Brexit: stuck

Predictable as it was, it’s difficult to feel anything other than astonishment and despair at what is – or more accurately isn’t – happening with Brexit. It is now six weeks since the UK was due to leave the EU, and there is still not the remotest sign of any realistic thinking about the predicament that our country is in.

The government’s talks with Labour are ‘ongoing’, supposedly given new impetus by the local election results which both May and Corbyn, apparently, think were a message to ‘get on and deliver Brexit’. That’s absurd, given that the main gainers were remain parties but, even if we indulge the absurdity, it seems clear that it is only a matter of when, not if, it is announced that the talks have failed. They were probably doomed from the start.

The trap of betrayal

Even if that is not so, it is abundantly plain that if they did yield anything then the hard core Brexiters would say it is a betrayal. Farage has already warned as much – in fact, he calls it the ‘final betrayal’ (though, with Farage, you can be sure that there is always another one in his back pocket). And that is the crux of the trap that May’s Brexit premiership has created for itself: if she gets a deal through it will be seen by Brexiters as a betrayal; if she doesn’t then that too will be seen as a betrayal. But still she presses on because – having imbibed their language without gaining their support – she thinks that to do otherwise would be … betrayal.

Were there to be, as Labour hope, a General Election bringing Jeremy Corbyn into power he would face the same situation. It was clear in his launch of Labour’s European elections campaign yesterday that he is committed to delivering Brexit (but the Labour version, which is still based on the ‘single market access’ fantasy). If that happens it, like a ‘Tory Brexit’, will be seen as betrayal by the Faragists and also opposed by the bulk of his own party, in a mirror image of May’s dilemma.

Small wonder that Corbyn doesn’t want to talk about Brexit much at all during the European elections and in that, too, there’s a mirror with the Tory Party. It has already become obvious that they can hardly campaign on May’s Brexit policy because it so bitterly divides them. But nor can they campaign on any other Brexit policy whilst May is their leader. Thus their line seems likely to be that the elections don’t matter because the MEPs elected will not take their seats because something will turn up and they are reportedly resigned to a disastrous, perhaps even sixth place, result (£).  So from the two main parties on the biggest defining issue for decades, which dominates the political landscape, there is a total void.

The Brexit black hole

Into this political black hole step the Brexit fantasists who, untrammelled by any need to take responsibility, can continue to promote an imaginary ‘true Brexit’ that could never be delivered. Still struggling with the concept that leaving the institutions that make borders unnecessary has the consequence of making borders necessary (the political equivalent of 2 + 2 = 4), they continue to promote ‘alternative arrangements’ for the Irish border that don’t exist.

Sometimes, ludicrously, as when proposed by David Davis who as former Brexit Secretary had ample opportunity to learn it was nonsense, the proposal is that this is something that May might negotiate. More commonly, it is proposed as something that her replacement as Tory leader could do and it seems certain that most candidates for the job will make this their pitch. It is pure hokum as has been pointed out endlessly, not least on this blog.

Almost invariably, those proposing these dead-in-the-water ideas claim that they have ‘had conversations in Brussels’ revealing that the EU have made it clear that they are completely open to them, if only the British government would formally propose them. Needless to say, no evidence is ever given. In a variant on the same theme, others claim to have met ‘senior WTO people’ (never named) and on that basis conclude that the Article 24 nonsense is a viable way forward. Yet even these proposals, gibberish as they are, are a masterpiece of statecraft compared with the entirely content-free offering of the Brexit Party. Extraordinarily, the plan is, apparently, to release their manifesto after the election whilst campaigning on a platform of – you really couldn’t make this up – defending democracy.

Alongside the pretence of a miraculous way of doing Brexit if only ‘they’ would do it, one of the most notable things about Brexiters now is that they have ceased to make any pretence at all that Brexit is desirable in and of itself. The latest example is the bathetic comparison made by Ann Widdecombe, now a Brexit Party MEP candidate, between Brexit and – inevitably – the Second World War. Apart from the notion, at once ludicrous and offensive, that voluntary membership of an international body is equivalent to fascist domination, she was reduced to saying that whilst no-deal would produce some bumps in the road, it wouldn’t be anything like as bad as what people had suffered during the war. Goodbye ‘sunny uplands’, hello ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’. Truly inspirational.

