My friend and occasional co-author Howard Reed asked on the blog this morning:
What would you say is the probability of “no-deal Brexit” now Richard? I'd say it's still less than 50% but growing all the time. It could happen if May's deal is voted down but she refuses to cancel Article 50 and then Parliament simply runs out of time before 29 March. There seems to be no sense of urgency to avoid a national crisis and that's very damning.
I happen to think that's an excellent question. And one of the most important of the moment.
My answer is that the risk is high. And my concern is that very few people seem to realise this, including a majority of MPs.
As a matter of fact if nothing else happens we leave the EU on 29th March without a deal. The law to make this happen already exists: the Commons has already passed it. And unless positive action is taken to prevent it, this will occur, come what may.
In that case the question is, in effect, whether or not there is a chance that some action might be taken to prevent this happening. Those actions might include:
- Adopting May's deal;
- The holding of a general election;
- Calling a second referendum;
- Postponing Article 50 to let a referendum happen;
- Agreeing what question a second referendum might pose;
- Calling a second referendum;
- Cancelling Article 50.
I have listed events in likely approximate order.
Let's start with what is not going to happen. May's deal is not going to happen. There is no majority.
And a general election is not going to happen. There is no way May is going to agree to it, and she would have to.
Nor will there be a successful no-confidence vote. The anti-Corbyn alliance is too strong for that. So an election will not be forced on May.
We then arrive in mid-January with no Deal.
There will be near panic amongst sane MPs about this. But MP do not control the Common's business. However, Grieve succeeded in giving them a say. When that happens then, and only then I suspect is there a chance of forcing a delay to Article 50 and a second vote.
I do not believe anyone has the courage to actually just cancel Article 50 without a second vote.
May's deal is by then dead so the only choices left are stay or hard Brexit. That, then, would have to be the question on the ballot.
Who will win that? I am not sure.
So there is a real risk of Hard Brexit for this reason.
And a real risk of Hard Brexit because May will not allow anything else once her deal fails.
What are the overall odds? More than 50% I would say right now. And that is despite maybe 10% of the Commons wanting it.
Split the difference between me and Howard and it is 50:50, I'd say.
We're that close to a disaster.
Because there is no good hard Brexit.
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The agony of it all is you are probably right. I’m ashamed. None of the arguments appear in public in any full sense. The wrong party had the leadership ‘contest’. There will be no general election. May could engineer another referendum as she easily does volte face in denial. Another bung to the DUP will keep her going, especially if we vote remain. Norther Ireland could be offered a referendum on in out via a United Ireland post Brexit if the EU allow. this would lose her the DUP though, I now favour the dissolution of the Labour Party, once my pride and joy. Agony squared.
The only sane option at this stage is to cancel Article 50 as this has been deemed possible by the EU. As you say whether enough sane MPs can get this through parliament is another matter. The Rees-Mogg brigade will be spitting blood and unfortunately a large proportion of the “public” lap this up. Dire straights I’m afraid.
The only thing that TMay has ever wanted throughout all this, is to be known in the history books as the PM “wot dun” Brexit. What the exact version of “Brexit” actually is, is immaterial as long as the photo of her signing Art 50 is next to the text. Considering that no commons majority wants her deal, that the ERG et al want their Brexit ‘ard, the DUP think they are in a “troubles” face off, Jeremy Corbyn is staying well out of it (like Ruth Davidson with her “strategic” baby), that MPs seem to have a blind spot when it comes to realising that there is a world on the other side of the channel and that the EU is now off Xmas shopping (and are bored of all this), I reckon the chances of falling off the cliff are a lot higher. I’ll put an each way bet (in sterling, which will probably be worthless either way) on a 3 month Art50 extension and then a foot of cliff SPLAT or just a straight down SPLAT. Merry Xmas.
To me the real danger of a hard Brexit is that someone has to grab the system by the scruff of the neck and make some sort of preventative action happen. Who that is going to be and whether they have the courage or means to do it is the harder question.
My fear is that we get to 29th March with persistent bickering about who is going to do what and we slither into hard Brexit by default.
I’d say the most likely outcome is that the EU gives her enough to get the deal through and enter into the transition period. They can then wait for a change in the UK parliamentary arithmetic or if doesn’t come begin playing hardball again over the political deal have given up nothing and gained at least 21 months of UK payments, market access and political stability.
They have been able to negotiate hard so far as they have had nothing to lose. That changes on 29th March. I doubt they will go off the cliff edge for no reason.
