Tony Blair has said very recently that he now thinks there is a 50% chance Brexit won’t happen. If you go on Twitter and search through the #FBPE pro-European hashtag, you will find a lot of people who have almost convinced themselves that not only will Brexit not happen, it can’t happen. Remainers are starting to fall into a weird sense of complacency given the situation.
We have a governing party who is determined to see Brexit through. Even the most pro-Remain Tory MPs (bar Ken Clarke) talk about simply softening Brexit via retaining Single Market membership (and sometimes, they won’t even go that far). Corbyn has lightened his stance on Brexit – but only a little. He’s talking about trying to get a customs union of some description with the EU as opposed to the hardest imaginable Brexit he was peddling before. I know that Remainers look at the state of the negotiations, side by side with how angry Leavers are at the moment and think that Brexit is in the midst of falling apart. This is wishful thinking. I don’t think it’s 50-50 that Brexit happens. I think the possibility of it not happening is less than 10%.
The fight is there for Remainers to up that number a little, of course. But this newfound complacency takes several forms. A really bad one is the “Brexiteer X only wants Brexit because he/she stands to personally gain from Brexit”. The gold standard on this count is the idea floating around Remainer Twitter accounts that Jacob Rees-Mogg stands to personally gain 1.2 billion pounds or whatever colossal sum of money you like from Britain leaving the European Union. This is a form of political comfort food: you convince yourself that your opponents must have corrupt reasons for pushing forward their agenda. This implies they could be easily switched from their current support if only the financial gain for them went the other way. The other thing this sort of trope does is make you feel good that your side is the morally and historically correct bunch, while the other side could only be supported by someone corrupt.
Whatever the truth of this story about JRM and his personal Brexit benefit (which I think is probably hot air), I have no doubt whatsoever that if Jacob Rees-Mogg stood to lose a fair amount of money from Brexit, he would still be just as for the idea of it happening as he currently is. Remainers are vastly underestimating the hardcore Brexiteers with this sort of thinking. Having been around them myself, I can’t begin to tell you how devoted they are to the idea of Brexit. It is something bordering on religious devotion. Remainers are unwise to neglect this fact.
Yes, there are scenarios under which Brexit might not happen. The deal May gets could be terrible, leading Labour and significant number of Tories to vote it down and then enough Labour and Tory MPs could come together and form a government of national unity to reverse Article 50in order t avoid hard Brexit. Again, I think the chances of this are slim, but you never know. In in the interim, Remainers should realise that Brexit is still more likely than not as things stand and plan accordingly.
Nick:
I understand your point about complacency; it is important and well made. Nonetheless, the obvious reason why many who have some understanding of what is happening find it hard to believe that Brexit will happen is the glaring lack of anything that could be described as a plan.
Moreover there is the phase 1 default agreement for the Irish border. Whilst a Brexit that retains the Single Market and Customs Union is possible, what else is? I do not see anything, nor anything substantive proposed. In fact much of what I see amongst Brexiters are manoeuvres aimed at ascribing blame when attempts at Brexit collapse.
I understand why you think Brexit will happen,but (correct me if I am wrong) I do not think you have an idea how.
Of all possible scenarios, I would say the least likely is the EU Council and Parliament forcing a hard Brexit. At the very least, either some sort of extension of Article 50 or a transition period would be offered with a price tag. I think the biggest difficulty with an extension of Article 50 is representation in the Parliament. Possibly the UK could be given the option of choosing not to be represented, but I think this might be challenged. A transition extension without an endpoint has similar problems and would need more agreement on the UK side, which simply might not be available.
I would put a fairly high probability, surely over 50%, on some sort of Brexit limbo, in which a lot is left unresolved.
I understand why you think Brexit will happen,but (correct me if I am wrong) I do not think you have an idea how.
Surely the ‘how’ is obvious: midnight ticks by on the 29th of March 2019. That’s all that needs to happen for the UK to leave the EU.
As I wrote, the ‘dropping off a cliff’ outcome is unlikely and very unlikely that the EU Council would force it. If something like this did happen it would be due to the insistence of the UK. From the EU side there would be (at the going rate and conditions) an offer of some sort of stay of execution.
Nick
The only credible way to solve Ireland and the DUP is to keep the UK as a whole in CU and SM, if necessary by another name to placate some of the Brexiteers.
At that point, there will be enough saying “so what is the point of this?” to force the Govt to think again, & Ref2 is their tool. Narrow Tory self interest rather than grand designs will deliver this.
Nick you are right and I am afraid to say Toby and Martin are mistaken. We will leave the EU on 29th March 2019 at exactly 11:00pm. There will doubtless be a significant transition period (i.e. a period of ongoing uncertainty and fudge over so much detail), but legally the UK will have left and that will be that.
This will save the Conservative party which our leading lights chose to give succour to for five years of denial and self delusion, and be the final nail in the coffin of the Liberal Democrats as a viable parliamentary party which for some reason we still prefer not to save.
There may just be a 1% chance of reprieve, but it will not save the Lib Dems, because whether it is Labour of the Conservatives who change their position, it will them who will claim and be given the credit for it.
All in all, it will be a tragedy beyond belief.
I largely agree with you, Nick, about the likely direction for Brexit, though only the European Court of Justice can say whether it is possible to rescind an article Article 50 letter unilaterally. It hasn’t been tested, but I have my doubts. Otherwise, issuing such a letter would become a handy form of blackmail to be employed by any European Union member state in negotiations. At the very least, rescinding an Article 50 notice would require the consent of the other 27 EU states, ditto for an extension of the Article 50 period or for an extension of the transition period. Martin is right to say that there would be a price tag attached to any such consent. But franky, I don’t see any request being made. As has become apparent over the weekend, the Conservative party is uniting around Mrs May’s proposals. Michael Heseltine and John Major no longer have the influence they once did twenty years ago. And any proposal advanced by The Absolute Boy – whether it is for a customs union or anything else – is anathema to all Conservatives. As to the fake row about the Irish border, one answer to that is provided by the European Parliament’s own report, Smart Border 2.0. If you want to know what will happen, just listen to what Theresa May says. She is not a complicated politician. She does what it says on her tin.
To all appearances, Brexit will happen automatically two years after notification. Any other scenario requires either unanimous agreement from the other member states, or a successful legal challenge to the obvious interpretation of Article 50. Assuming it’s not going to happen is a very strange thing to do.
Especially when the only real plausible route to it happening — the government falling, a general election, and the opposition taking over — would put Corbyn in charge, and he’s perfectly happy to leave the EU.
If Labour had a pro-Remain leader, then the weakness of May’s government would mean that the chance of the whole thing being called off was pretty much exactly the chance of there being a general election in the next twelve months, which is unlikely but not totally impossible.
But the fact is that even if there were an election, and even if Labour were to win it, Corbyn would not stop Brexit. He might (in fact he probably would) heavily imply during the campaign that he would, albeit always in the tortured non-binding language he is so fond of (‘I lead the Labour party, and the Labour party is committed to the UK playing a full part in Europe, so of course if we win we will look at every possible option; now ask me again about the IRA’), but on taking office, he would drag his feet, set impossible conditions, basically just make sure that leaving happened. And there’s nothing anyone in the PLP could do to stop him, because he would easily win another leadership challenge.