A dangerous political void

There is now a dangerous void of leadership and policy at the heart of British politics. Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, as regards Brexit, the UK no longer has a functioning government. There are no obvious solutions in sight, and the outcome is completely unpredictable.

The House of Commons has decided that it has confidence in Theresa May’s government, but at the same time that it is opposed, on a massive scale, to the central and defining policy of that government: a truly bizarre situation. In rejecting May’s Brexit deal, the core underlying problem with Brexit itself was revealed: there is no consensus about what it means, even amongst those who support it.

Thus some voted for the deal because it ‘delivers Brexit’, whilst others opposed it because it ‘betrays Brexit’ whilst still others opposed it because it is ‘the wrong sort of Brexit’. The consequences of the failure of the Leave campaign to specify its meaning, and of May to build a durable consensus as to what it could mean, have now been brutally revealed, as has the vacuity of every proponent of Brexit claiming that their particular version is sanctified by 17.4 million votes.

Pointless politics and junk ideas

So May is now, far too late, in the process of ‘reaching out’ across parties to modify her deal. But, so far, it seems that the only aspect she is willing to modify relates to the Irish backstop provisions. Since there is no prospect of the EU re-negotiating the substantive parts of this, since changes which aren’t substantive will not placate those who oppose the deal on those grounds, and since much of the opposition isn’t simply or even at all to do with the backstop, this seems to be an utterly pointless exercise.

By, apparently, insisting that her main ‘red lines’ still define the true meaning of Brexit, May therefore begins this exercise by rejecting the main Labour demand, to remain in a customs union. But that demand is, in and of itself, also pointless. Being in a customs union (not, note, ‘the customs union’, which is only for EU members) in itself has little value. It certainly doesn’t solve the Irish border issue, nor does it deliver frictionless trade. Equally pointless is the reason given for not being in a customs union, an independent trade policy, since the economic benefits of this are, at best, nugatory and swamped by the wider costs of Brexit.

May also rejects the demand to ‘take no deal off the table’, made from any number of quarters, including Labour. But this demand is also pointless. No deal can only be avoided by agreeing to do something else. If nothing else is agreed, no deal happens by default. Equally pointless is the commonly given reason for not taking it off the table, that it gives the UK leverage in negotiating the Withdrawal Agreement, since those negotiations are closed. There is no reason at all to think that the EU-27 would extend the Article 50 period to re-open those talks, or that a substantively different outcome would result.

This makes Labour’s idea that, if in power, it could negotiate a better deal as ludicrous as the ERG idea that May’s Withdrawal Agreement can be rewritten - or, even more ludicrous, dropped altogether as a prelude to miraculously negotiating a future trade deal having refused the preconditions for such a negotiation. These are junk ideas, with no foundation in political reality and at this very late stage in the day we shouldn’t have to suffer politicians and others propounding them.

Remote prospects for a solution

Where there is scope for renegotiation is in the Political Declaration on future terms. It is here that May’s red lines are plain and where they could, if she would agree, be dropped. The particular issue, of course, is the single market (and, hence, the freedom of movement and ECJ red lines). Yet not only is she adamant about these red lines, but Labour’s policy of seeking a “strong single market relationship” is so vapid as to be entirely meaningless. For that matter, it is not notably at odds with what May would claim she seeks.

The real issue is single market membership: what used to be described as soft Brexit until the goalposts changed so that it meant anything other than the kamikaze Brexit of no deal. If Labour were to pivot to supporting single market membership (as well as a form of customs union), and amending the Political Declaration accordingly, it seems highly likely that, with Tory rebels, that would command a majority in the Commons. It’s not even entirely inconceivable that the DUP would support it, in that it upholds their deepest red line of Northern Ireland and Great Britain leaving on the same terms. Alternatively, a cross-party coalition of backbenchers might conceivably be able to create a majority for amending the Political Declaration in defiance of both front benches.

This would only take things so far, though. For the point about the Political Declaration, of course, is that it is non-binding. So even if a cobbled together cross-parliamentary alliance were to get such an adjustment it would be immediately prone to unpicking, post-Brexit – for example by a Brexiter successor to Theresa May.

