How Brexit broke Theresa May: election analysis #2

In the coming days, months and even years the shock outcome of the General Election will be picked over by journalists, analysts and historians. They will identify many factors, but the role of Brexit will surely be central, and the roots of the result lie firmly with the referendum and its aftermath.

The vote to leave the EU was, in itself, a shock and one which left the UK polarised, politically unstable, and facing immediate economic consequences in the form of a currency collapse which would at any other time have been seen as a crisis. That led to a truncated Tory leadership campaign in which there was no real debate about what Brexit meant and the near coronation of Theresa May whose USP appeared to be pragmatism and experience. Few knew anything about her, but many thought she would be ‘a safe pair of hands’.

But she faced an immediate problem. She had been an (admittedly lukewarm) remainer and inherited a party which had for years been riven by Eurosceptic factionalism that was now triumphant and triumphalist. If she had delivered on her USP what would have happened would have been a consensual, practical recognition that the country was deeply divided and that the referendum, whilst narrowly voting against EU membership, had not voted for anything in particular.

Whilst the referendum was legally only advisory, it was politically undeniable that it could not just be discounted. The obvious, leaderly, conclusion would have been to seek a consensus around a ‘soft Brexit’ of single market and (perhaps) customs union membership. This would have been in line with what some leave campaigners, and many leave voters, understood Brexit to mean. It would have given them exit from the EU, the CAP, the CFP, formally from the ECJ, and might even have been consistent with some kind of enhanced ‘emergency brake’ on free movement of people. It would have given all voters some of what they wanted and some voters all that they wanted. Moreover, it would have been consistent with what the traditional business and finance backers of the Tory Party most wanted.

For months, May used the much-derided ‘Brexit means Brexit’ formula to avoid any public conversation about the different forms that Brexit could take, and so failed to build any consensus about what form it should take. In the same period, she engaged in an absurd and ultimately doomed legal battle to prevent a parliamentary vote on the triggering of Article 50 that made no contribution to consensus-building – on the contrary, it further polarised debate through the language of ‘enemies of the people’ – and flew in the face of the most basic theme of the referendum campaign, namely the sovereignty of parliament.

As this battle continued, May hinted at different possible positions, sometimes harder and sometimes softer, before announcing in her January 2017 Lancaster House speech that – by decree – Brexit meant the hard Brexit of leaving both single market and customs union, and any and every form of CJEU jurisdiction. That gave some voters all of what they wanted but most voters none of what they wanted. She had – perhaps through fear of the Tory hard Brexiters, perhaps because of her Home Office preoccupation with immigration as the ultimate issue – ceased to be the pragmatist many believed her to be and had become a dogmatist others feared her to be.

However, at the same time, two other things were happening. First, May was discovering, as Cameron had before her, and as Major had warned both of them was the case, that the Tory Eurosceptics could not be appeased. Give them Brexit, and they wanted hard Brexit. Give them hard Brexit – as she had done – and they wanted the ultra-Brexit of ‘no deal’. Out of that was born the ill-fated phrase ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’. But, second, she was beginning to realise that Brexit was much more complicated than she had thought.

May’s model for Brexit appeared to be the opt-out of all, then opt back into some, approach that had worked for her over security and policing issues whilst at the Home Office. That was never going to work for full-on Brexit, and it seems to have begun to dawn on her that at the very least there were going to have to be transitional arrangements on trade that might last for years, and certainly well beyond the next scheduled election in 2020. And even though she seems to have excluded business leaders and civil servants who raised concerns about the practicalities of Brexit it’s difficult to believe that the mounting briefing papers about the kinds of compromises and complexities that Brexit entailed were lost on her, especially given her reputation for detailed immersion in her red boxes.

No doubt there were many reasons for deciding to call the 2017 election – the apparent weakness of the Labour Party being the most obvious – but I suspect that a big part of the thinking was to create the political space to face down the ultras in her party, and the electoral space to avoid going to the polls when Britain was still to all intents and purposes in the EU during a transitional deal. Equally, as I have said, there were many reasons why that gamble failed. Amongst them is the fact that this chain of events meant that she had completely failed to build any kind of consensus around Brexit and that was a problem for ‘hard remainers’, who had been treated with complete contempt, even though many of them were the professionals and business people who had to actually deliver a version of Brexit that seemed more and more detached from reality.

No less was it a problem for ‘soft remainers’ and ‘soft leavers’ – together probably the majority of the electorate since only a minority felt passionate on either side. They could see the beginnings of some really serious economic effects of a hard Brexit on their lives and were alarmed by the ever wilder sound of the ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ rhetoric. Remember, they had been told during the referendum campaign that a deal with the EU would be quick and easy. Now, suddenly, they were being told by Theresa May that “dire consequences” were in prospect if Brexit did not go well and, moreover, that she was willing to entertain these consequences. Sure, this played well with the ‘hard leavers’ in the Tory base and with the UKIP vote, but it was a long way from that pragmatic, safe, USP that she had come to power and built her personal ratings on.

