Our disunited kingdom will only have limited time to arrange its exit strategy
Just as St Augustine pleaded with God to make him virtuous “but not just yet”, so Britain’s Leave campaigners are in no rush to depart the European Union. In his first speech after the referendum result, Boris Johnson stressed how there was “no need for haste” and no requirement to “invoke Article 50”. This is the vital clause of the Treaty on European Union – as amended by the Lisbon Treaty – which lays out the procedure for a member state to quit the club.
There is a certain irony about those who damned the EU now declaring that they are in no hurry to escape its yoke. But there is a more serious point: the British departure plan, so far as it exists, flies in the face of the wishes of much of the rest of Europe. Put bluntly, the uncertainty created by divorce proceedings will damage their economies, so they want us out – and they want us out fast.
David Cameron has promised to hand over to a successor by October – and the new Prime Minister will decide when to trigger Article 50. But Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, has very different ideas. “They want to leave the European Union, so it doesn’t make any sense to wait until October to try to negotiate the terms of their departure,” he told German television.
Britain’s problem is that there are as many different ways of leaving the EU as there are of skinning the proverbial cat. Before the next prime minister begins exit proceedings, he or she will need to assemble a united British negotiating position.
Even within the Leave camp, there are numerous different visions of a post-EU Britain. Some will accept freedom of movement within a Norway-style arrangement, others wil say that freedom of movement – and the attendant arrival of East European migrants – was exactly why the North and the Midlands voted to leave.
A cohort of Brexiteers saw the EU as a barrier to ultra free-market liberalism; others saw it as preventing what they want, which is protectionism and a command economy.
Before he or she starts divorce proceedings, the next Prime Minister will need to reconcile these diametrically opposing views.
And that is before they come to consider the still more formidable task of building a consensus with the SNP administration in Edinburgh, which carries the nuclear option of triggering another referendum on the dissolution of the United Kingdom.
If left alone, Britain could take years to assemble a united, cross-party negotiating position – embracing Scotland along with Wales and Northern Ireland, and not forgetting the English regions.
Then the Prime Minister would invoke Article 50, triggering divorce talks with the EU that must conclude within two years.
The danger is that Britain will not be left alone to put together a consensus position – assuming this is possible in any case. Instead, the rest of the EU might decide to force the pace.
Suppose the other 27 members choose to take the referendum result itself as invoking Article 50, meaning that the two-year timetable for divorce talks actually began last Friday?
Britain would probably respond that only a government can trigger the proceedings by sending a formal letter. But the wording of the treaty is ambiguous. The vital sentence reads: “A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention.”
What constitutes notification? Does this have to take the form of a letter from the Prime Minister? Could it not be taken as the thunderous result of a national referendum, broadcast around the world?
As ever, there will probably be a compromise. European leaders will allow Britain a period of grace to cobble together its negotiating position – and they will suffer the economic cost. But their patience will not be eternal.
The greatest danger is that even if they give the next prime minister a great deal of time, he or she may still fail to achieve a consensus position within the United Kingdom.
If so, Edinburgh may declare that Scotland’s interests have not been protected and call another independence referendum.
In the worst case, our next prime minister could be embroiled in simultaneous divorce proceedings with both Brussels and Edinburgh.