Don’t resign, Remainers, but hold your nerve and prepare for no deal
The best outcome is still an agreement with the EU, but if talks fail ministers won’t help by quitting
Left to herself, Theresa May would make a good poker player. Her natural style is to keep her intentions mysterious and not to give away her thinking in advance. She has long mastered the art of maintaining the same facial expression whether on the verge of triumph or disaster.
Her negotiations with the EU, however, have been like trying to play poker with a crowd around her shouting out loud: “You’ve played your strongest card already”, or: “Oh no, how can you possibly hold out with such a weak hand?”. Combined with the difficulty of playing with a clock running down, this has made things very simple for the other side. They can be bold because they are confident she has to fold in the end.
Sitting in Brussels, they can readily form the view, from reading newspapers and listening to Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, that Britain does not have the stomach, the plan or the majority in Parliament to leave the EU without a deal. They can therefore play their own hand with confidence that they can’t lose. Either they will force the UK to accept a difficult deal, or they will cause the Government to collapse, with a new government or second referendum emerging from the wreckage.
Unfortunately, the resignation of Jo Johnson as a transport minister only further reinforces such confidence. We must, of course, treat with respect a minister who resigns on a matter of principle with an eloquent explanation, particularly one as honest and bright as Jo. He is exactly the sort of person we should want to be in politics.
But the message sent to the EU by his resignation is that the Prime Minister has her back to the wall with nowhere to go. He said that other ministers were “reflecting hard” on whether to quit, not as ardent Brexiteers but as people who think we should pull back from leaving altogether. Read from Brussels, this translates as confirmation that they need make few further concessions.
So what should these other ministers who are said to be wondering about resigning do now, as the crunch finally arrives? There are many members of the Cabinet who voted Remain, but who have loyally joined in the effort to negotiate Brexit, refraining from participating in the damaging shouting match around the poker table, and hoping for the best. They are more numerous than the Leavers, and they might face a very important decision in the coming days.
Naturally, they will be hoping that a deal is agreed in principle this week, with sufficient assurance on the nature of the Irish “backstop” that it can be endorsed by the whole Cabinet and has a fighting chance of being ratified by the House of Commons. This indeed would be the best outcome, allowing an EU summit to be held later this month to endorse it, the key vote in Westminster to take place in December and sufficient time to make all the necessary regulations for Brexit to proceed on March 29.
The challenge then would be to persuade enough MPS to back an agreement that hardly anyone will like but many will prefer to the alternatives – a “no deal” exit or political chaos of unknown duration and outcome. Personally, I would back it because it would deliver leaving the EU, but in a way that minimises economic damage, allows us to have our own immigration policy and lets the Government get on with the rest of its job.
What if, however, these ministers, stirred by the same fears and beliefs as Jo Johnson, face a more agonising decision? If the EU negotiators don’t move another inch? If the whips say that what is on the table cannot be passed in the Commons? Or if the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, who has now assumed vast but perhaps justified importance in Cabinet deliberations, says it isn’t good enough? Should they then reluctantly put their pens to their letters of resignation?
No, they most certainly should not. In those circumstances, they should join, whatever their misgivings, in fully preparing the country to leave without a deal. That is a big step, involving more expenditure, hiring more officials, building more infrastructure and drafting urgent new laws. Many would not want to be part of it.
Yet with little more than four months to go and no deal agreed, any set of ministers would need to do this, just as countless cabinets before them have had to prepare for eventualities they did not want to see realised, from wars to recessions to natural disasters. It would be irresponsible not to do so, and whoever replaced anyone resigning would have to do it anyway.
Furthermore, there is a good argument that a satisfactory deal would only ever be reached after the supposedly last moment for it had passed and when both sides had to face up to the consequences of the talks failing – the EU side as well as the British. For Ireland, these consequences would be just as serious in many respects as for the UK. This is therefore a scenario in which it would be in the national interest for the Cabinet to hold its collective nerve. Sticking together would be the only way to improve the deal at the last minute.
Crucially, ministers should see the deep flaws in advocating a second referendum. To anyone who is unimpressed by the choice between the prospective deal or a no-deal exit, this is an easy thing to call for. But it is perhaps the surest route to national humiliation, division and uncertainty, needing most of next year to bring it about, with no assurance at all that it would solve the problem. It is almost impossible to see a Conservative administration holding together to implement such an idea, which means the road to a second referendum leads unerringly through the catastrophe of a Corbyn government. Jo Johnson’s proposed way out of the Remainer’s dilemma is actually the worst of all the options.
So if this Prime Minister can declare the poker game over because she has enough winnings to leave the table, all well and good. But if not, the best thing to do is to sit with her for another round, with a cool and determined countenance. It is all very well to denounce retrospectively the way she has played the game, but it doesn’t help her, or the country, bring it to the least unpalatable conclusion.