Author: Frank Schnittger

So 7 Labour MPs chose to resign the party whip and set up an independent group citing dissatisfaction with Corbyn’s leadership and claiming endemic anti-Semitism within the party. Hardly the most pressing issue exercising the minds of the populace just now. Perhaps it was the only issue they could find to unite around.

Then they were joined by an eighth Labour MP and three Tories. Hardly a rush to the centre.

But enough to worry Corbyn and May, and soon, perhaps, enough to ensure that the DUP and ERG aren’t the only game in town. The problem is that it is not clear they have a unified and coherent plan for dealing with Brexit. Do they all support a second referendum? Will some support May’s deal if the alternative is no deal? Will their whole raison d’etre be undermined if Corbyn ends up supporting a delay and then a second referendum?

So far they aren’t a game changer, but if their numbers grew to perhaps 20 – roughly equally from both Labour and Tory camps – they could come to represent a new balance of power with which either May or Corbyn would have to treat with if they wanted to have any hope of achieving a parliamentary majority.

But how coherent a group are they? What are their policies and objectives? Say what you like about the DUP, but all their 10 MPs march in lock step. It seems appropriate that they have formed themselves, initially at least, as a limited company rather than a party. They seem more of a business lobby than a traditional political party, and much of their funding probably comes from businesses terrified at the prospect of a no deal Brexit. But in the age of Russian election interference and Zionist influence peddling, the funding opaqueness represented by private equity ownership doesn’t present a good look.

So they probably have a few weeks to consolidate their numbers, form a party, formulate some policies and elect a few spokes people if not an outright leader. Otherwise they may well slide into incoherence and irrelevance.

One issue parties rarely do well in the longer term, but if their issue is a second referendum to give voice to the 48% who voted Remain and the majority who would probably support Remain in preference to May’s deal or no deal now, then they have a shelf life at least until that referendum is held. After that they would probably have to join up with the Liberal Democrats to survive.

There has been some commentary that they don’t include any national figures comparable to the “gang of four” (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers) who formed the breakaway Social Democrats who later combined with the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats. This may effect their prospects in the longer term, but right now its a number’s game.  If they can attract a few more MPs they could supplant the DUP as the swing vote in the House of Commons.

So far Theresa May seems barely to have noticed – determined to plow her own furrow of seeking legal guarantees around the Irish backstop. But it seems unlikely that any deal she can negotiate with the EU will mollify the DUP, in which case the Independent Group votes could come into play.

Equally likely however, is that they will join the flotsam and jetsam of history, the litany of breakaway groups that ended up going nowhere, destroyed by their own incoherence and the first past the post single seat constituency parliamentary electoral system which permits of only two major national parties. The centre may not hold, and even if it does, it may simply move elsewhere.

The question is whether Theresa May is following her present course out of conviction or merely to mollify her hard liners. It seems to me it is both: she seems genuinely committed to delivering her version of Brexit and opposed to a second referendum on principle. In which case she may prefer a no deal Brexit and running down the clock to dealing with the Independent group in order to achieve a parliamentary majority for a softer Brexit.

If May succeeds, the Independent Group could end up being the shortest living political movement in recent history. Alternatively they could be the vital missing piece in putting together a coalition with the numbers to pursue an alternative course of action. But Corbyn is yet another missing piece in this jig-saw. Just precisely what will he do if a no deal Brexit beckons?

One way or the other, it may well be that only the people can decide. Are there sufficient further MPs prepared to force an election or a second referendum by supporting a vote of no confidence in the Government?

From the very first line of the foundation Treaty of Rome, “DETERMINED to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe” the EU has always thought of itself as primarily about encouraging an ever closer union between the peoples of Europe as a means of ensuring peace on the continent. Ever increasing economic integration is an important goal in itself, but also primarily a means of creating inter-dependencies which make a resort to war increasingly unthinkable.

The success of this project is self-evident. There has been no major violent conflicts within the EU since its inception despite numerous tensions and diplomatic fracas. Seen in a historical context, this represents an unprecedented 60 years of peace. Seen in a geographical context, the EU is an island of peace surrounded by wars in the Ukraine, Kosovo, Syria, Palestine and Libya.

The EU has also been instrumental in resolving or ameliorating conflicts within N. Ireland, between Russia and former Baltic states of the Soviet Union, and between states on different sides of the former “Iron Curtain”. It helped ease the path to German re-unification, and may one day do so for Irish re-unification as well.

Seen in an economic context, the difficulties being experienced by the UK in extricating itself from the EU illustrate the success of the economic integration project. It wasn’t meant to be easy to resurrect the ghosts of militant nationalism, and the UK will soon find there is a considerable economic price to pay for doing so.

But just as the EU was primarily a political project with strong economic and social dimensions, so is Brexit. Many Europeans seem puzzled by the UK’s hell-bent determination to pursue Brexit even after all the evidence of economic damage has become more and more apparent. So if we are to understand the EU as primarily as a political project to build peace and prosperity, how are we to understand Brexit?
The mistake made by the Remain campaign has been to focus almost exclusively on the economic benefits of membership. But the longer these became established, the more they were taken for granted. Britons allowed themselves to be convinced that they could “have their cake and eat it” and negotiate “the easiest trade deal in history” because the EU needed them more than they needed the EU. Once seen as “the sick man of Europe” the UK’s economy recovered within the EU to become the leading centre of financial services on the continent, and perhaps the World.

Memories of currency devaluations, IMF interventions, national strikes and de-industrialization have faded to be replaced by pride that the UK is still the fifth largest economy in the World, on some measures. To what extent this was based on access to the EU’s Single Market and Custom’s Union will only become apparent to most Britons in its absence. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with Brexiteers who acknowledge that while there might be some short-term economic damage from Brexit, the longer term political and economic benefits will be worth it.

But the larger point is that for them, Brexit wasn’t really about economics at all. It was about rolling back a tide of “Europeanisation” with which they were deeply unhappy. For a time, Europeanisation was a price they were willing to pay for the economic benefits attached to the EU, but once they because convinced that those benefits could be achieved in other ways it was a no brainer: Britain had to re-assert its sovereignty and takes its place among the free nations of the world.

