Manawatu Standard

No turning point yet on Brexit

- Gwynne Dyer

Even with Donald Trump’s brief visit to the United Kingdom this month amid massive protests, it’s still ‘‘all Brexit, all of the time’’ in the sceptred isle – and the long struggle over the nature of the deal that will define Britain’s relationsh­ip with the European Union post-exit allegedly reached a turning point last weekend.

‘‘They had nothing else to offer. They had no plan B. She faced them down,’’ said a senior government official about the hard-line Brexiteers after Prime Minister Theresa May got them to sign up to a so-called ‘‘soft Brexit’’ at a crisis cabinet meeting.

But the armistice between the Leave and Remain factions in her fractious Conservati­ve Party lasted less than 48 hours.

On Sunday morning, hard-line Brexiteer David Davis, the ludicrousl­y titled secretary of state for exiting the European Union, reneged on his shortlived support for May’s negotiatin­g goals and resigned in protest.

Then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson followed suit, claiming that May’s plan meant ‘‘the [Brexit] dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt’’.

The sheer fecklessne­ss of the Brexit dream is epitomised by Johnson, who first compared May’s negotiatin­g plans to ‘‘polishing a turd’’, then came round to supporting them for about 36 hours, and finally resigned, saying that they would reduce the UK to a ‘‘vassal state’’ with the ‘‘status of a colony’’ of the EU.

Yet at no point in the discussion did either of them offer a coherent counter-proposal.

And what is all this Sturm und Drang about? A negotiatin­g position devised by May with great difficulty two years after the referendum that yielded 52 per cent support for an undefined Brexit that could never be accepted by the European Union.

Its sole virtue was that it seemed possible to unite the Leave and Remain factions of the Conservati­ve Party behind it. But the unity imposed by May broke down before the weekend was over.

All four of the great offices of state – prime minister, chancellor (finance minister), foreign secretary and home secretary (interior minister) – are now held by Conservati­ve politician­s who voted Remain in the referendum.

Yet they are unable to persuade their party to accept even a soft Brexit that preserves Britain’s existing access to its biggest trading partner, the EU. The Brexiteers’ power lies in their implicit threat to stage a revolt that overthrows May, fatally splits the Conservati­ve Party, and precipitat­es an early election that brings the Labour Party to power.

They may not really have the numbers to do that – it’s widely assumed that a majority of the Conservati­ve members of parliament secretly want a very soft Brexit or no Brexit at all – but May dares not test that assumption.

So, horrified by the prospect of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn (who is regularly portrayed by the right-wing media as a Lenin in waiting), the Conservati­ves are doomed to cling desperatel­y to power even though they can probably never deliver a successful Brexit. And the time is running out.

The UK will be leaving the European Union on March 29 of next year whether there is a deal that maintains most of its current trade with the EU or not. If there is no deal, the UK simply ‘‘crashes out’’ and chaos ensues.

There’s still a chance that reason will prevail before the UK crashes out of the EU, of course. But the odds are no better than even.

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