Alternatively, if Labour were to spearhead and succeed in this initiative, the likely fallout in terms of Tory splits could well be a successful no confidence vote, an election and, potentially, a Labour government to implement soft Brexit. If Labour hadn’t led the way then much more difficult, but not entirely impossible given these crisis times, would be some form of semi-permanent coalition based upon that which had forced the amendment of the Political Declaration. In effect, this would be a form of national government.

If a parliamentary majority for another referendum could be found, however, that would only need to endure long enough to frame the legislation and hold the vote (and, of course, seek the Article 50 extension that would be needed and, most think, would be granted). But May is resolutely opposed (even though it is actually the only route by which her deal might have a chance, possibly a good chance, of succeeding), as is Corbyn. Again, were Labour to change position then that would make it far easier both to create a parliamentary majority for a referendum and to sustain it to agree the vexed issues of the question and the franchise. What the outcome of a referendum would be is, of course, another matter.

All pathways are blocked

So every pathway is convoluted and currently blocked by one or more apparently immovable obstacle. The incoherent nature of the Brexit project was always likely to have brought us here, but it has been compounded by lamentable leadership. May seems to care about nothing but her monocular version of Brexit whilst Corbyn seems to care nothing about Brexit at all, to the extent that he apparently doesn’t understand even the most basic facts about it.

Despite their political differences, May and Corbyn are remarkably similar in their grotesque rigidity, and their slightly tetchy muleishness born of a mediocrity of character, intellect and judgment. Indeed the most notable thing about the closing speeches in the ‘no confidence’ debate was that they provided devastating critiques of both party leaders. Certainly neither seems remotely prepared or competent to create and lead the kind of temporary or semi-permanent cross-party parliamentary alliance that looks like the only route out of this mess.

A theme of many posts on this blog has been that various actors within the Brexit process need to face up to realities. Indeed, the central reason for the current fiasco is that so many have failed to do so. From that perspective, we all now need to face up to the reality of what is happening. The leaders of the two main parties are woefully inadequate and neither has a deliverable policy on Brexit (May’s is in tatters and Corbyn barely has a policy at all), the party system is completely inadequate to the situation, and parliament is spavined.

Unless something radical changes – and it may, precisely because of the desperate plight we are now in - then it seems highly likely that Britain will leave the EU with no deal. That will mean that in ten weeks’ time we will face severe economic and social dislocation, with the probability of food and medicine shortages, troops on the street, disruptions to travel and much else.

It would be an outcome desired by only a tiny minority of grossly irresponsible ideologues in parliament and amongst the public. The division, crisis and extremism it would unleash make that feared were there to be another referendum, or even a revocation of Article 50 without a vote, seem like a walk in the park.  

Government paralysis risks a Brexit disaster

With each day bringing ever more peculiar political stories it is easy to take for granted the over-arching peculiarity shaping British government, as if it were a normal situation. That is to say, we have a minority government whose central and defining policy is to change fundamentally Britain’s economy and foreign policy in ways which will damage, and are already damaging, both; and this on the basis of the most extreme interpretation of a very narrow referendum result, itself conceivably influenced by a foreign power, an interpretation which is not supported by the majority of MPs, nor by half the cabinet, nor by the majority of the electorate and which the Prime Minister herself probably does not think is in the best interests of the country. I cannot think of a precedent in the history of Britain, or any other country, for such a situation. No matter how familiar these facts are we should never take them to be normal.

It is from this perverse situation that everything else flows, with cabinet ministers quite airily articulating their own version of what form Brexit will take so that (even leaving aside Priti Patel’s freelance adventures in diplomacy) Britain no longer has a functioning foreign policy, as Ian Dunt argued in an excoriating article this week. Meanwhile, having insisted that its 58 sectoral impact assessments, full of “excruciating detail”, must on no account be published since they would reveal the UK’s ‘negotiating hand’, the government now announces that, in fact, they do not exist. Which suggests either that on one of these points they were lying, or that the damage of publishing them would consist of revealing to the EU how little proper planning had been undertaken.