Some of this unhappiness was expressed in terms of a loss of control to “faceless bureaucrats in Brussels”, an antipathy to high levels of immigration, a protest against austerity and a perceived relative loss of status, a rebellion against the status quo in general and “the establishment” in particular. But the bottom line is that they didn’t like being treated as the equals of Europeans they had either defeated or liberated in war, or indeed which they saw as feckless or corrupt compared to their own upright, hardworking and high achieving selves.

In truth they never knew a lot about or cared much for whatever the EU was supposed to represent. It was fine if it made life easier as a tourist or as a businessman abroad, but basically the EU had no business meddling in UK affairs back home. “Europe” was what was happening across the channel among the foreigners. The UK was effectively a continent and world power all on its own.

Many commentators have referred to this mockingly as a grand nostalgia for empire, but it could just as easily be seen as a turning inwards to focus on unmet emotional, social, and economic needs. Members of the Eton and Oxbridge educated ruling class may dream of the UK regaining an independent role in a multi-polar world order, but for many ordinary leave voting and leave supporting Britons it was more about wishing to retain a slightly privileged place in a social and economic pecking order increasingly dominated by immigrants and forces they could no longer control or understand.

One of the consequences of the Remain campaign focusing on the economic problems associated with Brexit is that it doesn’t explain why so few Leave voters have actually changed their minds even as the economic news becomes more and more foreboding. Some of this can undoubtedly be explained by the fact that few Leave voters have yet been personally effected by the economic damage Brexit is doing. Many are either retired or economically secure and so can cheerfully waffle on about the importance of sovereignty and freedom while others are suffering the consequences.

But the emotional drivers of Brexit remain much the same particularly among those who don’t see themselves as having benefited from “creeping Europeanisation”, globalisation, or economic growth. They see themselves as being squeezed by austerity, immigrants doing better than they are, and Europeans they don’t know or understand running the show.

While Opinion polls generally show double digit majorities now supporting Remain much of this is due to older Leave voters dying off, and younger Remain supporters joining electoral registers. Despite their disastrous performance in government, the Tories are maintaining a slim lead in general election opinion polling, and Theresa May has maintained double digit leads over Jeremy Corbyn as preferred Prime Minister.

So one could be forgiven for thinking that not much has changed in the UK political landscape since the 2016 referendum and the 2017 general election. Brexiteers are still hell bent on securing Brexit even if this turns out to be an economically disastrous no-deal Brexit and few see Corbyn offering much of an alternative even if there is now a popular majority for Brexit being reversed.

Some Remain voters now even see Brexit offering a necessary and unavoidable catharsis forcing the UK to come to terms with a changed world order and deal with unresolved internal tensions which it would rather not have to do:

There is something surreal about these last days before Brexit – just 39 now. There is still no visibility on a deal, and no clarity on a no deal. There is no parliament that seems to have a grasp on managing the slide into the unknown, other than humiliating the prime minister in vote after vote and then proposing little as an alternative. The scene outside parliament is a collection of Brexit doomsday soothsayers and naysayers, each with chants and flags and signs and regalia.

Elsewhere, stranger things are happening: pro-remain campaigners have started stripping off, we are arguing about Winston Churchill and Boer War concentration camps, and children are marching in the streets chanting: “F**k Theresa May.” It feels like the last days in the compound of a cult that once flourished but is now finally and fatally besieged.

The end of such a cult, that operates outside the bounds of common sense, is inevitable. Not only that, it should be welcomed. It is time. It is time for the country to come to terms with the fact that it has for too long been in denial about some of its fundamental flaws – and if a messy unplanned Brexit is the way to do that, then so be it.

These past few weeks are proof that Brexit, maybe even a hard Brexit, is now looking more likely. Yet, counterintuitively, it also looks like it is necessary. The country is paralysed and polarised ahead of next month’s deadline in a fever of predictions, lies and anticipations that will only break when the reality bites.

Nesrine Malik goes on to say:

Also finally exposed is the unbridgeable gap, both economic and cultural, between centre and peripheries, between the winners and the losers. There is a double nihilism about Brexit. There are many who feel like they have nothing to lose from a no-deal scenario, while also savouring the prospect of trouble ahead. This is what happens when a country is fed a diet of crisis as glamorous film reel. You cannot fight this appetite for martyrdom with technical arguments about processing times at Dover: these perverse fantasies can only be vanquished by an actual crisis.

And that is why the Brexit reckoning must happen. A humbling must come to pass. From the beginning, Brexit created its own momentum. Once the question was asked – in or out? – all the grievances, justified or not, could be projected on it, with “in” being widely seen as a vote for the status quo. Within this frame, nothing else matters – not economic predictions, not warnings about medicines running out, nor threats of the need to stockpile foods. The remain campaign could not have done anything differently: it lost the moment the question was asked.

And so, maybe, in the end, we will finally believe that immigration is necessary for an economy and an NHS to function, that the inequality between the south-east and the rest of Britain is unsustainable, that our political class is over-pedigreed and under-principled. We might even believe that other crises, such as climate change, are real, too.

Maybe, in the end, the country outside Europe will find its stride by confronting its issues rather than blaming them on others, and forging its own way. But there is only one way to find out. What a shame Brexit is that path – but better to have a path than none at all.

But again, it is easy for Remainers to become philosophical about Brexit if they will not be the ones to bear the brunt of its worst effects. Sometimes a crisis can have a cathartic effect and change a country for the better, but sometimes it can also lead to an ever descending spiral of decline and despair. The last major European power to feel it was falling behind its rivals started a World War to try to redress that perceived imbalance…

Often times when I see Brexiteers spout their nonsense on the TV or in Parliament I get this almost uncontrollable urge to let them have an almighty comeuppance: to wish the hardest of hard Brexit on them followed by an inexorable decline. But then I remember it will be the weakest in British society who will suffer the most. I also wonder if the humiliation of the UK is in the EU’s larger self-interest. After all the seeds of the Second World War were sown in the humiliating outcome of the First, and the EU is built on the principle that even the defeated have rights which must be protected.