The betrayal trap contains the seeds of a solution

Eventually we need to face up to some unpleasant truths. Any conceivable government delivering any conceivable Brexit is now going to be accused of betrayal. This would apply even to a no-deal Brexit under a new Tory leader since the disastrous consequences would inevitably be ascribed by those Brexiters now calling for just that to its having been ‘done the wrong way’. The betrayal accusation is probably going to be believed by something like a quarter to a third of the electorate. Sky News’ political correspondent Lewis Goodall summed this up very well in an article this week, arguing that Brexit is just the beginning of a much bigger populist revolt.

If that’s right, and I think it probably is, then the conclusion is that it doesn’t much matter what we do about Brexit – even, that Brexit isn’t really the issue. However it is delivered, and whether it is delivered or not, the same anger, the same sense of betrayal, the same sense that an amorphous ‘they’ always get their way will exist. But if that is so, then why not abandon Brexit, since there will be that sentiment anyway? It is rather like the old joke of the man who goes to the doctor and is offered some tablets with the warning that they may cause impotence, halitosis and baldness. I’ve already got the side-effects, he replies, so I might as well start taking the medicine.

Drifting to a referendum?

Parliamentary revocation has never in my view been a politically realistic route, except in extremis if there was no other option, but another referendum looks increasingly likely (although, of course, there’s no guarantee that the result would be to abandon Brexit). It’s true that the Tories are still steadfastly opposed to it, and Labour is so equivocal as to be unsupportive of it in all but name. For them, as re-iterated by Corbyn yesterday, the dodge is to keep it as an ‘option’ if a General Election cannot be achieved. That is a formula for potentially endless deferral since it will always be possible to say that wait another day and the government will fall.

Even so, since endless deferral isn’t really an option given the Article 50 process, and since neither party looks like coming up with anything else, it seems quite likely that one or even both of them will get to a referendum policy in the end (clearly it would be an easier pivot for Labour to make than for the Tories). I’ve thought that this was the direction we were going in since last February (and in that post accurately predicted that there would be European elections and the shape the campaign would take).

The longer things drift on and the further the 2016 vote recedes into the past the more likely it becomes. We’re clearly not there yet but there are currently rumours that May is at least considering the possibility of a parliamentary vote on the idea and amid his restatement of Labour’s non-policy yesterday Corbyn made some positive remarks about the healing possibilities of a referendum.

If for no other reason than getting off the hook on which Brexit has impaled their parties they might not be that far from realising it is the only way out. Few will think it a good solution, just the only thing left. A strong showing by remain parties in the EP elections would give impetus to that. Naïve as it might be to say so, one might even think that the fact that opinion polls have for some months now shown that the majority no longer wish to leave the EU might make a difference.

For now, though, Brexit – and with it Britain - is stuck on the same endless loop of nonsense we have been going round for years.

Brexit has been betrayed – by Brexiters and by Brexit itself

With the launch of the Brexit Party, a profoundly dangerous and dishonest argument - which has been doing the rounds in Brexiter circles virtually since they won the Referendum - is now being advanced with renewed and growing vigour. Its strength is its simplicity, indeed at the moment it is the entirety of the new party’s pitch: Brexit has been betrayed and democracy thwarted by a remainer parliament and a remainer Prime Minister. It’s a claim which is also, of course, made ad nauseam by Tory Brexiters, and seems to account at least in part for Labour’s continuing Brexit muddle.

Judging by current opinion polls, this argument resonates with, at least, 27% of voters. That figure matters both because it is quite large – certainly enough to bring significant success in the European elections – but also because it is considerably smaller than the 52% who voted to leave the EU. So it probably represents the hard core of the Brexit vote, and consists of people who, most likely, are impervious to any arguments against the ‘democracy betrayed’ argument.

The conclusion for remainers is that they need to find a way to rebut this argument which has cut through with those who are not in this hard core but did vote to leave, and also with those who voted remain but have some sympathy with the ‘democracy betrayed’ line. The first of those groups appears to be about 25% of the electorate, the second is much more difficult to quantify but might, conservatively, be guessed to be something like 10%.

Taken together, these two groups will matter in particular if there were to be another referendum but also in the European elections and any General Election that may be held. Perhaps most importantly of all they matter in terms of whether the poisonous politics of betrayal comes to dominate British politics. For they are both susceptible to the ‘democracy betrayed’ line but also potentially amenable to counter-arguments.

Counter-arguments to the ‘democracy betrayed’ narrative

There are certainly plenty of counter-arguments available. But not all of them have much cut through with this group of ‘amenables’. Pointing to the conduct and funding of the Leave campaign and its proven violations of Electoral law is perfectly valid, but the amenables will likely conclude that it is all rather murky and complicated and, anyway, has the sound of ‘sour grapes’. Repeating that the Referendum was only advisory, whilst legally true, just doesn’t have political traction not least because of Cameron’s ill-judged promise that the result would be implemented. And saying that democracy is an ongoing process, not just a single vote in 2016, invites the response that, still, there was a vote then and it should be honoured.

