People’s protest brings a second vote closer
PIZZA plots. People’s marches. Parliamentary votes. When the day-to-day noise gets too loud in politics, it sometimes helps to tune out and remember the fundamentals. There are still only three options facing Britain over Brexit: crash out without a deal, negotiate a withdrawal or remain in the EU. A growing number of Brexiteers now favour the first option. That is because ideological purity is easy; compromise is hard. Some say openly that it’s worth the stockpiling of medical supplies, the lorry parks on the motorways and the chaos of the airports just to get out. “It’s better to be poorer but free” is the new mantra from those who are rich enough to think that way. Other Brexiteers claim they are pushing for a “Canada Plus” trade arrangement.
But that amounts to advocating no deal, for the EU demands separate treatment of Northern Ireland in order to avoid the imposition of a hard border — and the same Brexiteer leaders who push for the Canadian approach also say we cannot possibly divide up the UK. Brexiteers don’t want to hear this, so they tell the Prime Minister: “find your inner Boudicca” — even though some of them had the privilege of leading these negotiations from around the Cabinet table and failed. It’s all an excuse. The contradictions in the hard Brexiteer position lead logically to no deal.
What about the second option facing Britain? Negotiate a withdrawal. That is what Theresa May says she has been trying to do. But when the crunch comes, she is not prepared to confront the Tory party over the concessions required to deliver that deal. That’s because she made the disastrous mistake at the beginning of her premiership of making herself the Brexit leader of the 52 per cent rather than the national leader of the 100 per cent. When she made the big climbdown on the Irish backstop last December, she didn’t argue that the compromise was necessary but instead pretended to the Cabinet that “nothing had changed”. And when she split her party at Chequers, she made the possibly fatal mistake of doing so over a proposal that she knew the EU would not accept. That forces her to make more concessions now, when her political capital is all but exhausted.
Her latest idea — extending the transition beyond 2020 — merely delays the choices Britain has always faced: if you want the benefits of the single market that Margaret Thatcher created, you must accept the obligations she agreed to. The latest Tory tail wagging the Tory dog is the claim that to win fishing constituencies in the 2021 Scottish elections we’ll have to be out by then. But what is the alternative to kicking the can down the road when the governing party, let alone Parliament, cannot muster a majority for any alternative?
Just imagine how different things would be if the Prime Minister had, right from the start of her tenure, used her goodwill to advocate a simple-to-negotiate, down-the-middle response to a referendum that so divided Britain — like membership of the European Economic Area or EFTA that satisfies proudly independent nations such as Norway and Switzerland. The best that No 10 now, privately, hopes for is to get agreement to an extended transition whereby we leave the EU, still sign up to all its rules, pay its dues and have nothing other than a few warm words about a long-term relationship.
But does a parliamentary majority exist for this bridge to nowhere? Hard Brexiteers won’t support it. The Labour leadership won’t either — because it wants to bring down the Government. Moderate Tory MPs are beginning to peel off. Downing Street seems to be counting on the votes of rebel Labour MPs. That is not a credible whipping strategy. If there isn’t a majority for Mrs May’s permanent transition, Parliament will face a choice: crash out with no deal, or find a third way.
All this leads to another general election or a second referendum — and a vote, in effect, whatever the actual question, to stay in the EU. Though reluctant to choose, most Tory MPs would prefer the latter to the former; and a majority of all MPs would accept that the national interest favours a new referendum over crashing out. That is why the People’s March tomorrow matters, and that is why the chances of a second vote are rising rapidly.