But I think we are reaching a tipping point in the EU as well. Donald Tusk spoke for many when he wondered “what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.” If the UK decides to go through with a no deal Brexit it will find it has few friends in Europe offering a generous trade deal or even basic cooperation on many issues of common interest. Previously quiescent issues like Gibraltar or Sovereign bases in Cyprus could flair up and N. Ireland will become de-stabilized. The EU will become focused on addressing the problems of its own members and any travails the UK endures will barely register.

So the question arises whether Brexit is the only or the best way to address the political contradictions of the UK and whether the EU would be better off without those contradictions being refracted onto a European plane. My own view is that Brexit will be an enormous tragedy for both the UK and the EU and will cause long lasting and irreversible damage to both. The best option is still to delay and ultimately reverse Brexit before it becomes irreversible. But even I have to concede this is become less and less likely and a very damaging Brexit is in prospect.

EU leaders have been quite clear from the outset that “damage limitation” has been their prime objective. It looks increasingly likely that their efforts will have been in vain. The UK may come to resolve some of its internal contradictions, but at the cost of its place as a major power in the world. Remarkably, Brexit will have achieved the very reverse of its stated objectives.

I have previously asked the question Can a no deal Brexit be a good thing? and came up pretty empty. I still have seen no new evidence to change my view.

I have been engaged in other projects recently and have not kept quite up to speed with the latest Brexit happenings and so perhaps you guys can help me out: Has anything of any real significance happened recently?  The main points I have gleaned for a cursory perusal of news sites are that:

1. The EU has lost patience with UK

Donald Tusk wasn’t having a senior moment. His wondering “what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely” wasn’t a temperamental outburst. It signaled the EU had reached the end of the road in its attempts to accommodate UK demands.

2. Theresa May is running down the clock

Having been rebuffed by the House of Commons, the EU, the Irish government, the DUP and her own hard liners, Theresa May has decided the only way forward is to run down the clock and see if the imminence of a hard no deal Brexit will concentrate minds and force acceptance of her deal as the only alternative available.

3. Jeremy Corbyn has decided to get in on the game

Smarting from poor opinion poll ratings and unease among his own supporters, Corbyn has decided to engage with Theresa May so that he can say “well at least we tried” if the whole thing ends up being an almighty clusterfuck. For Theresa May talks with Labour can help run down the clock and light a fire under hard core Brexiteers and the DUP that she might, just, go down another road entirely if they don’t come on board with her deal.

4. But what, precisely, is the substantive difference between Corbyn and May?

May has signaled a willingness to address Labour demands for increased worker and environmental protections, and for help for deprived ares. The one area of difference is Labour’s demand for ongoing membership of “A” customs Union with the EU. Labour seems to think that the EU will agree to providing the benefits of a customs union while acceding to the UK “having a say” in future trade deals. But how is this different from the status quo? I am not aware of the UK having objected to any trade deals in the past, and all EU trade deals beyond the EU’s current negotiating mandate require unanimous agreement of its members…

More to the point, the whole row over “the Backstop” is about the possibility of the UK “being trapped” in a customs union indefinitely, when this is precisely what Labour seems to want. If May could agree with Corbyn on this and present a jointly agreed proposal on these lines to the EU, the EU might have little cause to object – especially when Corbyn’s support would guarantee a Commons majority for the resultant agreement.

Corbyn – always seen as a genuine if closet Brexiteer – would achieve his objective of a softer Brexit, protect some jobs in the short term, and be seen as the saviour of the UK for preventing a no deal Brexit. May will have delivered on her “mandate”. The EU will have achieved “frictionless” trade with the UK, a solution to the vexed Irish border question, and still managed to carve off a huge slice of London’s financial services industry for its ongoing members.

The 48% who voted against Brexit may be less than happy at such an outcome, but no one seems to regard them as a threat to the future stability of the UK – unlike hard core Brexiteers who might precipitate civil unrest if they don’t get their way. I wonder…

They say turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, but it seems the UK will have voted for the Turkey option even as Brexiteers hyped the risk of Turkey joining the EU in their anti-EU propaganda…

Am I missing something here?

FT: The EU cannot rescue Britain from Brexit chaos

May’s government has shown it can no longer be counted as a trusted partner

I had intended to address a slightly sheepish plea to Britain’s European partners. Even at this late hour, the EU27 should show forbearance with the Brexit shenanigans at Westminster. The prize of an amicable parting of the ways — or, in the best case, a change of heart in a second referendum — was worth it. My shaky resolve collapsed after Theresa May’s latest swerve. The EU could now be forgiven for simply throwing Britain overboard.

The prime minister’s embrace of her party’s hardline Brexiters was breathtaking in its cynicism. Only weeks ago she was immovable about the arrangements in the EU withdrawal agreement for the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Now she promises to try to rewrite them to suit the prejudices of her party. What of the Belfast Agreement, the treaty underpinning peace on the island of Ireland? It ranks second, it seems, to appeasement of Brexiters such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The mandate the prime minister claims to have secured to rewrite the Irish “backstop” is worthless and incredible. Worthless because all the other options for the Irish border have been exhaustively explored, and discarded, during the Article 50 negotiations. Incredible because the hardliners who backed her this week do not want an agreement. Supporting Mrs May now was a diversion. The real strategy is to run down the clock all the way to a no-deal Brexit.

What must be doubly maddening for the EU negotiators is the assumption among so many Tory MPs that the Irish arrangements were designed permanently to lock Britain into a close trading relationship. Nothing could be more removed from the truth. Governments across the EU fear the backstop, were it ever to be implemented, would give Britain an unfair advantage — unique access to the European market without any responsibilities. The EU27 would be as eager as any Brexiter to ensure such a regime was short-lived.

