LONDON LETTER FEBRUARY 2018 OF BREXIT, CHURCHILL AND HISTORY IN THE MOVIES.
There is a scene in Robert Bolt’s play ‘A Man for all Seasons,’ when Thomas More is engaged in a dialogue with William Roper who insists he would cut down every law in England to get at the Devil; More responds, - “Thomas More: ...And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.” I have thought a great deal about the scene recently when witnessing what can only be described as the blind fanaticism of Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox or Michael Gove. They would cut down any obstacle, legal, constitutional, ethical, that stood in the way of their imagined holy grail of severing all connections with the European Union. The...