If the latter, it is, alas, likely that the EU are all too well aware of this. Indeed, there are widespread reports of growing frustration and bewilderment within the EU. Despite Britain’s frequent calls for quicker progress, this week’s talks are to be brief and, according the government, no more than a ‘stock taking’ exercise rather than substantive negotiations. A closely argued article by Jonathan Lis this week, based on high level contacts in Brussels, suggested that the EU is now coming to the view that a ‘no deal’ outcome, with all the chaos that entails, in March 2019 is more likely than not. And it is reported that a deadline of three weeks will be set for Britain to agree the terms of a financial settlement if there are to be talks about a transition agreement (itself a highly complex matter, as a new analysis by Professor Kenneth Armstrong discusses).

It hardly needs to be spelt out, but the reason why things are stalled is that the government can do nothing because as soon as it does it will fall apart (there have been rumours of a serious offer on the financial settlement, but nothing has happened yet). For that matter, The Times is today reporting (£) that Brussels are preparing for the British government to fall by the end of the year. I argued in my previous post that this must be a real possibility, underscored by the fact that the cabinet meeting was cancelled this week, apparently because of the depth of the political crisis and divisions engulfing it. If this doesn’t happen, then the paralysis will continue. But paralysis does not mean stasis, because each day that goes by brings March 2019 closer, and brings no deal closer. This, of course, is precisely what the Brexit ultras want and is the reason they continue to support May. The issue thus becomes whether and when the more pragmatic parts of the Tory party (and pragmatic in this context does not mean remainers or even soft Brexiters, it just means not belonging to the kamikaze tendency) are prepared to stand up and say that this ludicrous situation cannot continue, bringing the government down if needs be.

If that does not happen soon the damage will be huge. And yet if it does happen soon the Ultras will inevitably say that all would have been well had the government survived and continued on its kamikaze course. In those circumstances, a new government of whatever stripe might well continue on just such a course. So it may be that it is not until the damage – economic and political – really ramps up that there is any chance of the Ultras being discredited, if not in their own eyes then those of the public. Thus we are on a very perilous tightrope with no certainty, and perhaps only a slender chance, of getting to the other side more or less intact. If the government implodes too soon, the Ultras may still drag us to disaster; if it struggles on as it is for too long the disaster will arrive of its own accord and it will be too late to do anything about it.

Talk of a 'no deal' Brexit is normalising hard Brexit

One noteworthy feature of the nomination race for the Republican Presidential candidate was that the candidates who might in other circumstances have been thought of as holding rather extreme views became seen as moderate. The reason, of course, was Donald Trump, compared to whom they were indeed relatively moderate. By moving the scale so far to the extreme what had hitherto been seen as extreme became normalised.

Something very similar is underway now with Brexit. The idea of a ‘no deal’ – or what might be better called kamikaze - Brexit was not even entertained during the Referendum campaign when, as noted in my previous post, leading Brexiters assured us that a deal would be quick and easy. But now no deal is being talked about quite blithely as not being too bad or, even, as being actually preferable to having a deal. And this comes not just from fringe figures on social media but from senior MPs like John Redwood and even cabinet ministers like Liam Fox.

Anyone who knows anything at all about it knows that the consequences of no deal would be catastrophic for the UK – not just in terms of trade but a wide range of the taken-for-granted amenities of modern life from air travel to affordable food to cancer treatments. No less significant is that such an outcome would shred Britain’s credibility as a trusted negotiating partner, with consequences for both trade and geo-political deal-making. Pretending otherwise does not hold water even as a ‘negotiating tactic’ since the EU knows all this just as much as anyone else. This is not, as some seem to imagine, a game of poker in which one player can bluff because each player already know what cards the other holds.

So no deal is not, and should not be regarded as, a serious possibility. But the consequence of talking about it as if it were certainly has serious consequences. It serves to normalise what is actually an extreme position, namely hard Brexit. Thus we are getting to a situation where it seems as if just avoiding the catastrophe of no deal would somehow be a sane, pragmatic and desirable outcome.

In fact, as those long months in which all we knew was that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ showed, in the initial period after the Referendum the spectrum of possibilities ran from soft Brexit – meaning single market membership and some form of customs union membership – to hard Brexit, meaning neither as well as exiting numerous bodies such as Euratom. It was not until May’s Lancaster House speech in January 2017 that we were told that Brexit must mean hard Brexit. Yet now, it is common to see no deal described as hard Brexit, and what used to be called hard Brexit depicted as a soft position. Thus Philip Hammond is eviscerated for his lack of faith for championing what was once seen as the extreme form of Brexit.