And therein lies the rub. Whilst the conclusion of a Withdrawal Agreement was a significant achievement by EU negotiators – not least because it kept the EU27 united – it also contained major concessions by the EU for which it has gotten zero credit. Norway pays a hefty price for Single Market access, not dissimilar, on a per capita basis to the UK’s hated net contribution for full EU Membership. There has been no talk, to date, of the UK paying a similar price – which would also serve to undermine the basis for the Norwegian contribution.

So there is a case for the EU27 (if not Ireland) to regard a no deal Brexit with a sort of equanimity, even if only as a short term expedient to lower UK expectations and result in a retrospective acceptance of May’s deal. But there has to be a considerable doubt that May’s deal, or something very like it, will even be on offer after Brexit, especially if the no deal divorce has been nasty and accompanied by much Brexiteer triumphalism.

EU politicians have Parliaments they must answer to as well, and there are EP elections coming up. My guess is that if the UK doesn’t accept May’s deal in full very quickly after Brexit day then it will be withdrawn and far harsher terms of engagement will apply. The UK will have to join the queue of third parties looking for FTA’s with the EU, and discussions won’t even start until the 45 Billion have been paid upfront, the rights of EU citizens in the UK have been protected, and guarantees on the border have been honoured.

No deal Brexiteers want to avoid as much future “entanglement” with the EU as possible, to enable the UK to become “Global Britain” and be free to engage with the world on its own terms. They may find the rest of the world, no less than the EU, will not be overly enthusiastic about engaging with a UK that cannot be trusted to keep its word or deliver on its commitments.

The priority for the Irish government must now be to achieve an “understanding” with the Commission that they will tolerate an open border within Ireland in exchange for tight controls at Irish air and sea ports to prevent UK goods using Ireland as a backdoor into the EU. “Chlorinated chicken” and the smuggling of tariff free goods will then become an internal problem for Ireland to resolve – one that is doable because so much of UK/Ireland trade is through air and sea ports anyway, and so much of the rest of it is by a handful of major supermarket chains and agri-food producers and importers who can be policed on an on-site basis.

The EU is aware that Ireland will be most badly effected by a no deal Brexit. For much of the rest of the EU27 it isn’t such a big deal. Some tolerance towards Ireland would be a small price to pay in return continued EU27 solidarity and cohesion. Brexiteer dreams that German car-makers will quickly bring the EU27 to heel and result in more advantageous trade terms for the UK are just that – dreams. This could all get seriously nasty before it gets resolved, if ever.

Hardly anyone in the UK has any conception of how difficult this could get unless saner heads prevail. The EU was created to promote peace in Europe, but on its borders instability prevails – Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Libya, and N. Africa more generally. We do not want N. Ireland to join that list. Even within the EU, democracy is threatened in Hungary and Poland and perhaps Romania and Bulgaria.

The EU has to be seen to protect and defend the interests of its member states, or else it too could disintegrate. If that has to be at the cost of non-members like the UK, then so be it. When trust breaks down it can be incredibly difficult to recover. Brexiteers like to talk about “our friends in Europe” as if their actions were without consequence. Their regard for the problems their alliance with the DUP is causing Ireland borders on contempt.

Britain First in its own headspace could well lead to Britain Last as far as the rest of Europe is concerned. The UK could be gaining the World at the loss of the best friends it ever had.

The Irish Times has published two letters of mine on successive days, which is a record! I would be interested in your views on it.

Free public transport – could it work for Dublin?

A chara, – I read with interest Lara Marlowe’s article on the almost exponential growth of free urban public transport systems throughout the world (“Free public transport – could it work for Dublin?”, Weekend, January 26th).

The Irish Times published a letter of mine proposing such a system for Dublin in 1980. In it I argued that such a system could massively reduce traffic congestion, reduce car imports, reduce fuel imports, and increase employment in the city.

In the meantime, we have seen a massive increase in traffic congestion, urban sprawl, commuting times, population density, and proposed and actual new public transportation systems such as the Luas and Metro causing massive disruption during the building phase and costing many billions of euro.

Tripling the size of Dublin’s bus fleet would probably be required to meet the latent demand for an efficient and free public transport service, but the capital cost would be minuscule compared to the cost of the aforementioned projects.

Instead of requiring exorbitant new infrastructure, existing and underused bus lanes would be more fully utilised, and journey times improved as car traffic diminished. Valuable space currently required for car parking could be repurposed for social housing or public amenities.

Such an expansion of the public bus system would massively improve the convenience of the existing bus services by increasing the frequency, range, and scope of current routes.

Instead of wasting time, burning fuel, polluting the atmosphere, and contributing to global warming, commuters could work on the bus, engage with social media and, horror of horrors, actually talk to one another, thereby recreating a more convivial and socially egalitarian city.

If the buses were primarily electric, they could further reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce the fines we will soon become liable to pay for failing to reach our carbon reduction targets.

As we have little oil and no car manufacturing industries, such a system would also improve our balance of trade and employment levels.

As a nation, we think nothing of spending billions on (partially) free education, healthcare, roads and public facilities. But an efficient public transport system is every bit as vital to the functioning of a modern economy. How much time is wasted driving cars on congested roads which could otherwise be devoted to more productive work or social activities? How many lives could be saved by less tired (and sometimes intoxicated) driving?

It is an idea whose time has come. – Yours, etc,

FRANK SCHNITTGER,
Blessington,
Co. Wicklow.

Letter to the Editor, Irish Times

A chara, –

John Lloyd (Opinion & Analysis, January 25th) argues that Fintan O’Toole has got it all wrong when he argues that Brexit is caused, in part, by a nostalgia for an imperial past and a tendency to blame the EU for all ills that afflict the UK.

Instead, he argues that Brexit was motivated largely by a desire to be ruled by their own parliament and courts which the British people can better understand and control – in contrast to a fundamentally undemocratic, opaque and unaccountable EU.

Am I alone in tiring of being lectured on democracy by the only country in Europe without a clear and written constitution, with an entirely unelected upper house of parliament, an unelected head of state, and an electoral system which can lead to wildly disproportionate results and which renders many votes in “safe” constituencies pointless as they will have no influence on the overall result?