OT – The media reaction to the ECB statement today highlights what we are up against in terms of monetary reform. The ECB announce that QE will not be unwound, the media report that it is ending. Disgraceful.
Stu says:
“I’d say the most likely outcome is that the EU gives her enough to get the deal through ….”
Yeah Right….like David Cameron went to Brussels and arranged everything so it was OK to ‘remain’. (?) That little pantomime alone was enough to swing the Brexit vote to ‘leave’. I would have loved to vote against him for that, let alone the rest of his slimy pronouncements post 2010.
I don’t see what’s in it for the EU to ‘give’ anything. What, if anything, does the UK deserve that makes us ‘more equal’ than the other member states? Not a lot I would have thought.
Why would the EU 27 give an arrogant and (bloody) offensive UK any wiggle room for ? May has one red line over Freedom of Movement and I see no reason why anyone should think that a good thing; and another impossible red line conundrum over the Irish border.
Pull Article 50.
Sort the English independence question and then England can have another go at leaving the EU if they still want to without the encumbrance of the rest of the UK supposedly dragging it down or holding it back.
That’s right.
Pull Article 50. Now.
Even if the EU27 grant an extension to Article 50, will it be long enough? The EU Parliament elections are due in May and if we are still in the EU we will need to elect new MEPs, will the EU 27 want that?
As I understand it, the ECJ ruling said we can unilaterally cancel Brexit but only if we are serious. So, we can’t cancel as a means of gaining more time, that would not be allowed.
On that basis, if the EU27 agree to extend Article 50, we have until about the end of February to get our act together. Can we organise and hold a referendum, and then complete any necessary legislation in that time? I believe we required about a year to organise the 2016 referendum, I think the Electoral Commission had some say in the matter.
The sensible way forward is to cancel Brexit with the option that we will hold another referendum in 5 to 10 years time, if Parliament decides it is necessary.
Unless ‘Remain’ MPs grow backbones and form alliances to cancel Brexit whatever the consequences to themselves (at the next GE) or their party, there is no other option than crashing out.
A couple of years ago, I thought Corbyn might campaign within the Labour heartlands and show that the problems they are experiencing have little to do with the EU and won’t be fixed by Brexit. Unfortunately, that never happened and the Labour Party remains in limbo. As a life long Labour supporter, I’m not sure how I will vote at the next GE.
Surely the only realistic solution is to revoke article 50.
The ECJ ruling means that this needs a simple vote in parliament. Unlike postponement, no negotiation or agreement with the EU needed.
Of course, to pass it would involve offering a different colour of unicorn to every faction, but this has always worked so for.
The problem is what it has always been. Every single MP in Westminster has no problem in putting the following three priorities in order of importance:
1. My career prospects within my party.
2. My party’s chances of getting to mismanage the country for five years following the next general election.
3. The UK’s standing in the world and the health, wealth, happiness and wellbeing of its people for the next two or three generations.
I hold every single one of them in contempt.
Rather sweeping statements George which, living in Scotland, I do not agree with
1 My MP is NOT as you describe him in the slightest….
2 Not possible as SNP do not stand in any seats outwith Scotland….
3 All SNP MPs are fighting for an end to this madness…. & it took Scottish MPs, MEPs of SNP, Labour & Greens to get the case through whereby the U.K. has the legal chance of revoking Article 50…! I therefore totally disagree with your final sentence & would ask you to consider withdrawing it…
Yes, that’s very true Ian, George is being unfair. Undoubtedly his remarks apply to some of our politicians, especially those on the hard right. But, as you say, there are quite a few MP’s, not just those in the SNP, who are trying to stop this madness, and are not purely amoral careerists, or mindless leaders of the party line.
Caroline Lucas immediately springs to mind, but also what about those in other parties who are resisting this, despite the vile abuse and death threats they get from the anti EU fanatics? This applies especially to those conservatives such as Anna Soubry, Damien Grieve, Sarah Woolaston etc.
Ian Sanderson says:
“Rather sweeping statements George which, living in Scotland, I do not agree with”
Agreed entirely. Ian.
George simply expresses what I think is a sadly typical, (or at least common) Anglo-centric view. (Plenty more enlightened viewpoints are represented on this page on a regular basis, but I think this is a somewhat non-typical cross section 🙂 )
He does however give voice to a widespread dissatisfaction with the Westminster/Whitehall based, London focussed parliamentary set-up which in my view was instrumental in delivering the Brexit ‘leave’ vote in the first place. Unfortunately those who should properly be wishing to hold our own government to account have been misled (poor simple fools that so many of them apparently are) into blaming the EU for all our national ills (when they are taking a rest from blaming Nicola Sturgeon !!)
