Only certainty is that Britain is in disarray
BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May has signalled her intention to hold discussions with her divided Conservatives, and across other political parties, to try for a Brexit deal everyone can agree on.
But in that case, the question has to be asked – why leave it until 71 days before Brexit kicks in automatically to start the negotiations?
May delayed her Brexit bill for five weeks in the hope of winning support for it, but she made no changes to her unpopular proposals. The result was stark: a predictable, and massive, defeat, 432-202.
In fact the scale of the defeat was the only surprising thing about it – a humiliating, record-breaking 230-vote loss in which 118 of May’s own Tory MPs voted against her. That’s one in three.
You only had to look at the groups gathered outside Westminster to see how unpopular her proposals were across the board. Both the proBrexit supporters brandishing Union Jack flags and the proRemain supporters with their European Union stars celebrated the result.
Two and a half years have passed since the British people voted to leave the European Union.
Now, only 10 weeks from Brexit, no-one knows what’s going to happen after 11pm on March 29.
It’s not known what customs checks could be placed on goods crossing between the UK and EU and what rights people will have to live, work and travel across the EU and UK.
No-one knows if there will be new taxes, or charges, if there will be food shortages or medicine shortages, if traffic jams will shut down the border crossings and what access the EU and UK will have to each other’s police and security data bases.
May denied she was attempting to run down the clock in order to spook either the House of Commons or the EU into cutting a last-minute deal.
Despite those denials, the under-siege PM will still be hoping for an 11th-hour agreement.
But this isn’t AFL Trade Week, where all the big deals are done on the final night.
People need certainty about how their lives are going to be affected after March 29. And the politicians have failed to provide it – and in doing so, they have failed the British people.
Former prime minister David Cameron called the Brexit referendum as he tried to confront the endless discontent in own party about the UK’s relationship with Brussels. He campaigned against leaving and thought his side would win. When it lost, he resigned and May stuck her hand up for the job. She’d voted Remain too, but at least understood she had to deliver on the results of the referendum.
But now her political credibility, already battered by her loss of majority government and the 117 votes against her in an ultimately unsuccessful Tory leadership challenge last December, is destroyed. She held on to the leadership only after promising she’d stand down after delivering Brexit.
But she has been unable to find a Brexit deal that the parliament, or even her own party, would accept.
Her only chance now to retain any control is to somehow convince the EU to get rid of the so-called “temporary backstop’’, a legally-binding commitment which ties the UK to the EU for a period of time in order to avoid a hard border in Ireland, and doesn’t allow the UK to leave without the EU’s permission.
Getting rid of the backstop, which the EU has so far refused to do, or giving the UK the power to leave it at any time, might bring back enough centrists for her deal to pass.
Otherwise, it’s the brave new world of an accidental nodeal Brexit – or whatever the parliament comes up with.
And that could be a delayed Brexit, a second referendum, or no Brexit at all.
ELLEN WHINNETT IS NEWS CORP’S EUROPE CORRESPONDENT