This isn’t the whole story of the election, by any means, but it is one important strand and it now begs a crucial question. What has Theresa May learned from it? The wise lesson would be, even at this late stage, to seek the pragmatic, soft Brexit consensus. It’s even possible that the need for DUP support will force this on her (to the extent that, whilst being pro-Brexit, they want to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border which in principle implies a soft Brexit). But there has as yet been no clear statement from May – just as there has not been throughout the last year – of what in achievable, realistic and, crucially, desirable terms she is seeking from Brexit.

The reason for that remains that which has dogged her premiership all along, and which is underscored today by the support she is receiving from the ultra Brexiters in her party: those ultras will simply never accept anything that is achievable, realistic or desirable from Brexit. So whether she secretly agrees with them or secretly opposes them makes no difference. Either way, her capacity to govern in – as she put it today – the “national interest” is doomed to failure. The reason is nothing to do with personalities, strategies or electoral arithmetic. It’s something much simpler, but something that neither she nor for that matter the Labour Party can yet say: Brexit, on any meaning of the term, is not, on any meaning of the term, in the national interest.

What does the election result mean for Brexit? Some initial thoughts

From my first post on this ‘Brexit election’ I have observed that the outcome was not necessarily going to be that which was initially expected, and so it has proved. Today, we face a complex and highly unpredictable situation and in this post I will give what inevitably are just initial thoughts.

Overall, although the result most certainly does not spell the end of Brexit, it does represent a slim window of possibility for that to come about and a rather wider window of possibility for Brexit to be shaped in a softer (i.e. single market) form than that which May had proposed. At the very least, there has been no ringing endorsement of her Brexit approach, and the chaotic situation now unfolding opens up a space for different possibilities which a clear Tory majority would not have done. This has the additional and important implication that it is going to much harder for Brexit politicians and newspapers to sustain charges of sabotage and disloyalty against remainers.

The outcome shows the gross irresponsibility and arrogance of the government having chosen to trigger Article 50 and then have an election. This in any event was going to mean time wasted from the already short two year negotiating period. Now, it may be many months before the UK has a fully functioning government with an agreed position on what form of Brexit it is seeking. Whatever happens now, a second general election later this year seems very probable.

Logically, the UK should seek to pause the two-year clock, but there is no mechanism to do so, although the EU could by unanimous (including British) agreement extend the two- year period. The more time that is wasted the closer we get to a situation where membership lapses with no agreement in place, causing massive dislocation to every aspect of daily life. Astonishingly, the initial noises from the Tories are of the need to prevent the EU delaying the process. Perhaps a greater degree of realism will emerge, but the record of Brexiters is hardly one to encourage this hope. The only other mechanism for a pause would be for Britain to rescind its notification, but at the moment there is no sign either party would do that and, in any case, it is not clear to me that the EU would accept it if it were understood as only temporary (all of the legal meanings around A50 processes are rather untested and unclear, but that it my understanding).

The most likely current scenario is some form of deal, or even coalition, between the Tories and the DUP. Whether such a deal is sustainable, or even possible, remains to be seen. But if it happens the DUP attitude to Brexit will be crucial. Whilst they are strongly pro-Brexit, the months since the referendum have made it very clear what hard Brexit would mean for the Northern Ireland border, peace process, and economy. It may therefore be possible that DUP involvement leads to a soft Brexit position (on both single market and customs union) as this is the only realistic way of avoiding a hard border.

Against this, such a deal or coalition would only yield a very slender majority which will inevitably strengthen the hand of the ultra-brexiters within the Tory party. The one hope for remainers when a large Tory majority looked likely was that it would sideline the ultras. The result will empower them. Yet the same also goes for Tory remainers, and whilst these have been spineless to date the new landscape of a much weakened Theresa May could change that. Similarly, the pro-remain House of Lords might be more willing to assert itself against a weak government with little mandate for hard Brexit. In a sense, although the election does not in any way over turn the referendum result it does mean that the referendum ceases to be the all-defining, overhanging fact of political debate. It is that more than anything that creates new spaces of hope for avoiding or softening Brexit.

The idea that Labour will form a minority administration seems highly unlikely to me, but if it happens then the crucial issue will be for the party to get much clearer about its Brexit policy. At the moment, the manifesto is quite vague and although it suggests a hard Brexit there are different views within the party, its membership and its voters, and there is perhaps room for something softer than the Tories were planning to pursue. A more likely scenario is that of a second election and for that Labour need to move explicitly to a soft Brexit if they are to have a mandate for such an approach. But since in any variant Brexit is going to be a disaster, it might be argued that it is better for Labour to be out of power and for the Tories to be forced to tidy up their own mess.

For a mess is what it is, and this goes back way before this election to the whole series of events that led to the referendum being held at all, to the failure of remain to win it, to Cameron’s immediate resignation and the hurried, panicky anointment of Theresa May as leader. It is a deep irony that in the 2015 election the Tories warned of the chaos that would happen if they lost, and yet since then have unleashed a chaos unparalleled in modern British political history. It very much remains to be seen how this will play out and, today especially, only the most provisional of thoughts are possible.