I agree with George that Westminster is collectively a disgrace to democracy, and letting down the side rather badly, but to blame all the individuals is rather missing the reality of the situation.
What Scotland can do about this whilst under the thumb of Westminster is, and palpably has been, very limited indeed. Particularly since ‘no-one’ ‘Down There’ has been taking any notice at all of Scottish interests or opinions (and the antipathy to the Irish situation is frankly embarrassing).
From the outset Brexit has been redolent of the ‘Three Bodies Problem’. (The one that concerns the very complex gravitational interplay between the Sun and Earth and our Moon). In this model the Moon is played by Scotland and pro tem the Earth played by England is little influenced by Scottish gravity.
And when I say ‘gravity’ there is conscious ‘double entendre’ …I think the current situation may be very grave indeed.
Saor Alba. Asap. But the timing DOES have to be right. Many in Scotland, as elsewhere in South Britain, still think it’s going to be enough to invoke the ‘Blitz Spirit’ – to keep calm and carry on. I think they are wrong.
Hi Andy,
Thanks 4 this….
We could go up/down the stairs regarding who pushed the referendum in the first place .. (personal pref is for the big dark money chaps who are terrified of upcoming EU legislation on money-laundering).
In total agreement with your final para…. I’ve just started reading Ian Dunt’s “Brexit – What the hell happens now?”; there’s a chapter on Scotland which explains ID’s thinking on Nicola’s seeming reluctance to call IndyRef2 which rings bells wi’ me… Written in 2016 so he’s commenting on ‘future events’ with a fair degree of accuracy IMO…
Time will, as ever, tell…. I’m up for IndyRef2 any time v.soon..!
“I do not believe anyone has the courage to actually just cancel Article 50 without a second vote”. It’s not a question of courage, the ECJ said revoking Art 50 could only only occur with full due democratic process suggesting at least a parliamentary vote would be required and perhaps even a referendum to reverse the first one?
My impression May was moving to a referendum, if Brussels doesn’t blink it’s the only way to avoid the cliff edge and the will of the people can be blamed one way or the other. I hadn’t thought May would go for a hard Brexit if there was any way to avoid it, but we’ll see.
A referendum is not required as the first one was not binding so it cannot require another to undo it
Whatever happens parliament would have to vote
Parliament is sovereign in the UK
I realise parliament is sovereign but lots of political capital has been invested in respecting the peoples vote. Walking that back without a referendum could be catastrophic for the tories.
What is the Prime Minister’s Plan B? Plan A, with a cunning deadline. It appears Theresa May now intends to circle European capitals endlessly; offering daily photo-ops and carefully staged vacuous soundbites. Say little. Never, ever reach a conclusion. Negotiation is never over. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and nothing is ever agreed. Burn as much time as possible with nothing-at-all, the perfect vacuum, until March. Rely on Parliament being too paralysed for any inedependent action. Command and control the Parliamentary timetable, and just keep kicking the can down the road. Do what the Conservatives do best: nothing.
Parliament is unlikley to be offered a debate or vote before the last date available; 21st January (?). The Government and the media will recycle spin; and the PM will no doubt prevaricate, delay, foot-drag, manipulate, postpone, stall; anything and everything that ‘runs down the clock’, into the ground. Time will run out, but so will the options: then there are only two left. Finally, Britain will be boxed-in to a decision between the Withdrawal Agreement and No Deal. No Deal is so bad, it is the only deal which can be said to be worse than the May Deal. That is why Theresa May wishes the choice to be reduced to this binary choice; at which point Parliament, out of options and out of time, will vote for May’s Deal.
You think this is daft? You may think this proposition is crackpot. Welcome to Britain. Welcome to ‘strong and stable’ in the hands of Theresa May.
50/50? I hope not. Two aspects of a no deal which haven’t had much comment are the effect of WTO rules and how damaging these might be to Ireland. Indeed the only person who seems to have raised the later is the ghastly Priti Patel, with her comments about food shortages and how these should be used as a lever in negotiations.
I’m not an expert on this, but it seems to me, without a deal, WTO’s Most Favoured Nation (MFN) requirement will mean that both sides, NI/UK and the Republic/EU, will have to carry out customs checks, and probably charge tariffs. On agricultural goods this will be crippling.
