Having been rejected three times by her party’s Brexiter fanatics, Theresa May has at last decided to try something else. The prime minister’s overture to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn shows, at least, a hideously belated recognition that crashing out without a deal would be utterly irresponsible. But, having burnt her bridges with the hardliners, she has to go further. It is not enough to ask Mr Corbyn for help, which might well be unforthcoming. A reason has also to be given to the EU for asking for the long extension the UK clearly needs. That should be another referendum.
Let us look not at today’s sorry spectacle in Westminster, but at the broad options available to the UK: a no-deal exit; a softer Brexit acceptable to the EU and the British public and parliament, for which an exit agreement is a necessary condition; and continued membership of the EU. Crashing out is unacceptable. The withdrawal agreement does not attract the needed support, for very good reasons. That leaves EU membership as the one sane option.
According to a recent paper from the Centre for European Reform, the UK economy is already some 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been if Britain had not decided on Brexit. The knock-on effect on the public finances is, it argues, £360m a week, almost exactly the sum that the fount of economic wisdom, Boris Johnson, promised would be available after Brexit. The figure is in line with other reasonable estimates. Philip Hammond, chancellor of exchequer, used to say that the British people “did not vote to be poorer”. But they did. Alas, it could get far worse.
Last week, Mr Johnson argued: “It is time for the [prime minister] to channel the spirit of Moses in Exodus, and say to the Pharaoh in Brussels — LET MY PEOPLE GO.” The view that the British people are enslaved by the EU is laughable. But the analogy is better than Mr Johnson knew. The freed Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. That was not the promise of the Brexit campaign. But it is probably accurate. A no-deal Brexit is likely to deliver a large negative shock, followed by decades of weaker growth in an economy with reduced access to its natural markets and shorn of global confidence.
The prime minister is absolutely right to reject this option, though that has come far too late. The natural tendency then is to seek some sort of soft Brexit. But there is a problem with this, indicated by the reaction to the withdrawal deal itself. Any soft Brexit — staying in the customs union, staying in the single market, or staying in the customs union and the single market — requires the UK to accept a wide range of EU conditions, regulations and rules, without enjoying a say in them. The only exception would be a Canada-style free trade agreement. But the EU has made it clear that such a deal would only be possible if Northern Ireland were treated separately from the rest of the UK and so there would need to be a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea. But that has, in turn, been unacceptable to parliament.
It is a reasonable judgment, supported by behaviour in parliament, that such a halfway house is very unlikely to be acceptable in the long run. The UK is not a small country, in the European context. It is most unlikely to accept such subordination to the EU political process in the long term. It will probably not accept it even in the medium term. It would indeed be “vassalage”.
If no-deal Brexit is insane and a soft Brexit ultimately unacceptable, the only sensible option becomes staying inside the EU. But that would only be possible after another referendum, conducted on the basis of the options we know: a no-deal Brexit; the prime minister’s withdrawal deal; and withdrawing the application to leave. Such a referendum would be complex, but not impossible.
How should the EU confront such a possibility? The starting point is that it only makes sense to offer a long extension if something might change. Another referendum would be such a change. A general election might also be such a change. But the crucial choice for the EU is this: should it be rid of this impossible, even unhinged, country, even though a no-deal Brexit could do significant harm to the bloc and perhaps even to the credibility of the European project? Or does it offer a lengthy extension in return for the UK’s willingness to rethink what it wants to do, including another referendum?
Who, the EU must constantly have wondered, will rid us of this turbulent country? Happily, comes the answer, it is willing to do so itself. Yet think again: just as the UK will always be European, so will the EU always have the UK as a neighbour. This may be the last chance for the two sides to rethink. Take it.
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