One can argue that the Brexit result was as much a protest against a UK political system which had successfully deflected all blame for its own failings onto the EU.

For once, every vote actually counted. – Yours, etc,

FRANK SCHNITTGER

Faced with the possibility of Brexit being delayed, or even reversed, members of the DUP and ERG are beginning to moderate their positions and are suggesting that May’s deal could be passed if only the hated Irish Backstop clause could be removed or time limited in some way.

For their part, the Irish government is coming under increasing pressure to moderate its absolute insistence that there can be no border infrastructure of any kind. Critics are pointing out that a hard customs border will be legally required from the 29th. of March if a no deal Brexit occurs.

Officially the Irish government is still insisting that this is a problem for the UK side to overcome, and that it is awaiting firm proposals from the UK side so it can respond accordingly. The problem is that no one trusts Theresa May’s ability to deliver on her promises any more, so what is the point of making concessions now when there is no guarantee these will secure a deal and that the UK government won’t come back again looking for more?

But the outlines of a potential deal have been visible for some time if only the political skill was there to realise it…
Suppose the House of Commons were actually to pass a bill ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement (“May’s Deal”) subject to an amending clause time limiting the Backstop to a maximum duration of (say) 5 years similar to the amendment proposed by Andrew Murrison MP (Cons).

May will have gotten her infamous deal across the line. Brexiteers will have achieved Brexit, even if it doesn’t become fully operational until the EU and UK have agreed a new future relationship, or failing that for 5 years. Remainers will have secured a relatively soft Brexit with industry spared the prospect of the chaos of a no deal Brexit. The EU will be assured that one simple further concession will secure an orderly Brexit and they are no longer subject to the whims of the DUP and extreme wing of the Tory party.

But what about Ireland? The Irish (minority) government will be pilloried by all opposition parties for conceding the principle of a hard border in at most five years time, unless the EU and UK can agree a deal which has so far eluded them. Realistically, that can only happen if N. Ireland remains within the Customs Union and Single Market (CUSM) and we know the DUP will oppose this as it would created a customs border “down the Irish sea” unless Great Britain, too, remained within the CUSM.

In vain the Irish government will plead mitigation because the alternative “no deal” scenario would have required a customs border from the 29th. March. In politics, there is a world of difference between agreeing to something, and having it forced upon you by the decisions of others despite your strong opposition.

But is there also another way out of this dilemma? Suppose the Irish and UK governments were to agree a critical amendment to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA). At the moment the GFA only explicitly refers to a referendum in N. Ireland in the event of a proposed United Ireland. The EU is hardly mentioned, because all assumed both Ireland and the UK would remain members indefinitely. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty didn’t exist then.

The GFA has, effectively, become the constitution of Northern Ireland in the absence of a formal, written constitution. Supposed the proposed amendment provided that the status quo in N. Ireland (membership of the EU) could only be changed with the explicit approval of a majority in N. Ireland in a referendum. The Irish government could then point to the the 56-44% Remain vote in N. Ireland as providing a reasonable guarantee that no hard border would  ever come about.

The DUP would then be placed in the awkward position of opposing a referendum in N. Ireland on EU membership – not that that ever stopped them. This scenario could therefore only come into play once the House of Commons had actually voted for the (amended) Withdrawal Agreement and the DUP’s critical votes could no longer block it.

The DUP could always vote no confidence in May’s government and prevent any change in the GFA, but would they still hold the balance of power if the Irish Government insisted that its support for the (amended) Withdrawal Agreement was contingent on the amended GFA?

Would a majority in the House of Commons really countenance a no deal Brexit if the price was a simple referendum in N. Ireland giving its people a choice of remaining within the EU or not when that principle has already been conceded in relation to a United Ireland?

It can be pointed out that it is quite possible for N. Ireland to remain in both the UK and EU – arguably the best of both worlds, from a Unionist perspective – as Greenland remains part of the Kingdom of Denmark, but no longer part of the EU.

The EU has already conceded the principle of extending full membership to N. Ireland in the event of Irish re-unification, so agreeing to it somewhat in advance of any such development would not be a major change of principle. It would also remove the pressure on the EU to agree to effectively full membership of the CUSM for all of the UK (in order to keep the Irish border open) without the concomitant costs which Norway pays, and restrictions on the UK’s ability to control immigration and negotiate FTAs.

Of course a referendum in N. Ireland wouldn’t be required if, in five years time, the UK government of the day were no longer dependent on DUP support and were happy for N. Ireland to remain within the EU.

Probably the strongest argument against it from a UK perspective is that Scotland would demand a similar referendum which could, potentially, create a customs border on the Scottish English border. But that would be an argument for another day, and would many in England actually care at this stage?

But all of this is contingent on the House of Commons actually passing the (amended) Withdrawal Agreement and amendments to the GFA. Nobody will trust the UK until it clarifies exactly what it would actually take to achieve an orderly withdrawal. Hence the constant refrain from EU leaders for the UK to actually state what it wants and what it is prepared to concede. No further confused speeches on red lines from Theresa May will suffice.

Theresa May may not yet have lost the Confidence of the House of Commons, but she has certainly lost the confidence of the EU.

Hence, the refusal to date of the EU to budge from the Withdrawal agreement as previously agreed. Hence the public refusal, to date, of the Irish Government to re-negotiate the GFA. The DUP has to be taken out of the equation first. Exactly what is it a majority of the House of Commons will support?

The world wants to know.

The back-stop is that part of May’s now half dead deal with the EU whereby all parties committed themselves formally to what they all claim to be committed to in practice: No hard policed customs border in Ireland. Initially the UK proposed to do this via yet to be invented new technology which would magically make any border controls invisible. When no practical solution on these lines emerged they proposed to do so by retaining Northern Ireland within the Customs Union and Single Market until such time as another solution to keeping the border open could be found.

This was absolutely unacceptable to the DUP as it would entail a customs border “down the Irish Sea” between the EU and UK and, in their terms, threaten the constitutional Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The DUP is opposed to any and all divergence between Northern Ireland and Great Britain for this reason, except when it is not: On abortion rights, marriage equality, minority language rights, animal disease control and some agricultural product standards, for example.