Some Brexiteers, of course, are saying that they would not charge tariffs on goods coming from the Republic. How generous of them. But what does this mean? Without a deal MFN would seem to imply dropping tariffs across the board — to goods coming from all other members of the WTO. Would we really want to do this? And, if we were to do this from Day 1, how easy is it then going to be to get other countries to drop tariffs on our goods in those famous new trade agreements?
Accepting that trade deals are not just about tariffs, if there’s to be a free trade deal involving tariffs, it has to look something like “we’ll drop our tariffs, if you’ll drop yours”. But that’s never going to work if we aren’t charging tariffs anyway. It’ll be a case of “we’ve dropped ours, so do you think possibly you might consider dropping yours too?” That a doesn’t seem to me a strong position to be in.
But the position for the Ireland and the EU would be intolerable. When Brexiteers say they would not charge tariffs, they also then say it would be up to Ireland and the EU what they decide to do — you can hear the grievance being prepared already, if they did not follow suit.
But clearly following WTO rules, if the EU did not apply tariffs, they would also have to trade tariff free with all other WTO states. They are simply not going to agree to this, and to suppose that a leaving state, us, might seek to impose such a regime on them is the purest arrogance. To accept that would be the end of the EU.
The inevitable result of a no deal then will, in the short term, be is a hard border with tariffs. What happens in the longer term is harder to see, but perhaps more worrying.
It’s difficult to think that no deal and tariffs would not have a very grave impact on the Republic. Not only is a very large part of their trade with the UK, but (I’m guessing) most of their trade with the rest of EU comes by road through the UK. This is going to be very damaging (even if there are special arrangements for goods in transit), and to impose this on them would be really a very hostile act.
I get the sense this could only end badly.
this entire pantomime was kicked off by a referendum result which was near as dammit 50/50,
imagining that any decisive action could be agreed upon based on a 50/50 vote was delusional,
the article 50 letter should have never been sent in the first place, it was obvious it was going to be a disaster,
cancelling the article 50 letter and actually discussing why people are pissed off and hence voted leave might reveal a direction to go in that gets a wider approval than 50/50
no one in parliament seems prepared to face up to why so many people are disgruntled atm,
I found this interview with Adam Curtis, in The Economist, caught the zeitgeist quite well.
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/12/06/the-antidote-to-civilisational-collapse
I found the interview helped clarify my thoughts and I do agree with him, wholeheartedly.
I think Adam Curtis interview is remarkably shallow, journalistic, in fact. though I admire his films. How could he talk so much about individualism and about the current zeitgeist without one single reference to neo-liberalism? And many good politicians are doing and saying exactly what he is asking for. Is the Green Party not saying help us make a better world? Climate change and Brexit have been captured by technocrats? Eh ? And when he said Trump voters are asking themselves existential questions that is when I had to stop reading. He is making a lot of this up. What a disappointment.
Thanks Matt for the link to Curtis.
Curtis is Grade A heterodox. I see him as a heterodox historian as well as a thinker or journalist.
I find myself agreeing with him too.
As for BREXIT, the reports about Council funding shook me out of my BREXIT induced stupor. 3% CT increases in April next year. Absolutely outrageous.
The BBC was reporting wages had risen in the private sector by just over 3% this year (the public sector where I work still lags behind so the 3% rise in CT will really hurt us).
But are the Tories that simple? Apparently they are. God how I hate them. Never mind stopping BREXIT – we need to stop the Tories.
And look at this sack of merde:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/13/daniel-hannan-mep-group-told-to-repay-half-a-million-in-eu-funds
Hannan is one of those people I would just love to bump into in a dark alley somewhere. This guy is Public Enemy Number 1 as far as I am concerned. He has a lot to answer for.
That’s the Hannan who reassured people that “absolutely nobody is taking about threatening our place in the single market”.
The HuffPost had quite a good compilation of similar quotes. It’s here https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/open-britain-video-single-market-nigel-farage-anna-soubry_uk_582ce0a0e4b09025ba310fce.
Includes Owen Patterson’s “Only a madman would actually leave the Market”.
Now on the blog
Thanks
Who knows where we’re going at present? The sanest way out of this insanity is for Article 50 to be revoked by the UK Parliament. For that to happen, what passes for a government would have to put it forward, and MPs vote it through.
Maybe our hopeless PM will do yet another u-turn, see sense as disaster looms, and for once do the right thing. And maybe there are enough sane MP’s with a bit of guts who will get together, regardless of party, to see it through. We can hope!