Brexiters in denial: we didn't mean 'that' or 'you'

Because of the General Election there is not much Brexit news to write about, although there are daily reports of Brexit causing companies and sectors to be in difficulty or pulling out, losses of vital EU staff, falling growth, and rising inflation. In fact there is not a single example of something good happening which would not have happened had it not been for Brexit. Even the paltry crumb of comfort that the falling pound helps exports turns out to be minimal.

The General Election hiatus is also bad news in that it represents a waste of what everyone agrees is the already inadequate 24 month time frame for the Article 50 exit negotiations. It means that at least two of those months are being squandered. To put it another way; suppose that you had a vital task to complete and had just 12 days to do it. You and everyone else knows that 12 days is way too little. So you begin your 12 days by spending a day in bed. That’s what Britain is doing.

It’s not as if there was any compulsion to trigger A50 at the end of March. It was the government’s choice to do that, and then almost immediately call an election. In some peculiar way we seem to have decided, both as a nation and in our government, to start doing incredibly stupid, self-damaging things.

Anyway, since we are in that hiatus, I am going to write more today about Brexiter logic – or, rather, illogic – because I think it is going to become an increasingly important issue once the negotiations start. I’ve written before about Brexiter illogic in terms of them thinking any piece of evidence to ‘prove’ that they were right. That’s quite easy to demonstrate from the public statements of leading Brexiters, but here I want to talk about something much more nebulous, which I’ve observed mainly in online discussion forums and social media.

There is the strange sense from those who argue most vociferously for Brexit that, somehow, Brexit won’t change anything. For example, I’ve seen Brexiters ridicule the idea that leaving the EU could mean needing visas to travel to the EU or that it could mean restrictions on air travel within the EU. Or that security cooperation with EU countries would be diminished. Or that European fruit and vegetables might be less easily sourced. Or that British people would face restrictions on retiring in EU countries. Or, possibly the most ubiquitous since the referendum, leave voters saying to their friends and neighbours from EU countries: ‘oh, but we didn’t mean you when we said there were too many immigrants’.

I don’t think that these things are necessarily to do with the idea that Britain can ‘cherrypick’ some parts of the EU that they like, and it is more subtle than simply rejecting warnings as 'project Fear'. Rather, what underlies such sentiments is two related things. One is a taking for granted of the familiar accoutrements of modern life without realising that they are the product of extensive, albeit largely invisible, institutional arrangements. So of course ‘nowadays’ planes fly us to wherever we want without restrictions, as if this were not the outcome of complex agreements such as the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA), and ‘of course’ we can travel visa-free in Europe, as if that were not the outcome of freedom of movement rights. In some ways, Brexiters, who despise Euro technocrats and bureaucrats and rail against extra-national decision making, also treat it as an act of nature that there are Europe-wide regulatory systems which, on Brexit, British citizens will still have available to them.

The related underlying issue is that for many Brexiters the vote to ‘take back control’, with all its emotional resonance, was not thought about in concrete legal or institutional terms but as a kind of symbolic, feel-good act. That, indeed, is the implication of the Brexit White Paper which affirms (para 2.1) that sovereignty was never lost by EU membership but that “it has not always felt like that”.

The problem is that both the assumption that familiar freedoms are an act of nature and the symbolism of taking back control are now in collision with the reality of leaving the legal institutions of the EU. This isn’t going to be a matter of assumption or symbolism: it will have hard, concrete effects. It will be no good saying to your EU neighbour that ‘you didn’t mean her’ when she quits her job as a Paediatric Consultant and your child is ill. It will be no good saying that ‘of course, they will never introduce visas to go on holiday to Spain’ when you have chosen not to be a part of ‘them’.

One reason why this situation has come about is because of the way that the Leave campaign chose to conduct itself. Rather than accept that there would be adverse consequences of leaving the EU but that these were, in their view, worth accepting, the leave campaign hyperbolized so as to dismiss those consequences. Thus, to take the most obvious example, when remainers talked about the EU’s role in keeping peace in Europe, the leavers said ‘ah, so World War Three will break out if we leave’ – making a perfectly reasonable claim into a ludicrous one that could then be dismissed. It was the same with travel. When remain warned about restrictions, leave hyperbolized that to say ‘ah, so you’ll never be able to go on holiday if we leave’. The legacy of that, now, is that when WW3 has not broken out and the end of foreign travel is not in prospect, Brexiters taunt remainers with the claims that the latter never, in fact, made. But that in turn means that Brexiters still believe that leaving the EU doesn’t make any difference at all.

From this mixture of lack of realism about EU institutions, symbolic understanding of leaving, and dishonesty about the consequences of leaving flows a great danger. As the realities of what Brexit means kick in, the leaver mindset that leaving ‘didn’t mean that’ or ‘shouldn’t mean that’ or ‘needn’t mean that’ is morphing into a belief that ‘the EU is making it mean something that it doesn’t, or shouldn’t or needn’t’. So whereas a rational response would be to say that by voting to leave leavers have chosen the consequences, what is emerging is the punishment narrative that Brexiters are already beginning to deploy to avoid taking responsibility for the consequences of their decision.