I’ve written elsewhere about how no matter what concessions are made to Brexiters they always want more. They have now succeeded in dragging the whole country with them. There is simply no way that most, or even many, leave voters could have thought that the no deal scenario was what they were voting for. But now that this scenario is being discussed as a real possibility many voters – whether they were for remain or leave in the Referendum – are highly likely conclude that, by comparison, hard Brexit is ‘not so bad as that’*. In this way, hard Brexit, which was never voted for by the British people, is becoming normalised.

 

*That claim is in no way undermined by the recent Sky News poll finding that 74% of people would prefer ‘no deal’ to ‘a bad deal’ because a question posed in that form would be bound to achieve such a result. A ‘bad deal’ sounds – of course – like something bad; whereas ‘no deal’ sounds neutral, as if nothing much would change (some respondents might even interpret it to mean remaining in the EU). But if a question were posed in terms of choosing between the realities of ‘no deal’ and those of hard Brexit the result would certainly be a preference for hard Brexit.

By accident or design, a 'no deal' Brexit is getting closer

Theresa May’s commons statement on Brexit progress was a strange, confused and confusing mixture indicative of the strange, confused and confusing situation we are now in. On the one hand it showed some glimmers of realism about how in any ‘transition period’ ECJ jurisdiction would continue. That immediately attracted the ire of the Brexit Jacobins, such as the ubiquitous Rees-Mogg. Interestingly, there are signs that the Brexiters in the cabinet – Gove, especially – are more relaxed about this, reflecting, I suppose, the distinction between those who have the luxury of not having to take any responsibility and those who do. On the other hand, there was a much harder sense that May is preparing for a ‘no deal’ or 'Kamikaze' Brexit, and in that, of course, she has the unqualified support of the Ultras.

Why should ‘no deal’ even be being spoken of at this point? The answer seems to be a realization that the EU is unlikely to agree that sufficient progress has been made on phase 1 issues in order to progress to trade talks, and raising ‘no deal’ is perhaps designed to put pressure on the EU – or more accurately the individual member states – to give ground on this (and, by the way, even if they do UK ideas of what the future trade relationship would look like are unrealistic).

That in itself is absurd. The reason there has been no progress on phase 1 is almost entirely because the UK has failed to come up with anything remotely realistic on the issues of citizens’ rights, the financial settlement or the Irish border. And the reason for that, as ever, is because the Brexit Ultras won’t countenance anything realistic on the first two of these, whilst there is no obvious solution to the third of them. Moreover, progress has been made slow by the lack of British preparation prior to triggering Article 50, the time wasted by the election and by Tory infighting, the confused departmental structure created to handle Brexit, and the low-energy approach of David Davis to the negotiations.

What May is proposing to the EU probably leaves them with no option other than to decline it – at which point they will be accused of collapsing the talks and, possibly, giving a pretext for a UK walkout. If this is indeed about negotiating tactics then it is taking a massive gamble since it would, at the least, precipitate an immediate further collapse of sterling. In the longer run, using such tactics risks the possibility of a ‘no deal’ by accident – the political equivalent of nuclear brinksmanship going wrong. If that happens then the consequences will, of course, be economically and socially catastrophic – as outlined in an alarming, but by no means alarmist, post by pro-Brexit blogger Pete North.

Even accepting that Brexit is going to happen, there is absolutely no reason why it needs to be pursued in this way. I don’t just mean that a soft (single market) Brexit would avoid what is happening now. I mean that even a hard Brexit does not need to be pursued in this fantastically reckless and incompetent way. Having made its ill-advised choice, the government could fairly easily deal with citizens’ rights by not fixating on an ECJ role, and with the financial issues which are not, in the overall scheme of the costs of Brexit (and certainly the costs of a no deal Brexit) so great. And on Ireland they could at least develop some meaningful proposals, unlike the latest absurdity. Above all, there is absolutely no reason why they need to be in such a hurry. Given the complexities involved, there’s no reason in principle why the UK could not seek a much longer transition period and/or an extension of the Article 50 period. Whilst neither could be guaranteed, a more pragmatic and conciliatory stance from the UK could have made them achievable.

