Thirty-three months after its in-out referendum and just a week before it was due to leave the EU, Britain faces the most calamitous failure of government in modern times. Brexit has exposed deep fissures within the UK. Theresa May has squandered her authority. Parliament has struggled to agree on a future relationship with Britain’s neighbours. The EU27 have now handed the prime minister a short reprieve. She must not throw it away.
Unravelling more than four decades of EU membership was always going to be a monumental project. In 2016 a little over half of those who voted in the referendum backed withdrawal. A fraction under half judged that, for all the irritations, Britain was better off as a member of the European club. The Article 50 departure process has seen the arguments become ever more acrimonious, inflicting wounds that will not be easily healed.
The divisions cut across nations, demography and economic and social groups. England backed Brexit. So did Wales. But, apart from Birmingham, the UK’s great metropolitan cities were on the side of Remain. Scotland endorsed continued membership. So did Northern Ireland. The elderly favoured Leave by a considerable margin. Young people tilted heavily to Remain. Well-heeled graduates backed membership; the “left behinds” favoured Brexit.
A confident leader putting the national interest first would have set a course in 2016 calculated to minimise divisions. There was scope. Leavers held different views as to what Brexit meant. On the Remain side there were passionate pro-Europeans and those whose prime concerns were economic — above all, access to the single market.
Mrs May took a different tack. From the outset her strategy — the rush to invoke Article 50 and the red lines drawn for negotiations with Brussels — was calibrated to underpin her own position. She claimed Brexit as the sole property of the Conservative party. Even after losing her overall majority in an ill-judged general election, the prime minister sidelined devolved governments and Westminster opposition parties. Most recently, she has seemed the prisoner of hardline Brexiters and of the Democratic Unionist Party MPs, on whom she relies for a majority.
The deal Mrs May negotiated last year with the EU27 has been twice rejected by large majorities in the House of Commons. Arrangements to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland are strongly opposed by the DUP and Tory hardliners. The flimsy outline of an arms-length future relationship has been rejected by opposition parties.
Desperately, Mrs May has tried to reframe the choice as one between her terms and a costly and chaotic no-deal Brexit on March 29. Dangerously, she has blamed MPs for a deadlock in parliament that has been the consequence of her own stubborn refusal to seek wider agreement.
Britain was saved from her brinkmanship by the summit of EU leaders in Brussels. But the cliff-edge could return in mid-April. The EU27 have given Britain three weeks to make up its mind as between the deal offered to Mrs May or another course.
If the prime minister is set on a third vote, she should call it at the very beginning of next week. If she is defeated again, it will be her solemn duty to offer MPs the chance to vote on a range of other options, including a softer Brexit and a confirmatory referendum. Mrs May has a last chance to show she is ready to put Britain’s prosperity and security ahead of narrow partisan interests. History will not forgive her if she spurns it.
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