Although I have said that the sentiments discussed in this post are more obvious amongst grassroots Brexiters than their leaders, traces are visible amongst those leaders. For example, Nigel Farage recently ranted about the idea that British people would no longer be able to travel to Europe in response to point made by Guy Verhofstadt that Brexit would be likely to mean restrictions to travel. On the one hand, it was a hyperbolization (it wasn’t the effect claimed), on the other it was used to imply that, despite Brexit, ‘nothing would change’. Similarly, David Davis has recently opined that key EU regulatory agencies, the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority, could stay in London post-Brexit (as if Brexit ‘made no difference’) whilst the Brexit press depicts the loss of those agencies as ‘Brexit Punishment’ (as if Britain hadn’t chosen to leave the EU or ‘didn’t mean that’ when it did).

Once this unnecessary election is over the Article 50 negotiations will start and the consequences of Brexit will become ever clearer and the cries of ‘EU punishment’ will get ever louder. It will then be vital to remind leave voters that whatever they may have thought that voting to leave the EU meant, what it actually meant – it seems extraordinary to have to write this - was something very simple: leaving the EU. It will be a rich irony, given the months in which this absurd slogan was deployed to scarify remainers, that Brexiters will need to learn the rather brutal truth that, indeed, Brexit means Brexit.

[Updated with minor edits 28 May 2017]

What size of Tory majority should remainers hope for?

The best outcome of the election from a remainer point of view is obvious: a parliament with a majority of SNP, LibDems, Greens and Plaid Cymru. Arguably, and with many caveats, the next best thing would be a Labour majority because although Labour are pusillanimous and confused about Brexit, and have a leader who appears to be at best uninterested in and at worst in favour of Brexit, there would be many anti-Brexit MPs in place.

But if we assume that both these scenarios are highly unlikely and that the result is almost certain to be a Tory majority then the question is: what size of Tory majority is best for remainers? Given the current tightening of the opinion polls the range of possibilities now looks to be quite wide, between 40 and over 100. Judged solely from the point of view of being against Brexit, which is better?

Let’s leave aside Theresa May’s wholly spurious argument – which even she cannot believe – that a large majority will in some way help Britain to ‘get a good deal’ by ‘strengthening her hand’ in negotiations. That has rightly been denounced as nonsense from all sides to the Brexit spectrum because the EU will simply be negotiating with the British government, without regard for or interest in its domestic majority. If anything, a small majority can help in negotiations because, as the astute Tory journalist Ian Birrell argues, it enables the government to argue that it could not get the deal through parliament. But, really, it’s irrelevant except as an electoral ploy.

For remainers, the main argument for favouring a large Tory majority is the possibility which I floated in a previous post, and which some media commentators have also advanced but others vehemently rejected, that this would enable the government to be less controlled by ultra-Brexit Tory backbenchers. There are several assumptions in that, first and foremost that May’s government will, if unhampered by the ultras, seek to advance a pragmatic Brexit. That means, so far have we gone from any kind of sense, avoiding a ‘no deal’ crash out. There are some signs that this assumption is valid, since the Tory manifesto seems to accept that there will have to be compromises, the payment of some kind of ‘exit bill’, and is muted on CJEU jurisdiction. But it cannot be taken for granted, since May’s position is so unclear.

The other assumption is that the new intake in the event of the big Tory majority would not augment the numbers of (ultra) Brexiters. This assumption is also, I think, a reasonable one if the first assumption is also correct. If it is the case that May will seek to avoid an ultra Brexit then the new intake is likely to go along with that. Firstly because there is some evidence that Conservative Central HQ have sought to parachute May loyalists into safe seats to detriment of Brexiters (Daniel Hannan’s failure to be selected in Aldershot being a high profile example). Secondly because, in any case, new and ambitious MPs are always more biddable than old salt Brexiters like Redwood, Cash and Duncan Smith, whatever their personal views may be.

An additional argument for a large Tory majority is that it would be more likely to lead to a new Labour leader, who might be more anti-Brexit than Corbyn. Yvette Cooper, Clive Lewis, Chuka Umanna or Keir Starmer are all possibilities. But, of course, even if that happened it would have little effect, at least in the crucial period of the Article 50 negotiations.

A smaller Tory majority, by contrast, might be good from an anti-Brexit perspective in that it would bring into play whatever is left of the Tory remainers. Admittedly, they have been utterly feeble so far (with the honourable exception of Ken Clarke, who will most likely be in the next Parliament) but they might be emboldened by the combination of a small majority and the unfolding, inevitable, rising tangible costs of Brexit. Moreover, a smaller majority would make it much harder for May to claim – as she and the Brexit press clearly want to – an overwhelming Brexit mandate in which all opposition is deemed to be ‘sabotage’ and against the ‘will of the people’. That would be important not just, or even primarily, in terms of parliamentary arithmetic but in terms of the legitimacy of wider voices in civil society, business, academia and so on. It would make the Brexit McCarthyism that I have posted about previously a bit less potent.