Theresa May’s solution to this conundrum was to propose retaining all of the UK within the Customs Union until such time as an alternative solution could be found, thus giving Ireland, North and south, the best of both worlds: unhindered access to both the EU and UK markets, and calming the fears of most of UK business about barriers to trade with the EU for the foreseeable future. This has proved to be the single most unpopular feature of May’s proposed deal in the UK, and is widely blamed for it’s massive defeat. But it was actually a UK proposal and a massive concession by the EU – for which it has gotten zero credit.
It was unpopular among Brexiteers because it prevented to UK form negotiating its own trade deals which might differ with the rules contained in EU trade deals. It was unpopular with Remainers because it was so obviously inferior to full EU membership as the UK would become subject to rules it had no direct say in formulating. It was hated by the DUP because it did not achieve their unstated objective of ring fencing “Ulster” (in reality 6 of the 9 counties of Ulster) from the rest of Ireland.

It was also a major concession by the EU because no other third country has been given such unfettered access to EU markets without paying a heavy price: in the case of Norway, something approaching the UK’s current, and much hated, net contribution to the EU on a per capita basis. Although everyone agreed it would be temporary, no one believed there was any other way of keeping both the Irish border and the Irish Sea open. Neither the Norway+ or Canada+++ free trade deals mooted by the UK as a basis for their future relationship with the EU would have kept the Irish Border open.

The Irish government, supported by the EU, pursued a hard line on retaining the backstop within the agreement despite a lot of pressure from the UK to back down. Doing so would have meant accepting that, sooner or later, border controls would be required once the transitional arrangements, and any extension thereof, had expired to be replaced by some form of trade deal, however extensive. The risk of that happening would also have been a powerful lever for the UK to force further concessions from the EU in the future – effectively unfettered access to EU markets indefinitely – without having to pay Norway like contributions to the EU budget. Effectively the UK objective of “having its cake and eating it” would have been achieved.

But there were also powerful domestic factors forcing the Irish government’s hand in all of this. The centenary of the Irish Civil War 1922/3 is coming up, a war fought over the Anglo Irish Treaty which created the Irish border in the first place, and which has continued to shape Irish politics ever since with the two main political Parties – Fine Gael and Fianna Fail representing opposing sides in that war. One of the great achievements of Irish politics has been the relatively peaceful resolution of that civil war in the south, and, much more recently, the resolution of that conflict in the North through the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998 (GFA) which guaranteed “equality of esteem” to both the Nationalist and Unionist traditions there.

The GFA was successful largely because both Ireland and the UK were members of the EU and committed to “an ever closer union” which has gradually dissolved the hard edges of British rule in Northern Ireland, enabled some devolution of powers to N. Ireland, and reduced the border to some long abandoned check-points and military fortifications. It did so while scarcely having to mention the EU because A.50 of the Lisbon Treaty didn’t exist then, and no one gave a thought to the possibility of either Ireland or the UK ever leaving the Union.

The DUP, for its part, opposed and resisted the GFA, and only very reluctantly came on board after the 2006 St. Andrews Agreement which enabled Ian Paisley to become First Minister in a devolved administration which also included Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein as deputy First Minister. The pair developed an excellent working relationship, much to the chagrin of many of their supporters, and became known as the “Chuckle Brothers” for their jovial and harmonious relationship in public.

But that was then and this is now. Personal and political relationships gradually deteriorated under Ian Paisley’s successor, Peter Robinson, and then fell into free fall under his successor Arlene Foster, to the point where Martin McGuinness pulled Sinn Fein out of the devolved administration shortly before his death in 2017, an administration that has never been revived. Relationships deteriorated even further due to Arlene Foster’s responsibility for the Renewable Heat Initiative Scandal and then the DUP’s support for Brexit, even after it was decisively defeated in the referendum in Northern Ireland by 56-44%.

The DUP is a very right wing hard line (British) Nationalist party which would have been ideologically well disposed to Brexit in any case, but in this situation Brexit also represented an opportunity to get one over their opponents Sinn Fein, who campaigned for Remain. It was an opportunity to emphasise N. Ireland’s distinct identity from the rest of Ireland, and emphasize its closer alignment with Great Britain.

The DUP claims any customs controls in the Irish sea would undermine the Constitutional integrity of the Union while seeing no difficulty with greater (virtual or otherwise) controls across the Irish border. But if some greater controls in the Irish Sea (in additional to current animal and food safety checks) represent a change to N. Ireland’s constitutional status – which under the GFA requires majority agreement – how much greater a Constitutional change is Brexit itself, which has been explicitly rejected by a large majority of the people of N. Ireland?

The Irish government was explicitly opposed to Brexit for all of these reasons, but failing that, the least it could do was to insist on a backstop which prevented the re-emergence of a hard military and customs border in Ireland in all circumstances. Unionist commentators are now arguing that Ireland has overplayed its hand and now faces the prospect of a hard border re-emerging on the 29th. of March should a no deal Brexit occur. This would be economically very damaging for Ireland, North and South, but even these economic considerations are trumped, for the Irish Government, by the political implications of the re-emergence of a hard border for peace and stability on the island.

Nationalist commentators on the other hand, point out that the crushing defeat of May’s deal has made a reversal of Brexit much more likely, and that this was, rightly, the Irish governments preferred outcome all along. Either way, it is a high risk, high stakes, poker game, with the outcome still in the balance. It is a game which the Irish government very much would have preferred not to have to play in in the first place, but the historical and political situation gave it no choice but to go all in and play every card it had.

There will undoubtedly be huge recriminations within the Irish political system if a no deal Brexit occurs and huge damage is done to the Irish economy. The EU will want to secure its external frontier with the UK within Ireland, and yet it will be politically impossible for the Irish government to comply. It has even been suggested that the Irish government would pay EU fines rather than seek to enforce controls at the border. Parallels have been drawn with trade across the East/West German border prior to formal re-unification and incorporation into the EU.

