May doubles down on Brexit
No to second referendum and no to a permanent European customs union
Brexit was stuck before. It is stuck now. Will it ever be unstuck? Nobody can say.
After a humiliating defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday, where members of her own party contributed to a landslide rejection of her plan for withdrawal from the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May managed to survive a no-confidence vote on Wednesday.
On Thursday, in order to break the impasse and shape a Brexit plan that might pass a spectacularly divided Parliament, May held meetings with leaders of opposition and independent parties at 10 Downing Street.
Briefing reporters, her official spokesperson — who goes unnamed according to protocol — promised the talks would be undertaken “in a constructive spirit,” but he was also clear that May was not prepared to budge on any of the main issues that led lawmakers to reject her 585-page Brexit withdrawal agreement.
No, May was clear, she would not support a second referendum, which is what Brexit opponents want, according to the spokesperon.
Nor would the British prime minister endorse permanently, a European customs union, which is what those who want a softer Brexit want, because, her spokesperson said, it would then be difficult or impossible to seek free trade deals with other countries, such as the United States.
ITV News reported that oppo- sition lawmakers were given a paper by the government that said staging another Brexit referendum would take a year to organize. Nor would May promise to take off the table the option of leaving the EU with no deal March 29, which is what the Labour party wants to hear.
And finally, no, the prime minister would not ask European leaders to delay Britain’s departure beyond the March date — by extending or revoking the EU Article 50 — as the Scottish National Party has demanded as a condition of further talks. Why? “Because we do not wish to do it,” May’s spokesperson said.
In a speech Thursday, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn called May’s invitation to talk a “stunt.”
“If you are serious about reaching a deal, then ‘no deal’ must be ruled out,” Corbyn wrote to May.
The Labour leader warned that, though he lost Round 1, he was prepared to bring forward more motions to topple the government in coming days. “The government may have survived a confidence vote — for now,. But we have a government in name only.”
May’s Conservative Party is divided by hardcore Brexiteers who just want out and those who want either a soft Brexit or no Brexit at all — Labour is riven by similar splits between “leavers” and “remainers.”
Mike Gapes, a Labour lawmaker and critic of Corbyn’s, tweeted: “Apparently Corbyn is prepared to hold talks with Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad and Iran without preconditions. But not with the UK Prime Minister. Why?”
Reporters camped out at 10 Downing spotted a half-dozen Labour Party backbenchers going into the cabinet offices to talk with May’s ministers about breaking the Brexit logjam.
Labour former Prime Minister Tony Blair said Corbyn must meet with British leader.
Speaking to the BBC, Blair said: “In a moment of a national crisis, the prime minister asks the leader of the opposition to talk? Of course you go and talk.”
And no matter what May’s negotiating position is now, Blair said that seeking an extension to Article 50 — of delaying Brexit beyond March — was “inevitable.”
If he were in government, Blair said, “I would already be having discussions with Europe about the terms of extension.”
Brexit is hard to take your eyes off, and not just in a slo-mo train wreck way. The issues are difficult, and the more you try to position yourself, I find, the spikier they get — like sliding puzzles that taunt you after every clever move you make. Or it’s like a game between two teams neither of which is yours; so you can recline and enjoy the spectacle with no direct stake.
I’ve liked watching the U.K. House of Commons debate. We got ours from them so why is theirs so much fun, while ours is none? Everyone tries to be eloquent and witty, and some succeed.
Their speaker, John Bercow, is clearly having the best time of his life. At the grimmest, tensest moments, they’re still expected to banter. They sit on upholstered benches (ah, so that’s where “backbenchers” comes from), cheek to cheek as it were, without desks or space to hold their papers and laptops. It echoes a distant, largely oral era when Parliament began. It’s a form of Elizabethan theatre.
But I digress, for a reason: I’m still unsure where I stand on Brexit.
That was so in 2016 during the leave/ remain referendum. The EU had become a torture device for imposing neo-liberalism and austerity, especially on little guys like Greece, so it has been agreeable seeing smug peckers like Macron discomfited.
But the EU wasn’t always that way; it began with a noble desire to avoid further carnage between European nations. And I’ve never known why leftists like Jeremy Corbyn think they’d be the only ones to capitalize on getting out, when the movement to leave was actually led by reactionary buffoons like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
I feel comparably conflicted over whether they should now hold a second referendum or “people’s vote,” as if the first one involved aliens. PM Theresa May says it would betray democracy. I sympathize. It’s also the only area where she and Corbyn may converge.
On the other hand, what’s undemocratic about allowing voters to reconsider, in the light of better info? So one side or the other is going to feel stiffed democratically. Plus, there’s been little movement in the polls, though passions have intensified all around.
What do you do when both sides have a legit democratic beef and some plausible arguments? And they’re almost equally split? How nice it would be to find some ground to move forward on distinct from who’s right and wrong.
I think this was the stunning achievement of Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper this week. He started from somewhere else. He probably belongs to the right-thinking folk who want to remain in the EU so he posited a useful distinction re the Leave side: between “equality leavers” like Corbyn who are fixed on finding space to break free of neo-liberalism, and Little England leavers, who are nostalgic for empire and the days when everyone was white. This parallels Trump voters in the U.S. rust belt, who’d seen their worlds shattered by free trade, versus racist Trump voters who want to restore Confederate dollars.
Then Kuper turned to Nelson Mandela for inspiration. Mandela hated apartheid, spent decades in prison for it, and his mission was to destroy it. But he scrupulously treated his enemies with respect because they were human. He let them know he knew they had minds. They weren’t just stupid racists, with the emphasis on stupid. In other words, faced with irresoluble political conflict, find some way that allows winners and losers to coexist, no matter who wins. Let me gloss Kuper by saying that Mandela, as Trevor Noah likes to note (and mimic) prefaced his strongest statements with, “Ah buh-leev,” which is also a form of respect since it acknowledges that however fiercely you hold your view, you know it’s yours, could be wrong, and others have theirs.
Kuper’s column amounts to a tipsheet on how to do politics in a populist era. I should add that in his real life Kuper is basically a sports journalist, so he doesn’t have to be obnoxiously authoritative as he opinionates on Brexit. It gives him room to meander around and manoeuvre onto previously unoccupied terrains. Good luck to him, he’s my new favourite Brit journo.