Embedded within that is a peculiar unintended consequence of the way that the Tories called the election and the manner in which they have so far fought it. From the beginning, the assumption was that a huge majority was all but certain. This means, though, that a perfectly strong result, and one much better than achieved by Cameron in 2015 – a majority of 40, say – would in some sense be construed as a failure. In fact, given the extravagant predictions, anything less than a 100 majority will be a kind of a let-down. At the same time, the vagueness of the Tory manifesto both in general (the lack of costings) and on Brexit in particular, which might give freedom of action if the majority is large, will sap legitimacy if the majority if small. For Brexit that could matter especially in the pro-remain House of Lords, which would be wary of defying a landslide Commons majority and/or very specific manifesto pledges.

I am still not sure what the answer to this question is, partly because there are so many other imponderables – for example, a small Tory majority with a much enhanced LibDem representation might be quite different to a larger Tory majority with less LibDems, and the extent to which the SNP hold their seats will matter, as will the vote in Northern Ireland. But with all that said I suppose that the least-worst outcome is a small Tory majority which could at least strike some kind of deal with the EU and get it through parliament in defiance of the Tory ultra Brexiters with the support of the other parties. That shows, though, how shrivelled and limited the options for Britain now are: none of them are good, it is just a matter of the bad, the worse or the catastrophic.

A final thought, about what may well become a big issue in the future. Suppose that the next Tory government negotiate a deal which contains some compromises on issues like free movement of people, ECJ jurisdiction and budget payments. It would, of course, be a far less good deal than staying in the EU or even than a soft Brexit of staying in the single market. But it would be better than the ultra-Brexit ‘no deal’. In that scenario, the agreed deal would have to be ratified by the European Parliament, in what could well be a close vote. UKIP would by that date be (presumably) irrelevant within UK politics, having been outflanked by May in this election, but would still have MEPs. Is it, then, possible that they would join what could be a successful vote to veto the deal? And, if so, what an irony that a Brexit endorsed by the British parliament might be undone by the European Parliament courtesy of UKIP.

The Brexit election: but what about Brexit?

Theresa May framed the calling of the general election in terms of Brexit, but what is truly remarkable is in how little it is actually being discussed. You have to take a step back to see just how peculiar this is. Whatever side you were on in the referendum, leaving the EU is the biggest national event since the Second World War – far bigger than the decision to join – and it’s also possibly the most unusual political event in any developed democracy in living memory. When else has such a country decided unilaterally to re-write almost all its foreign and economic policy, and to seek to simultaneously detach and re-attach itself on unknown terms to the global trade system?

In those circumstances, one might expect an intense debate about the ins and outs of what Brexit will mean and how it will be pursued. It is no good saying that this was settled by last year’s referendum. That vote, whatever else can be said about it, only opened up new issues. It was a vote to leave the EU, certainly, but it was not a vote for anything else in particular. The way it is now taken forward will affect every single area of daily life, from air travel through to nuclear waste disposal, and every industry from fishing to computer game design. And the very existence of the country as a United Kingdom will be called into question.

So where is the detailed discussion of different options and their consequences? What exactly does the government’s White Paper Brexit plan, endorsed in the Tory manifesto, mean? Is ‘no deal better than a bad deal’? How would a ‘bad deal’ be defined? What does a ‘no deal’ scenario look like? Most extraordinary of all, where is the discussion of the costs of the Brexit plan? Every single other policy, from whatever party, is relentlessly scrutinised for affordability. How will this or that spending pledge be paid for? Yet no questions at all are asked about the cost of Brexit, even though in any realistic scenario it will be in the high billions of pounds, with reductions of GDP/capita in the range of 6.3% to 9.5% according to an authoritative study by MIT. Even halve the lowest estimate, and that is an economic disaster in prospect; at the higher end, which might by the same token be an under-estimate, it will be a catastrophe.

What will the effect on employment be? How will the tax take be affected? What is the impact on that totemic issue of recent years, the fiscal deficit? What about the balance of payments? Will the UK’s credit rating be affected? Will sterling’s status as a reserve currency be affected? And what about the value of sterling, anyway? Brexit has seen a huge currency depreciation which at any other time would have been a massive election issue. So why isn’t it being talked about except, sporadically, in muted terms of rising inflation?

Beyond the economics, where is the discussion of what foreign policy looks like post-Brexit? Trump’s election, itself one of the biggest issues of recent times, even were Brexit not happening, in combination with Brexit means that Britain’s place in the world and its core alliances are all in flux. But this has barely been mentioned by any party. For that matter, one might think that the fate of the over one million Britons living in the EU and who are directly affected by Brexit would merit some significant debate – not least since at least some of them have a vote in this election. But they are hardly discussed.

