendum was called and the result was Remain; suppose the EU said, "Great, glad to have you back." Reversing Britain's decision under these circumstances -- out of fear, to avert looming chaos -- wouldn't reconcile the country to its European future. This cringing submission would raise instinctive euro-skepticism to new extremes and divide the U.K. even more bitterly.
Gideon Rachman writes in the Financial Times that it would be a national humiliation. True. It would surpass the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the country's surrender to trade-union militancy in the 1970s -- crushing setbacks with far-reaching political consequences. If there were ever a case of "be careful what you wish for," this is it.
This the thinking that leads to pointless catastrophic wars. Let's shoot ourselves in the face just to prove our gun works.
This is what the national humiliation really is:
Every Conservative MP bar Kenneth Clarke voted in February for the triggering of Article 50. It now appears they and their leader started the countdown to Britain’s expulsion without even the vaguest plan for what we’d be aiming to achieve, let alone realistically likely to achieve. Worse, they pulled the trigger knowing very well that “Brexit” still meant different things to different members of the party and its government, and there was no reason to hope that divergent aims were ever likely to converge.
I call this criminal: irresponsible to the point of culpable recklessness towards their country’s future. The Conservative Party just thought they’d give it a whirl and all but one of them voted for the adventure.