At the very least, stringent controls will have to be enforced at Irish air and sea ports to prevent UK goods entering the rest of the EU via the “back door” of N. Ireland. This would make legitimate Irish exports to the EU subject to “rules of origin” checks to ensure they hadn’t originated in the UK and thus could cause some delays and costs. However there are very few UK exports to the EU which could be shipped economically via N. Ireland and the Republic and so spot checks on specific products, and trucks known to have originated outside of the Republic would probably suffice.

This would not prevent UK goods having access to the Irish market via the border. However the vast majority of these are shipped directly from Britain through Irish air and sea ports, and even those which do cross the border are largely imported by major supermarket chains like Tesco which could be subjected to onsite inspection and VAT like duty payment systems. The amount of goods, subject to WTO tariffs, transported across the border by private individuals and small businesses is trivial in an EU context and will probably be officially ignored for quite some time.

The Irish government’s case to the EU will probably be that the “No deal” scenario is temporary, subject to ongoing discussion between the EU and UK, and there is no point in putting in expensive and complex permanent solutions to what might well be a transient problem. Many – and soon a majority – of citizens in the North are eligible for Irish, and therefore EU citizenship and should not have their freedom of movement hindered.

So the argument that Ireland and the EU’s hard line insistence on a backstop has backfired is dependent on a number of misconceptions:

1. Firstly the backstop was never primarily about trade in the first place. It was about peace and stability in Ireland, and therefore essentially non-negotiable.
2. Secondly, to have placed a time limit on the backstop would have exposed the EU to a lot of pressure to give the UK unfettered access to EU markets – in order to keep the border open – after the transition period when the EU would normally only give such access  to a third country at considerable cost.
3. Thirdly, while the back-stop was the issue which provoked DUP opposition to May’s deal, only 45 Tory MPs gave it as their primary reason for voting against the deal. So even adding a time limit would not have come even close to bringing the deal across the line.
4. Fourthly, while the crushing defeat of May’s deal has made a no deal Brexit more likely, it has also made the Irish government’s preferred option – reversal of Brexit – more likely.
5. Fifthly, even in a worst case scenario, where a no deal Brexit occurs, post Brexit negotiations will undoubtedly take place, and the Irish Government’s and EU’s red line of an open Irish border will have been burnt into the political landscape. The UK will not get a deal negotiated post Brexit that will create a hard border any more than it could before.

6. Lastly, the DUP will not hold the balance of power forever. A future Labour led government, or even a Tory government not dependent on DUP support will not be slow to jettison DUP interests if the UK’s economic interests require it. Ultimately, very few in Great Britain care a jot whether N. Ireland remains in the Single Market and Customs Union or not, and customs controls in the Irish sea will barely raise an eyebrow.

Over two and a half years after the referendum Theresa May has finally decided to reach across the aisle and try to build a national consensus around her Brexit deal. She has begun talking to Labour MPs who have been saying for months they might support her deal provided they receive assurances on workers rights and permanent access to a customs union. She has even spoken to a couple of leading trade unionists she has never bothered to meet in all of her political career. Downing Street had to call the Union call centre to get the General Secretary’s contact details…

It is a last desperate maneuver, because the DUP has rejected her latest attempts to get them on board. With the DUP it is always a case of “what part of NO do you not understand?” It is the end-game of her strategy, first announced in her Lancaster house “red lines” speech, to secure a parliamentary majority by appeasing her the hard core right wing Tory Brexiteers and the DUP – all the while claiming to be uniting the nation around her.

She is also beginning to lose control of the whole Brexit process with an increasingly assertive parliament demanding that she announce her Plan B within three days of losing the vote on her Brexit deal next week. Tories are incensed that Speaker John Bercow allowed amendments tying the hands of the government. But what do you expect when you don’t have a written constitution and precedents are there to be set? His job is to assert parliamentary sovereignty, not protect the government.

So what are her options for a Plan B?

1. Ask the EU to renegotiate the deal. What part of NO does she not understand?
2. Play for time, and make concessions on other matters in the hope that sufficient opposition MPs will be spooked by a no deal Brexit to vote for her deal as the 29th. March approaches.
3. Ask the House of Commons to vote on a no deal Brexit – in order to demonstrate that her deal is more popular than No deal – in the House of Commons at least. That might take the sting out of a heavy defeat for her deal, but will it help to bring it across the line? Hardly.
4. Resign, and make way for a Brexiteer who will pursue a no deal Brexit. She looked very tired in her presser with Shinzō Abe.
5. Negotiate with Corbyn to agree a second referendum. He won’t agree unless he has failed to win a vote of no confidence in her government first, and even then they might not be able to agree on the options/wording to be presented to the electorate.

The great danger, from May’s point of view, is that she loses the initiative and control of the process altogether. Corbyn’s first option has to be to press for a general election. He could offer Tory Remainers a second referendum in exchange for their support in a vote of confidence.

It would be ironic if it were Tory Remainers who finally brought down the Tory government, as it has been the DUP and ERG who have been threatening May’s leadership all along. Somehow it always seems ok for the hard right to threaten disloyalty while moderates have to play by the rules.

But do the moderates have the balls? They could expect to be pilloried by the media and assaulted in the street. It’s ok to threaten violence if you are right wing.

More likely, Tory Remainers might threaten to support a Labour motion of no confidence unless May gave them a second referendum. She might insist that her deal is one of the options presented. Hard core Brexiteers would insist that a no deal Brexit is another, while Remainers would insist Remain is an option.

Could the electorate cope with the complexity of a three option referendum? Would the electorate be asked to tick just one box, or to enumerate the options 1,2,3 in order of their choice with the least popular option eliminated and those votes redistributed based on the second choice listed on those ballot papers?

On balance, it still seems a second referendum is unlikely to happen, although the probability of it happening could rise substantially if/when May’s deal is decisively rejected. If the House of Commons rejects her deal, and also a no deal Brexit, what is the alternative?

