An own goal for Britain?

No one, in Parliament or in government, is still clear on what Brexit means

March 27, 2019 12:02 am | Updated 12:02 am IST

The Brexit slogans have returned like a boomerang in the U.K. “ Take back control ,” the Brexiteers had demanded. Parliament has now wrested control of the Brexit process from Prime Minister Theresa May and will indicate the type of exit from the European Union (EU) that might be acceptable to it, having earlier rejected both her withdrawal agreement and her threat of leaving without an agreement. Though it is now abundantly clear that no one can quite agree on what Brexit means, let alone how to achieve it.

A new deal?

Ironically, the European Council had to take control of the Brexit time-line last week to offer Ms. May a reprieve until April 12 to decide how Britain wishes to exit the EU. Until then, Britain had been in very real danger of chaotically crashing out of the Union on March 29. Without a transition agreement, Britain will lose all current arrangements for 49.5% of its total trade; EU laws that govern its industry, banking, agriculture and influence national laws will cease to apply. Until a new arrangement is negotiated, seamless exchanges in goods and services will collapse. The EU, however, is not known for speedy negotiations.

At the heart of the current crisis is a 585-page draft on an interim trading relationship. Much of this could have been avoided if Ms. May had consulted widely on what Brexit meant before triggering Article 50 to take Britain out of the EU. Instead, she chose to negotiate with 27 other countries in a bloc by first putting down red lines, as if she held all the cards. When hemmed in by the extreme right of her Conservative Party, she prioritised party unity by calling an election where she lost her slim majority and then, astonishingly, carried on in Parliament as if she commanded a majority and was not at the mercy of the equally hard-line DUP of Northern Ireland.

 

In pandering to the Tory extreme right, Ms. May increased divisions between those who saw their future as best provided for within the EU and those who wanted to shed the perceived over-weaning powers of Brussels and regain control of immigration. Alternative visions of Brexit were never seriously debated even though the referendum itself was completely silent on what sort of exit was envisioned in the Leave option in the 2016 referendum.

Parliamentary turmoil

This weakness of the referendum process left Parliament in a bind. Convention has tasked Parliament with consulting on, debating and legislating for the country’s future. Quite simply, MPs are voted into Parliament to use their judgment. A referendum turns this convention on its head because it hands MPs a decision that has not been arrived at through proper parliamentary procedure, leaving Parliament unsure of how to treat that decision. There is no precedent for this — the Brexit referendum was only the third ever held, and the first where the majority of parliamentarians voted in opposition to the referendum result. Parliament chose to treat this as a binding instruction even though most MPs disagreed with the result. This then is the genesis of the current impasse.

Most parliamentarians voted Remain to safeguard Britain’s future. London’s attractiveness as a financial hub owes less to its soggy climate than to its position as a gateway to the rest of Europe; Britain imports a quarter of all its food from the EU; most large industry depends on complex just-in-time supplies from mainland Europe; and Britain imports medicines ranging from insulin to medical isotopes for cancer treatment to scalpels and syringes. Any regulatory, tariff or logistical barriers to imports could potentially cost lives. For those MPs to vote for or even acquiesce in a ‘hard’ or no deal Brexit which endangers prosperity and health is unthinkable. And yet, this is what a group of deeply Eurosceptic Conservative MPs are pushing Britain towards. They have threatened to break up the Conservative Party over Europe, and Ms. May has, time and again, caved into their demands, prioritising party over national interest.

And yet, her government cannot be sacked because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011, which makes it very difficult to remove a government mid-term. So Britain is stuck with a government that remains in power without wielding any power. The constitutional ‘firsts’ over Brexit continue. This is the first time Parliament has voted to take control of Parliament business; this is the first government to have been held in contempt of Parliament over its withholding of the Attorney General’s advice on elements of the withdrawal agreement; it is the first to lose a vote on the main business of the House of Commons by an overwhelming margin, twice; and it is the first in living memory on whose watch party discipline has disintegrated so completely that Cabinet Ministers can vote against their government and still retain their jobs.

In the meantime, the clock is ticking to April 12, when Britain has to tell the EU whether it wants to leave with the current unloved deal, no deal or needs more time to reconsider Brexit altogether. The gift of that extension which could safeguard Britain’s prosperity now lies in the hands of the 27 remaining EU member states, any one of whom could exercise their veto. It is indeed an odd way for Britain to take back control.

 

Priyanjali Malik is an independent researcher focussing on politics and nuclear security in South Asia

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