But for the ultras, if not for the government, the ‘no deal’ scenario is not something to be raised as a negotiating ploy – no matter how absurd and, had things been approached differently, unnecessary – it is the desired outcome. This is abundantly clear from the statements of many of them, including a contemptible piece by Bernard Jenkin, every sentence of which was a distortion of the truth, when it was not an outright lie. The overall message was clear – Brexit should be easy, and is only being prevented from being so by the vindictiveness of the EU and the machinations of remainers, in which conspiracy the Treasury and the CBI were included.

What Jenkin and his allies plainly want is for the talks to collapse and for a no deal Brexit to occur. Whether this is because they hope this will be a platform for a complete re-design of the UK along hard Right lines, or just because they are so viscerally bent of shape by their hatred of the EU is hard to tell. At all events, the government is now hostage to them, meaning that any halfway economically pragmatic approach to Brexit is politically impossible, and anything which is politically possible is economically untenable. So we are getting closer to ‘no deal’ even if, as David Allen Green argues, it is not inevitable.

It’s possible that this will change – a collapse of the talks would, as Jolyon Maugham suggests, throw into sharp relief just what a calamity ‘no deal’ would be, and might precipitate some parliamentary regrouping around sanity. But it is equally likely in such a scenario that a narrative of ‘EU punishment’ is whipped up, driving us headlong to the reality of ‘no deal’. If that comes about, those of us who can would be well-advised to make plans to emigrate, whilst those who can’t should stock up on tinned goods and install some good, strong locks.

It should never be forgotten that nothing remotely like the situation we are in – let alone that which might shortly unfold – is what was promised to those who voted to leave the EU. They were repeatedly told that leaving would be quick, easy and wholly positive. Every reptilian Brexit politician who piously invokes ‘the will of the people’ to justify this emerging national tragedy should be reminded of that.

The myth of 'pragmatic' Brexit

It seems highly unlikely that any cabinet ministers read this blog or were they to do so that they would find much to agree with. Nevertheless, developments over the last 48 hours might suggest that ministers are alert to the situation I outlined in my last post. There, I said that the more inflexible and extreme a stance Brexiters took the more danger (from their point of view, or hope, from a remainer point of view) there was that voters would turn against them.

It is this, as well as pressure from businesses, that seems to have driven the new soundbite of Brexit ‘pragmatism’ from Michael Gove and other ministers. Substantively, this amounts to an acceptance of some form of transitional or – the government’s preferred term – implementation period to follow the end of the Article 50 period and the formal end of EU membership in March 2019. What this means in practice is not clear in terms of, for example, single market and customs union membership. Gove has suggested that it would mean continued free movement of labour which in turn seems to imply both of those things and, therefore, ECJ jurisdiction. Nor is it clear what timeframe is envisaged. Periods of two to four years are mentioned, but if the transition in question is to the completion of a free trade agreement with the EU it could be much longer than that.

As the howls of outrage from kamikaze Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone suggest, this represents a victory for the more ‘economics-focussed’ Brexit of Philip Hammond. But as noted in my previous post it is vital to realise that this is not soft Brexit as normally understood (single market and, perhaps, customs union membership). It remains a hard Brexit and although it is not quite as ruinous as the ‘no deal’ or ‘cliff edge' variants of the kamikaze Brexiters it is only judged against that lunatic yardstick that it can be called pragmatic. Such pragmatism as is on display comes not, alas, from the government but from the decisions now being reported on a daily basis of individuals and companies to leave the UK. Whatever happens now, the Brexit ‘patriots’ have already done long-term damage to the country.

As for the politics of a transition period, once again the Brexiters are having an inward-looking, parochial discussion. It is by no means automatic that the EU will agree to such an arrangement. Although it would have the advantage of being more orderly and less disruptive for the EU-27, the prospect of the UK sitting half-in and half-out for a long period of time is unlikely to be appealing. That is especially so since Britain continues to act in the oppositional, awkward way that has long characterised our membership, even as we are in the process of leaving. For example, the government are currently fighting EU energy efficiency proposals, even though these would not come into effect until after we have left, and in May blocked a proposal for an EU military unit.