That this bizarre situation is being allowed to exist is partly a matter of the failure of journalists to ask any of these questions. It is also the responsibility of the two main political parties themselves (the LibDems are certainly making Brexit central, but focus mainly on the case for a second referendum). The Tories are content to let the only Brexit-related issue be which of May or Corbyn will be able to negotiate ‘the best deal’ – with no sense whatsoever of what that deal would be. Instead, the Tory manifesto re-iterates the White Paper commitments to a form of Brexit that was neither voted for in the Referendum nor advocated by many leading leavers. That is, to leave the single market and customs union, prioritising immigration control. But there is no explanation of why this is the preferred approach, how it will work in practice even if achieved, nor what costs – financial or otherwise – it will entail, and no one bothers to ask. So, for example, the news of Tory manifesto launch was dominated by discussion of social care funding. Yet the very viability of the care system, which is heavily dependent on EU workers, is in peril because of Brexit.

Labour are simply in a mess on Brexit, without a policy position that makes any sense at all. Their manifesto statement about wanting to retain the “benefits” of the single market and customs union but without being members of either is meaningless and in consequence so are the rest of their pieties about the kind of deal they would seek if in government or even support if in opposition. Nor are they asking any significant questions of the Tories about their policy in a misguided attempt to assert that the election is not, in fact, anything much to do with Brexit. Yet all of the issues that they are mainlining on will inevitably be hugely affected by Brexit, the NHS being just one obvious example. They are not even making the point that the outgoing Tory administration has foisted the greatest instability in living memory on the UK and yet are now insisting that only the Tory party can provide ‘strong and stable’ leadership. Nor do they mention how by calling this election Theresa May has blown two out of the already tiny twenty-four month time frame for the Article 50 negotiations.

The most extraordinary things about all this is that the only half-way intellectually respectable justification put forward for Brexit was that it would mean that the British electorate could choose and dispose of its political direction of travel via the general election ballot box. But what is now in prospect is the use of that ballot box to endorse a scarcely specified, barely discussed and yet central, historic policy. Although commentators are saying that this is the first election in recent times where there has been a very clear distinction between the main parties, on the core issue of Brexit they are both committed to a virtually identical hard Brexit.

This matters hugely, because on the basis of the result – presumably, a large win for the Tories - a mandate will be claimed to enact Brexit pretty much as they want. Included in the Tory manifesto is, again, the phrase that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ – giving cover for an outcome absolutely at odds with what voters were led to expect during the referendum campaign. Yet in her manifesto launch speech the PM said that the consequences of not getting the right deal would be “dire”. So what are voters endorsing if they vote to allow ‘no deal’ to be an option?

And it is certainly not just remainers who should worry about this. It is perfectly conceivable, and consistent with the manifesto, for Brexit to entail, possibly in backdoor form, many of the regulatory and legal institutions of the EU. In fact, if that does not happen then the stated preferred aim of creating a ‘deep and special partnership’ with the EU is unachievable. It’s noteworthy that the manifesto is not even explicit about leaving the ECJ (which isn’t mentioned directly). So what are voters endorsing if they vote to allow this ‘deep and special partnership’ to be an option?

So we have an election ostensibly about, and in the middle of, the biggest strategic and economic change that this country has made in the lifetime of most voters, and with consequences which will last for decades, but the actual nature of that change is barely being talked about, certainly not at any level of detail. With this farcical election on top of a farcical referendum we drift every more rapidly not, in fact, to the jolly, trouser-dropping British farce with which this all started, but to the theatre of the absurd: nihilistic, incomprehensible, dark and slightly mad.


Addenda (19 May 2017):

1. Comments now disabled on this blog due to volumes of spam
2. My briefing, 'The Business of Brexit: What happens next?' is now available.

The Brexit election: where the opposition parties stand

It seems almost inevitable that the Tories will win the election and, probably, with an increased majority. But that is not certain. This is an election like no other, for many reasons. The scars of the referendum are not healed and, as happened in Scotland after the independence referendum, that can have big effects. Moreover, each of the main parties is positioning itself away from key elements of its core support: Tories by pursuing a Brexit agenda that liberal and pro-business Conservatives don’t endorse; Labour with a hard Left and apparently Brexit-acceptant agenda that centrists don’t want. The statistics are clear enough – 40% of 2015 Tory voters voted remain (and more than that will have envisaged soft Brexit); 65% of 2015 Labour voters voted remain.

There are many other factors in play. Party allegiance amongst voters has been breaking down for years. Some potential Tory voters will be upset by May’s reaffirmation of the overseas development budget and lack of reaffirmation of the pension triple-lock and the commitment not to raise taxes. Others will assume a Tory victory is inevitable, and so will not vote. Others still may find May’s socially awkward and distant campaigning style unappealing and, possibly, the prospect of a triumphalist win against the Labour underdog distasteful. Then again, many who voted leave are not habitual voters at all – some even believe that the referendum means that Britain has already left the EU - whereas many who voted remain are highly motivated to vote in this election, and will do so tactically to bolster their cause. It’s also unclear to what extent 2015 UKIP voters will switch to the Tories in support of hard Brexit, stick with UKIP out of mistrust of Tory Brexit credentials, or just not vote at all.