Yours truly and Luis de Sousa have been using the Charge of the Light Brigade as a metaphor for the UK’s brainless charge for Brexit. But perhaps it is Boris Johnson himself who came up with the more apt metaphor when he said that the UK was going to make “a Titanic Success of Brexit”. The metaphor is all the more apt as the Titanic had been built in the famous Harland and Wolff shipyard – a fact that is now commemorated in the Titanic centre in Belfast. The DUP has also been leading the charge towards a Brexit which could well jeopardize the very union between N. Ireland and Great Britain they so claim to cherish.

It is now almost two months since Theresa May agreed her deal with the EU Council and very little has changed or moved on in the meantime as the great ship of state sails inexorably on towards a hard Brexit on 29th. March. If the 117 Tory MPs who voted no-confidence in Theresa May’s leadership combine with the DUP, May’s deal could well go down by over 200 votes in the House of Commons vote on January 15th.

No prime minister in history would have been subjected to such an emphatic defeat on such a major issue and survived, and yet Theresa May might fight on. Brexiteer Tory MPs effectively handed May a 12 month stay of execution when they precipitated an ill-judged no confidence motion in December and the DUP have said they will continue to vote Confidence in the Government (while threatening to vote down almost all else) for fear of precipitating a general election which Jeremy Corbyn might well win.

So we have a lame duck prime minister at the helm set on a course headed for a hard Brexit and no mechanism to change course, or have we?
Opinion polls have been showing consistent and increasing majorities saying the original referendum result was wrong, that a second referendum should be held and that Remain would win such a vote. But there has as yet been no sea change (see what I did there?) in public attitudes and the margin in favour of Remain has ranged from 3% to 18% in various polls carried out over the past two months. An average margin of 10% for Remain may seem decisive, but the numbers are quite variable and opinion polling has gotten a bad rap in recent years.

What is striking about the polling where three options are presented is that a No deal Brexit has consistently out polled May’s negotiated deal. In the most recent You Gov Poll of 25,000 voters only 22%  support May’s deal and that rises to only 28% among Leave voters. Remain would win by 63% to 37% if a second referendum offered a choice between Remain and May’s deal, but by a lesser but still decisive 58% to 42% if the choice is between Remain and No deal.

What seems clear from these numbers and the Parliamentary arithmetic is that May’s deal is dead in the water (ok I’ll stop the maritime metaphors now!) and no amount of “clarification” or tweaking around the edges can rescue it. The EU seem to have accepted as much and have offered only a minimalist “Exchange of letters” to provide greater clarity. No major renegotiation will be attempted because nothing the EU is likely to want to give can match the expectations raised by the Brexiteer side.

So what are May’s options? The honourable course, suggested by all historical and constitutional precedent is that she should resign. Her policy has failed abjectly to deliver a result acceptable either to the UK parliament or people. But unless the DUP or hard Brexiteers are prepared to risk a general election, there is no way she can be forced out now, as Tory party rules forbid another leadership challenge for 12 months after last month’s heave.

Her difficulty is that her resignation now would almost certainly result in the election of a hard Brexiteer as Tory leader and prime minister. Tory party members, who have the right to elect the party leader support a hard no deal Brexit by 57% to 23% for May’s deal, with only 15% supporting Remain. Much has been made of how much Corbyn is out of sync with his Remain supporting membership, but it is the Tory membership (average age c. 70) which is increasingly at odds with the population as a whole.

So if May resigns, the outcome will almost certainly be the election of a Boris Johnson style hard Brexiteer as Tory leader and Prime Minister and a hard, no deal Brexit – something to which May seems genuinely opposed. So what other option does she have? She has agreed to meet tomorrow with the over 200 MPs who wrote to her urging her to rule out the no deal option. Boris Johnson, meanwhile, has embraced the no deal option as most closely resembling what the people voted for. This must be news to the many Leave voters who were told that negotiating a good deal with the EU “would be the easiest deal in history”.

So a resounding defeat for May’s deal in the House of Commons could have the effect of taking her deal off the table and providing the UK with a clear choice between No deal and Remain. I don’t believe this government has the authority to make such a choice without popular legitimization, and so a second referendum seems to be the only option other than resignation open to her. But she cannot embrace it unless and until her own negotiated deal has been decisively rejected.

Corbyn will no doubt table a vote of no confidence in the government when May’s deal is defeated, but all the indications are that the DUP and Brexiteers will unite behind the government to prevent a general election. It is only after that point that both Corbyn and May will be free to embrace the second referendum option and the latest You Gov poll shows that Labour’s vote could decline to an historic low if he fails to support an alternative to May’s deal.

The stars are all not yet aligned and there is still plenty of scope for the UK to crash out of the EU in a cliff edge No Deal Brexit either through arrogance, inertia or mishap. But a heavy Commons defeat could take May’s deal off the table and clarify the choice facing May, the House of Commons, and the peoples of the UK as a whole. For some it will seem like a national humiliation to call the whole thing off, and for others a merciful release. Either way most people want the issue resolved once and for all sooner rather than later.

May could have to ask the European Council for an extension to the A.50 deadline to enable a second referendum take place but all the indications are the EU Council would provide the necessary unanimous agreement, and might well welcome the opportunity to show some flexibility towards UK demands. Any second referendum campaign is likely to be divisive in the UK, and many will accuse May of being a Remainer who never truly embraced the Brexit cause and perhaps negotiated a deliberately bad deal in order to force a Remain outcome.

But as regular readers here will know, the EU was never going to offer a Brexit deal even remotely as good as full membership and so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that any negotiated deal would fall far short of the inflated “have cake and eat it” expectations raised by the Leave campaign. Even if the entire Brexit saga serves only to heighten awareness in the UK of what the EU actually does, as well as giving the EU a much needed opportunity to show solidarity, cohesion and relative competence, then all may not have been in vain.

Not a lot of good came from the sinking of the Titanic, except perhaps a reduction in the hubris of the empire which created it. The establishment which had for so long used the EU as a scapegoat for all manner decisions they had led or assented to could finally be hoist on its own petard. Time for some Brexiteers to walk the plank…