This, along with the bigger irritation of Britain’s failure to engage seriously in the Brexit negotiations, is hardly conducive to accommodating a transitional deal to mitigate the most catastrophic self-inflicted effects of Brexit. But there is another factor, too. So unstable and flaky has Britain’s reputation become – something commented on again this week in both the American and Irish media – that this latest cobbled together stance cannot be relied upon. Why should the EU invest in this newly forged ‘pragmatism’ when within a week or a month it may have unwound and the kamikaze tendency are back in control? It’s hardly unthinkable that, say, Boris Johnson – who has not yet publicly endorsed a transitional period – might pop up shouting ‘betrayal’ and the whole British approach gets thrown up in to the air again.

As for the politics of remainers, this mythical pragmatism can be read in two ways. One is that – as per my previous post – it is unhelpful in that it appears ‘moderate’ compared with kamikaze Brexit. From that point of view it is important to constantly challenge the idea that it is moderate or pragmatic. The other reading is that it represents the possibility (as, clearly, the extreme Brexiters fear) that Brexit gets endlessly deferred, and Britain remains in an ever-extended transition. However I, and I would imagine most remainers, do not want to be in an ever-extended transition. I want Britain to be in the EU or, at worst, to be in a settled position within the EEA. From that point of view the only positive is that a transition might be a staging post to the abandonment of Brexit and that the longer it goes on the greater the hope that public sentiment moves in favour of such an abandonment.

Could the Brexiters be the best hope for avoiding Brexit?

That the latest round of Brexit talks did not yield any particular resolutions is in no way surprising and no one, including Brexiters, would have expected otherwise. But the undercurrent of talk around this week’s meetings is alarming. The BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg, amongst others, reports a sense that the British government has not agreed on what it wants, what it might compromise on, and is generally inadequately prepared for the negotiations. Instead, the UK seems to still be working at the level of meaningless generalities such as seeking “frictionless access” to the single market, something incompatible with the government’s stated policy of leaving the single market and customs union. That this is so was implicit in the end of meeting press conference, with Michel Barnier calling repeatedly greater clarity from the UK on its aims.

A significant sidelight on this was shed by former EU trade negotiator Miriam Gonzalez Durantez in a very interesting Guardian article. She argues that “the preposterous positions on Brexit taken by the government” are in part attributable to the leading advisory role played by the Legatum Institute think tank, the shortcomings of which she forensically dissects. Be that as it may, the core issue is that which is being played out daily in leaks and briefings, namely that the government is hopelessly divided on Brexit. It has lost its power to shock, but it is still worth remembering that they chose, of their own volition, to trigger Article 50 without having a settled view on what they wanted and how to go about it. It must rank as one of the most irresponsible acts by any government in living memory.

What is also worth recalling is that for all that the media misleadingly refer to the splits within the government as being between soft and hard Brexit they are nothing of the sort. The principle fault line is between those such as Philip Hammond, and perhaps David Davis, who want to seek a long transitional agreement and those such as Liam Fox, and perhaps Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, who do not. Perhaps within that there are other differences, such as a willingness or not to entertain a ‘no deal’ Brexit or to entertain some degree of ECJ jurisdiction. Nevertheless, this is not soft versus hard Brexit, it is hard versus kamikaze Brexit. Hammond’s position may be marginally more responsible, but the margin is fine.

The kamikaze tendency were out in force today, with Michael Gove refusing to endorse a government position paper which would allow the ECJ a role even in pending cases. A more high profile intervention came from Liam Fox which included the less than overwhelming claim that Britain could “survive” without an exit deal, and the less than plausible claim that a trade deal with the EU would be the easiest in history. That latter argument recycles one that Brexiters like Nigel Lawson used to make before the Referendum (Lawson has since said that he thinks there will not be trade deal) based on the fact that the UK already has zero tariffs and regulatory harmonization, the things that usually make trade deals slow. Thus, they argue, this one can be quick. But that ignores the fact that to make these arrangements ongoing entails membership of the single market and customs union which is precisely what the Brexiters don’t want. In particular, regulatory harmonization is not a one-off event but an ongoing process of evolution which is ultimately overseen by the ECJ. But Brexiters don’t accept ECJ jurisdiction. So if it was a normal trade deal, which sought to make trade closer, it would indeed be quick. But it is not a normal trade deal, because – uniquely in modern economic history - it seeks to make trade less close.