There are many possibilities and permutations, but my sense is that it is just possible that the result will not be the Tory landslide expected (we’ve certainly seen enough in recent months, from Brexit to Macron, to be wary of predictions). Whether this is true or not, what is the case is that those elected to the new parliament will be able to claim a mandate to argue for the policies they were elected on. This means that it matters what stance they take in their manifestos as it will shape what kind of freedom of action they have in the new parliament, whatever its composition.

For Tories – depending on what they say in their manifesto – that may mean being tied to the White Paper version of Brexit and make it more difficult for them to argue for a ‘no deal’ crash exit, as I argued in my previous post. Labour’s position is much less clear and – surprisingly, given the recent history of the Tory party – much more anguished. Today, their Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer has tried to clarify it, but it remains obscure and muddled (see this excellent analysis from Ian Dunt) except for offering an immediate guarantee of rights to remain for EU nationals in the UK and commitment to some of the non-market EU institutions such as Euratom.

Starmer appears to be saying that Labour would leave all negotiating options on the table, rather than following the government’s policy of ruling out single market and customs union membership. That is not unreasonable, but at the same time he is saying that Freedom of Movement of people must come to an end. If so, that makes single market membership impossible. It is just possible that what he has in mind is some negotiation of more stringent EEA emergency brake rules on immigration. That is a possibility that I outlined in an early post on this blog and, even now, it may have some mileage. Then again, the EU’s position is probably harder and less flexible than it was – partly because of the way the government has conducted itself, although a new government might have space to shift that. But Starmer isn’t, in any case, saying in terms that this is what a Labour government would seek and it’s only a possible reading of what he is implying.

Moreover, it remains very unclear whether Corbyn and McDonnell are on board with it. Corbyn says virtually nothing about Brexit and last week McDonnell was waffling on about seeking ‘tariff free access’ to the single market which goes nowhere near the issues that even the government seems, belatedly, to have understood about non-tariff barriers and regulatory harmonization. Starmer at least seems to understand what the issues are even if his articulation of them is so strangulated as to be all but incomprehensible – presumably precisely because his party leadership either does not endorse or does not understand those issues. The strong suspicion is that the leadership retain the traditional Bennite hostility of their wing of the Labour Party to the single market. And whatever their policy now, having voted to trigger A50 their anti-Brexit credentials are weak.

The LibDems Brexit policy is much clearer, but it has its own problems. They want a referendum on the final deal with the option not just of seeking a further negotiation but of reverting to EU membership. But this is less plausible than it seems. Firstly, because at the moment it is not clear whether A50 is reversible. And even if it turns out, legally, to be so, what would that mean politically? Could either the UK or the EU at the end of a long, complex and very likely acrimonious set of negotiations simply go back to the status quo ante of not just EU membership but all of the particular UK aspects of it (e.g. exemptions from Euro, Schengen)?  So even were there to be such a referendum, then assuming a Tory government the choice will be between the deal on offer or no deal at all. Since no deal at all would be catastrophic, the only viable option will be to vote for the deal on offer, no matter how bad for the UK it may be.

Thus a far more viable position to argue for would be a second referendum before negotiations get started. The argument would be something like this: ‘in June 2016 the British people voted to leave the EU. Even when you buy an insurance policy you are allowed a cooling-off period. The decision to leave the EU is a major one for our country. So we want to check that it is the decision you want and will hold a second and final referendum asking you again. But, also, last year's referendum did not ask you what you wanted to happen afterwards, so we are asking you that as well: specifically, do you want to stay in the single market or not?’

If that seems impossible given what the LibDems have already said about accepting the result of the 2016 vote then, at the very least, a more viable position than the current one would be to say: ‘in June 2016 the British people voted to leave the EU and this will be happen. But you were not asked what you wanted to government to negotiate for you after leaving, so we are asking you now whether you want to leave the single market or not?’

Clearly it is implausible that at this stage, when manifestos are being drawn up and their message has already been framed, the LibDems will change their policy in this way. Nevertheless, seeking an early vote on whether to pursue single market membership makes more sense than a late vote on exit terms. The same applies to the Greens, the SNP (although for them the issues involved are different and, in particular, bound up with the case for a second independence referendum) and other parties (such as Plaid Cymru, UUP, SDLP) which seems to want to retain single market membership on leaving the EU.

The tragedy in all this, as I have argued many times before on this blog, is that remaining in the single market and customs union would have been the most consensual and sensible way of responding to the very close referendum result whilst also honouring it. If David Cameron’s decision to call the referendum was the greatest strategic error of any modern British Prime Minister, Theresa May’s decision to interpret the result in such a partisan and damaging way must run it a close second. This election will - most likely - cement that decision, but the way that the other parties frame their stance now will shape what kind of opposition she faces.

The Brexit election: ultras beware?

Like most political surprises, the decision to call a general election already seems entirely predictable if not inevitable. It is not just the irresistible prospect of smashing the Labour Party whilst it is in chaos, it is also the possibility of killing off the UKIP threat that has haunted the Tory party for years. The latter, in fact, is one obvious dividend for Theresa May’s Damascene embrace of the hard Brexit cause. And of course a fresh election would free the government of the 2015 manifesto pledges which place so many constraints on fiscal policy.

