Boris can do a no-deal Brexit – but not without calling an election

The next PM will be able to take Britain out of the EU, but he can’t make the most of it with this Parliament

Let us imagine that it is the morning of Friday November 1, and that we have left the European Union without a deal. Whatever we think about such a scenario, it is something that could easily happen. Boris Johnson has said that if he becomes prime minister next week, October 31 will become the absolute deadline to leave the EU. The EU says it is not backing down on the deal Theresa May negotiated. And although quite a few Conservative MPS say they will block a no-deal Brexit, they don’t know how they are going to do that.

So it is not a fantasy to think we might be waking up that morning to find we are suddenly free of all the EU’S rules but also deprived of all its benefits – blinking in the sunlight of freedom or crying in the darkness of isolation, depending on your point of view. Over the next three months, acres of newsprint and long hours of parliamentary debate will be devoted to whether that moment should happen. Yet, strangely, there is little discussion of what exactly ought to happen after that.

True, there are many forecasts of the likely consequences, mainly about

the dire impact on some sectors of the economy. The CBI and NFU believe their members would suffer greatly; the Chancellor thinks it would cost us all £90 billion; and many of us are concerned that Scottish nationalism would receive a considerable boost. Brexiteers assert that all this is overblown, and that in any case the whole political argument changes irrevocably once we pass 11pm on October 31 and have left, with no ability to go back.

While I share most of the fears about a no-deal Brexit, I think that on this last observation the enthusiasts for such a departure have a point. From that November dawn there would be no point campaigning for a second referendum or clinging to any hope of remaining in the EU. The debate would indeed have to move on to what constitutes the best national strategy for the years to come. But the trouble with that, which any occupant of No 10 needs to think about very quickly, is that there is no majority, in parliament or the country, to do what would need doing. Such a majority would have to be mobilised and elected in a general election.

Just think of what any government might find necessary to mitigate the impact of a no-deal Brexit. Everyone seems to agree that the Treasury would need to open the floodgates on spending or tax reductions to avert a recession – but in the current House of Commons the Government would rapidly lose control of how the money would be spent. Even more difficult would be the passing of essential legislation. If farmers were not to go bankrupt in large numbers, a whole new Agriculture Act would be needed pretty quickly, with all the arrangements for a new subsidy regime. Fishermen would need a new Fisheries Act to define the waters of the UK and their rights within them. There would have to be a fresh Immigration Act enacted as rapidly as possible if border officials were to know who should be entering the country and what powers they would have to control them.

At every stage of passing these and countless other laws, there would be protracted argument and many amendments. Given the tiny Conservative–dup majority, which may by this stage have disappeared altogether, such legislation could take many months to pass and be mauled beyond recognition when it finally emerged. Ministers would be busy making announcements and pledging assistance that they would be in no position to deliver.

Yet this would only be the beginning. Any coherent strategy for British revival after a no-deal Brexit must involve being bold and innovative. It is possible to imagine such a strategy, and it can sound very attractive to anyone of a pro-enterprise disposition. We could reduce corporation tax to the same rate as Ireland; give special tax breaks to industries disadvantaged by Brexit; set up free ports around the coast where normal regulations and customs duties don’t apply; throw ourselves open to the most talented people in the world to come to our universities and hi-tech businesses while imposing strict visas on the rest; reform financial services regulation so that global banks and markets prefer London to anywhere else in Europe, and drive forward free-trade deals with America and much of the rest of the world. This adds up to something most of us Tories can get excited about.

We cannot know if this radical, liberated, ambitious set of policies would work out better than EU membership, but unfortunately we do know that it cannot be carried out with the current House of Commons. That free-trade agreement with the US would meet stiff opposition to our inevitable concessions on buying food we normally don’t eat. New laws for financial firms that attracted more of them to Britain would be bitterly controversial. Special tax breaks would be rejected, or else extended to everyone and become unaffordable. New immigration laws could be argued about for years. Any clear, bold plan would end up bogged down in a nightmare of parliamentary mush.

This is actually the biggest problem with a no-deal Brexit: that it would not be possible, without a new and very different parliament, to do what was desperately needed afterwards. As things stand, this country is too divided, and Westminster too deadlocked, to make a go of it. Success would depend on more than just optimism, but having a decisive, determined, and powerful administration, implementing a robust national plan. That is impossible today.

So while much of the discussion of recent weeks has been about an election occurring because parliament prevents the implementation of Brexit, it is time to consider a scenario in which it is Brexit itself that necessitates a dissolution of parliament. For leaving the EU, with no deal, and then finding ourselves becalmed and rudderless on the global ocean, would be the worst of all worlds.

Many Conservatives believe that a failure to deliver Brexit is their biggest threat, and certainly that is a serious one. But delivering it without the power and authority to make the most of it would be the greatest calamity of all.