The post you are reporting:
Matthew Parris in the Times.
The case against Brexit will never be won by argument. Protagonists on both sides have invested too much to back away now: debating defence mechanisms have warped our minds and proofed us with counter-arguments against all comers. Meanwhile the great majority of the general public are simply bored by the debate. They look on in disbelief, strangely detached.
So you can forget logic, it is useless. Both sides are entrenched and the audience aren’t listening.
You can forget prophecy too. Prediction is useless. Project Fear and Project Hope on each side have brought deep scepticism about forecasts of any sort by anyone with an axe to grind. Two sets of zealots wrestle with each other in the tar-pit that is the Brexit debate: locked together in slow-motion combat that has taken on an almost ritual aspect. Remainers and Leavers: we are all swivel-eyed, now. For the immediate, it is useless to talk of second referendums and replaying the whole ghastly debate.
Only events could now break the deadlock. Not political events — they are unreal to most — but real news, real developments that touch people’s daily lives. People don’t want to be told, they want to be shown. That is why the story this newspaper broke about near-panic at Airbus is tremendously significant. British business, industry and the City have proved poor lobbyists on the risks of Brexit. So has the trade union movement. All tried to make their case during the referendum campaign but little of it cut through. Since then these lobbies have occasionally piped up but more often piped down. It has sometimes seemed as though the wealth-creators in our economy have been taken hostage by history and, half-gagged and bound, were being pushed towards a destination they never chose but were helpless to avoid.They were being neither lazy nor cowardly but realistic. There is now deep scepticism in Britain about lobbyists, lobbying, the honesty of capitalists and the public-spiritedness of trade unionists. We think they’re all in it for themselves and will twist the truth accordingly.
But when the risks of Brexit translate into real commercial decisions about investment and jobs, that is when voters will sit up and listen — and in truth, apart from warning noises from Japanese carmakers, newsworthy decisions have been thin on the ground. Airbus’s decision to start planning for possible disengagement from the UK economy is the first. If there is more such news to come, expect opinion to begin shifting. Two weeks ago I sat down with a ferociously determined but unusually candid Brexit campaigner. He told me the public had made up its mind and little would shift it. “How about a big factory closure?” I asked, “that would cut through, surely?”He was too honest to demur.