What is less obvious is how the election relates to the Prime Minister’s overall Brexit strategy. Her stated aim of overcoming parliamentary opposition to Brexit is manifestly absurd. There has been very little such opposition and the government has easily overcome it. The sources of that opposition in the Commons, the SNP and the LibDems, will be likely to remain or even possibly to increase as a result of the election. The House of Lords might be slightly less willing to use what limited power it has in the aftermath of a general election, but as the Article 50 vote showed it was in any case reluctant to do so. As for Labour, their position insofar as it can be understood at all, seems to be identical to May’s in terms of leaving the single market and the customs union and, certainly, to present no challenge to the government at all.

Nevertheless, many Tory politicians as well as the Brexit press seem happy to parrot the line that what is in prospect is the crushing of Brexit ‘saboteurs’ and the ‘silencing’ of dissent. And, no doubt, this latest grotesque outbreak of what I have called elsewhere Brexit McCarthyism would appeal to the PM if it were likely to be successful. Her basilisk-like appearance during the House of Lords debate is testimony to that, as is the extraordinary and unnecessary length she went to in attempting to avoid an A50 vote. But she must be aware that the reasons she has given for the election don’t make any sense in terms of Brexit opposition. Instead, it’s the things that she can’t say that make her decision explicable.

As with so much else in the story of Brexit, what is at stake is the internal management of the Tory party’s longstanding splits on Europe. The smallness of the majority makes these, rather than the opposition parties, the problem. And that problem lies not with the Tory remainers, who have failed to win any concessions and been routed already, but with the ultra Brexiters. May has found, as did Cameron before her, that they cannot be appeased. Once, they just wanted to leave the EU but stay in the single market. But on winning the referendum that was not enough. Thus May embraced the hard Brexit of leaving the single market and seeking a trade deal but now finds that the ultras are pushing for no deal at all.

More specifically, ever since the White Paper was published I have thought that May’s Brexit strategy would in due course run into problems with the ultras. As I wrote at the time, the plan seems to be to re-create by different means (and at great expense) many features of the single market, and since then even the commitments on immigration seem to have been softened. Moreover, May now seems belatedly to have realised that there will have to be some form of transitional period between leaving the EU at the end of the two year A50 period and the beginning of any new deal, and to have accepted that the EU will not enter into parallel ‘exit and future’ talks. The ultras have been muted about this so far, but when the negotiations begin – especially as the first item is likely to be the exit bill – this will not last. They will then start pushing hard for the ‘no deal’ scenario that May once also entertained but has now apparently retreated from, presumably having realised that it would be an economic doomsday for Britain.

So the (for May and the Brexit press) unsayable explanation of the election is to undercut the ultras before they can undercut the government. Having campaigned and presumably won an election on the basis of the White Paper plan and not the ‘clean Brexit’ (aka ‘no deal’) which UKIP will campaign on, the ultras will find it harder to oppose May when she pursues that plan. And if, as expected, she has an increased majority then it will be difficult for them to succeed if they do try to oppose her. That assumes that the new Tory MPs are not also ultras but even if they are, junior and ambitious MPs are much easier to control than the old salt veterans of the Maastricht debates, especially by a newly installed, dominant and, reputedly, loyalty-obsessed PM.

This interpretation of what the election means is shared by many within the EU and also within financial markets, who believe it makes a softer Brexit more likely. These terms are relative, of course, in that ‘softer Brexit’ now means what used to be called hard Brexit, but it is softer than the ultra-Brexit position. This is why the pound, which has directly tracked every soft versus hard signal since last June, rose after the election was announced.

None of this is good news, except in the limited sense that indicates that May is trying to avoid the very worst case scenario that the ultra-Brexiters would force on her if they could. This seems consistent with the more general sense in recent weeks that May (and David Davis) are getting more realistic about the immense difficulties and dangers of Brexit. The plan – which the EU may or may not go along with – is a fudge which will leave both committed remainers and leavers dissatisfied but which may well be sufficient to keep the Tory party together and to satisfy enough of the electorate that Brexit is being pursued in a way which they can support or at least live with.

In that limited, tactical, sense May’s decision is an adroit one. But it may backfire. For one thing the outcome of the current election cannot be absolutely guaranteed – especially if the turnout is very low. In some ‘safe’ Tory seats where the remain vote was high, the LibDems might win and, more generally, it shouldn’t be forgotten that some 40% of those who voted Tory in 2015 also voted remain; nor that many leave voters are not habitual voters in general elections. That is highly unlikely to prevent the Tories winning but it’s certainly conceivable that the net result does not increase the government’s majority by very much. If so, May will have lost one very strong option in her arsenal as the negotiations progress, since it seems inconceivable that she could call another election within the A50 period. The ultras would then be in a strong position. On the other hand, if the outcome is a large increase in the Tory majority and if my analysis here is correct then it is a pleasing irony to think that the saboteurs May is seeking to crush are the ultra-Brexiters who are currently so enthusiastically supporting her.