In short, mobilising the arguments that committed remainers find convincing isn’t likely to resonate with those susceptible, but not committed, to the ‘democracy betrayed’ argument. What might?

Although hard core Brexiters have been looking – I would argue hoping – for signs of betrayal ever since the Referendum, in the event this has taken a slightly different form to what might have been expected. That is, there is less accent on a narrative of EU punishment (although that is certainly present) and much more emphasis on UK political failure. That is therefore the most important place to challenge the betrayal claim.

The key point is this: the betrayal claim talks as if the government had announced that it was going to ignore the Referendum and Brexit was not going to happen. In fact, the precise opposite is true. The government has done all it can, not just to deliver Brexit but to deliver hard Brexit. No single market, no customs union, no freedom of movement, no ECJ. The ‘remain’ parliament voted overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50. The entire machinery of government has been given over to delivering Brexit for the last three years.

Why hasn’t Brexit happened?

That’s not the reason Brexit hasn’t yet happened (yet). The main block has been Brexiter MPs not voting for May’s deal. The ERG voted against it en masse twice, and the self-styled ‘Spartans’, of whom Farage apparently approves, did so a third time. This is what has delayed and possibly imperilled Brexit.

There is a canard put around by these diehards that they cannot be blamed as, even with their votes, the deal wouldn’t have passed. But this is disingenuous. First, had they voted for it and the numbers been much closer then there would have been a much greater chance of more Labour leaver (or ‘Breleaver’) MPs defying their party Whip. As it was, they had no incentive to do so. Second, in any case, it is absurd for the diehards to simultaneously claim that theirs was a decision of great courage and principle but that on the other hand it was irrelevant to what happened.

Brexiters, of course, say that their refusal to support May’s deal is because it is not ‘real Brexit’, primarily because of the backstop. That is nonsense: the backstop arises precisely because May is trying to enact the hard Brexit which, at the time of the Lancaster House speech, the Brexiters accepted, and still say, was real Brexit. It is a consequence, not a betrayal, of hard Brexit. Nor does it preclude the 'alternative arrangements' that Brexiters prefer: if and when they are demonstrated the exist, the backstop will not be needed. So far from being a ‘remainer PM’, May’s self-inflicted tragedy has been to try to implement the lies and impossibilities demanded by those who now criticise her.

If that is accepted, then it follows that if Brexit and democracy have been betrayed then it is by the most committed Brexiters. But if it is not accepted, then it follows that these committed Brexiters have defended rather than thwarted Brexit and in that case parliament has not betrayed democracy but upheld it. Either way, the betrayal argument if falsified.

So who betrayed Brexit?

The deeper point is that if voters amongst the group I am calling the ‘amenables’ want to look for people to blame for what has happened, it is to the leaders of Brexit – including Farage – that they should look. It is they who campaigned with no defined version of leaving; they who promised that leaving would be simple and painless and poured scorn on anyone raising the complexities and costs; they who, when given responsibility for delivering it – people like Davis, Johnson, Raab and Baker – kept resigning rather than face up to the practicalities; and they who, when Brexit was just within grasp – people like Francois, Bridgen, Jenkin and, again, Baker – refused to vote for it.

Similarly, a recurring Faragist trope is that the remainer Establishment have “humiliated” Britain. But any humiliation is squarely down to the attempt by ‘the Establishment’ to ‘honour the vote’ and put into practice what Farage and other Brexiters insisted they must, not their failure to do so. The responsibility lies solely with those who urged the country on this path, a responsibility they have never taken, pretending instead that there was some wonderful way of doing Brexit that they have never revealed, or that no-deal Brexit, which they never campaigned for, is what people voted for.

It was never going to happen, however Brexit was done, that it would deliver what Brexiters promised. It was always going to happen, however Brexit was done, that they would cry betrayal. Betrayal is not a bug in Brexit, it’s a feature.

So those voters who are minded to think that Brexit has been betrayed need to recognize that, if so, it was Brexiters who betrayed it. The sensible conclusion from that is not to invest any faith in those same people, telling the same untruths, still refusing to provide a workable plan for Brexit and still refusing to take – perhaps pathologically incapable of taking – any responsibility whatsoever for a situation entirely of their own making.