As this pantomime goes on, the costs of Brexit in any form are becoming ever clearer – with, for example, banks already preparing to move thousands of jobs out of the UK – and those of a kamikaze Brexit particularly so – with, for example, serious threats to food supplies and air travel. At the same time, Britain’s reputation in the world is already being eviscerated, as detailed in a very thoughtful piece by Jonathan Lis, Deputy Director of British Influence, on the indispensable politics.co.uk site. One particularly interesting part of that analysis is discussion of the idea that the UK could somehow retain membership of various EU foreign policy, defence and security bodies after Brexit. This is of course, as Lis explains, completely unrealistic but all of a piece with other ideas about, for example, Euratom or the European Medicine Agency (EMA). As it becomes clearer what Brexit actually means in practice, so the UK tries to imagine that it can somehow avoid the damage by special arrangements. But one by one these fantasies are being exposed. For example, whereas David Davis airily opined that the EMA – which matters both in its own right and in its role in the strategically vital pharma industry and bio-medical research complex in the UK – might stay in Britain after Brexit that was simply brushed aside by the EU. The EMA will go.

There is therefore now a polarity amongst Brexiters (and sometimes within them). Sometimes they continue to cling to Pollyannaish fantasies of ‘having our cake and eating it’, whether as regards trade or non-trade issues. Sometimes they say that none of it matters, and that the cake can be hurled on the floor and trampled underfoot. And of course the one pole easily morphs into the other. When their fantasies are exposed as fantasies they stamp their feet like spoiled adolescents and say they don’t care.

All of this is both depressing and predictable to committed remainers. But I think its real importance lies in how it gets received by less committed remainers – the kind of remain voters who might say that whilst they did not vote for Brexit they now think we should get on with it – and less committed leavers – the kind of leave voters who accepted the Brexiter claim that leaving would be quick, easy and advantageous.

For these groups – and taken together they must be quite sizeable, perhaps half of the vote on each side – what is unfolding is likely to be increasingly alarming. On the one hand, it is all clearly proving to be far more complicated and protracted than they were led to expect. On the other hand, they are not like the Brexiter Jacobins for whom nothing matters so much as the purity of the flame. So they are likely to begin to see Brexiters as at best completely incompetent and at worst slightly mad.

From this perspective, for all that it will be a white-knuckle ride, committed remainers might have as their best hope that the government continue to display division and incompetence and bring Britain to the edge of disaster. If the relatively sensible and realistic voices of, for example, Hammond hold sway then it is less likely that Brexit will be discredited in itself, and more likely that its failures will be attributed to EU ‘punishment’. By the same token, if the kamikaze Brexiters are given their head and get to the point of disaster they will be less able in future years to nurture fantasies of betrayal (or, at least, those fantasies will have little traction outside their own fetid circle).

Of course this is very high risk stuff, not just for remainers but more importantly for the whole country. Precisely because it means going right to the brink of disaster in order to avoid disaster, it inevitably means damage. The jobs and investment lost, the companies relocating, the skilled workers leaving, the shredding of national reputation will all have long-term negative effects. But, against that, we might just get out of the even worse precipice that the Brexiters want to push us over. If this seems an unappealing set of options, that’s what the referendum campaign and its aftermath have left us with.

In this context, the Labour party stance – although I have been, and am, highly critical of it – might just possibly pay dividends. It is just sufficiently ambiguous and possibly sufficiently plastic that as the Tory Brexiters drive us towards what a majority of the public recognize as folly, Labour could, without too much pain, ride that wave of opinion, topple the government and pull back from Brexit. Alternatively, the idea that has been floating around since the referendum of a new centrist party emerging and taking power might come true. At all events, the more that Brexiters flail around incompetently, the more their mendacious predictions fail, the more extreme they become and the more the slim result of the referendum disappears into the past then the more fragile Brexit becomes. Very few people voted for the Brexit that is emerging; fewer still for the kamikaze Brexit some Brexiters dream of.