Daniel Hannan
We only have three bad options before us. Instead of gaining freedom, we have been humbled
It’s over. If Brexit happens at all – and, for the first time, I’m beginning to think it won’t – it will be on terms that keep the worst aspects of EU membership. Britain will be humbled in the eyes of the world, having tried to recover its independence and been faced down. The largest popular vote in our history will be disregarded, and the nation that exported representative government will be exposed as an oligarchy. Plus – and I know this sounds almost trivial next to those calamities, but it matters to me – the Conservative Party might never recover.
It all looked so different on the appropriately golden morning that followed the vote. I assumed, given the narrow result, that Britain would seek a Swiss-type relationship, keeping most of the EU’s single market rules but opting out of the customs union and the political aspects of membership. I went to see some of the ministers and officials involved, suggesting a number of Swiss leaders they ought to speak to. “Oh, no, Hannan,” I was told, “we’re going to do something much better than that!” Really, gentlemen? How’s that working out?
For two years, we have been wilfully narrowing our options until, with 100 days to go, we have three ugly possibilities before us. “It’s my deal, no deal or no Brexit”, Theresa May kept saying and, at 9pm on Wednesday, that statement became true. The only way to widen the choice would have been for a different prime minister to go to Brussels with a different offer – a prime minister who was genuinely ready to walk away if the other side remained vindictive.
But there won’t be a new PM. Conservative MPs chose to keep one whose defining characteristic is inflexibility. Supporters call it resilience and opponents call it obstinacy, but it amounts to the same thing. The lady is not for turning. She is committed to her deal, backstop and all. She believes in it, she tells us, with every fibre of her being. Even if she were able to change it, she wouldn’t, and EU negotiators know it.
As at Salzburg in September, so in Brussels this week, Mrs May’s remarks seem to have put her 27 fellow heads of governments’ backs up. An early draft had hinted at movement on the backstop but, after the PM had made her pitch, those clauses were struck out. EU leaders didn’t hide their contempt. Openly revelling in Mrs May’s weakness, they made sure that everyone understood that they were sending her away empty-handed. She responded, characteristically, by claiming woodenly that good progress had been made.
There was speculation that some MPs were looking for an excuse to drop their opposition to the proposed Withdrawal Agreement. But Mrs May cannot now offer them a fig-leaf, or even a pine needle. The EU isn’t bothering to pretend that it wants or expects the backstop to be temporary. Why should it? The backstop holds the British market captive for continental companies, who run a large surplus here, and removes any possibility that a more free-trading Britain might out-compete its neighbours. And that’s before we come to the legislative annexation of Northern Ireland, which would leave voters in the province unable to influence the laws under which they live – other than by pleading with Dublin to represent them in Brussels.
Here, then, are the three remaining options. First, the UK surrenders, signs up to all the obligations of EU membership, including the customs union, financial payments and the supremacy of EU law, and, in order to be able to claim that something technically called Brexit has passed, removes its representatives from EU institutions. Secondly, Article 50 is revoked pending a new referendum. Thirdly – though this is now unlikely – MPs fail to get their act together and the March 29 deadline arrives with nothing else in place, meaning that the UK automatically leaves on World Trade Organisation terms.
This third option is the least bad, given where we now are. In theory, the UK and the EU could simply roll over their commercial arrangements. The Swiss government announced on Friday that it would do precisely that, ensuring that its trading relationship with the UK will not change, with or without an EU deal. But, of course, Brussels has repeatedly shown itself ready to put politics before economics.
Never mind that a no-deal scenario would damage all 28 states – perhaps especially Ireland. As the story of the euro shows, Eurocrats are prepared to accept a great deal of pain in order to advance the goal of political union. Actually, “accept” is the wrong word since, being exempt from national taxes, they are spared the consequences of their own policies. “Inflict” would be more accurate.
Britain could, as I wrote here two weeks ago, mitigate most of the consequences of a no-deal Brexit by responding with emergency tax cuts, unilateral free trade and radical deregulation. But, looking at our parliamentary benches, do you detect the requisite willpower? MPs terrified by a shortage of Mars bars are unlikely to have the appetite for Singapore-style liberalisation.
If Parliament won’t accept Mrs May’s terms and won’t accept no deal then, one way or another, it keeps us in the EU. When you have eliminated the impossible, Watson, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So we are back to either non-voting membership (I refuse to call it Norway-plus, since Norway would never accept the backstop and, in any case, the European Free Trade Association is, as the name implies, a trade association, which makes it incompatible with membership of the EU’s customs union; or, more likely, a second referendum.
That, of course, is what Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and Nick Clegg and John Major and Roland Rudd and the rest were planning all along. Surely no one can still doubt that there is such a thing as the British Establishment. This time, though, they won’t risk losing. Instead of repeating the last vote, they will seek to make it a choice between Remain and Theresa May’s deal – which most Eurosceptics correctly regard as worse than Remain, because it keeps the costs of staying but forfeits the benefits of withdrawing.
Those who voted Leave in 2016 would presumably respond by boycotting the poll, so we’d end up with a Third World result: a 90 per cent Remain vote on a turnout of below 40 per cent. We would still be a democracy in the sense that Turkey or Russia are, but trust in our institutions would have gone, and the main parties would never be forgiven. Those plotting to overturn the last vote evidently don’t care, provided we stay in the EU. Remember that the next time you hear them claiming to be working “in the national interest”.
A second referendum is looking more likely. This time, though, they won’t risk losing