Or May will lose another vote in Parliament, then prevaricate, obfuscate, delay, can kick etc, make yet more pathetic attempts to get ‘concessions’ from the EU they clearly won’t give, wind the clock down, and present a by-now panicking Parliament facing the catastrophe of a no-deal (God, I’m sick of hearing that word) with the choice of that or her mess of a leaving arrangement.
And Parliament will pass it as being the lesser of two evils – which it is.
Or the EU takes pity on the UK, and grants an extension of the deadline date to avoid disaster, as we try and sort out some kind of solution, like another referendum or a withdrawal of A50.
Or is Parliament now, like much of the country itself, in such a mess that it will not be able to pass anything and the catastrophe of a no-deal actually happens? To the delight of disaster capitalists who funded so much of the Leave campaign, and the horror of the rest of us, including many Leave voters.
Two things I am clear on, and here I agree totally with many of the comments above. Labour have been next to useless on this so far, and will probably continue to be so. Corbyn and his fellow travellers should be ashamed of themselves.
And the leading Brexiters, like Hannen, Patel, Hoey, Johnson etc etc, deserve serious punishment for their disgusting lying, fanaticism, and stupidity.
Your gloom is all too well based. The daft ‘Doomsday’ clause (a la Strangelove) in the Withdrawal Act means that only counter legislation/repeal is certain to avoid the disaster. Short of that certainty, the political impact of a vote on January 21st for an alternative – a referendum/public vote and the accompanying application for an extension of Article 50 to allow it to happen, OR for the revocation of Article 50 – could force the government to cooperate.
But that will only amount to effective political pressure if it has a very significant majority behind it in the House. Otherwise May’s well-known pig-headed intransigence, with the Breximaniac tendency baying at her back inside and outside parliament, is quite capable of a ‘shan’t’, won’t’ hissy-fit – and defenestration by her own side will no longer be possible, even if achievable with opposition help. In short, I fear that by 22 January we will know.
The only good news today – apart from Raab not being about to strut his stuff before his party’s back-benchers and the truculent Tories of provincial Brexitania – is May’s humiliating put-down last night in Brussels. That has killed her deal in a very public way – and, perhaps more importantly, it has also demolished Corbyn’s last feeble defence of Labour’s pretence about negotiating a ‘jobs-first’ Brexit under him. Now, Corbyn has nowhere left to hide and that has materially increased the chance that Labour will have to endorse – and fight for – a referendum on the basis of ‘No Deal v. Remain in the EU’.
As for Scotland… there is increased speculation (the dependably perceptive Angus Brendan MacNeil to the fore) that the SNP may push Labour very hard now for a No Confidence vote with an accompanying statement that lack of action will ensure a Scottish referendum/election. The point of this, Scotland’s own determination aside, will be to increase the pressure on Labour to come out and do its job – which requires it to commit to something definite, vide the move for a referendum already discussed.
Those, seem to me, to be the only chances and the pretty well, inescapable time scales. It does not look good – and the sense that one is living amidst the kind of madness of 1914 in England or 1915 Italy just keeps growing.
(At at trivial level, I’ve noticed how dinner party conversations seem to be avoiding the subject and one wonders what was the chatter ‘on the brink’ in times past. As a surprising antidote – whistling in the philosophic dark really – try reading the passage, late on in George Mackay Brown’s “The American”, where that rogue and much decorated coward/national treasure Flashman {by that time a retired general and more} after a dinner in Soho on the evening of 4th August, 1914, inveighs against the nonsense of going to fight for plucky Belgium – and what the hideous real consequences will be. It’s a surreal moment where all the shabby, self-serving cowardice of his career seem at last to be justified by his final explosion of practical good sense. We could do with some self-serving good sense now – and a deal less British exceptionalist tub-thumping, but, alas, neither Moggy nor May would recognise the sense nor get the joke.)
https://www.facebook.com/indycargordonross/videos/1930451947264562/UzpfSTEwMDAwNDc1OTg0NzM3NzpWSzozMzg2MzE0NzM1MzQzOTY/
“As for Scotland… there is increased speculation (the dependably perceptive Angus Brendan MacNeil to the fore) that the SNP may push Labour very hard now for a No Confidence vote with an accompanying statement that lack of action will ensure a Scottish referendum/election. The point of this, Scotland’s own determination aside, will be to increase the pressure on Labour to come out and do its job — which requires it to commit to something definite, vide the move for a referendum already discussed.”
I’ll go for that… We should also be pushing for a Section 30…