Deal or No Deal? (20/11/18)
Alex Massie wrote an interesting article for The Sunday Times at the weekend in which he argued that it's effectively 'Deal?' or 'No Deal?' when it comes to a Brexit vote in the House of Commons.
Unless, of course, Labour and Jeremy Corbyn get their act together and back a People's Vote on the final terms of any Brexit deal which ought to include:
1) Theresa May's Deal
2) Crashing out of the EU with No Deal
3) Remaining a member of the European Union
Now that would be perfectly fair and democratic if you ask me, because the Leavers have patently not delivered on the claims made during the 2016 referendum and the voters should now have the final say.
Alex Massie: There is no miracle third way on Brexit
By Alex Massie - The Sunday Times
Politicians must swallow the truth that May’s deal is as good as it will get
What a week. Not since the last Brexit shambles has there been a fiasco like this. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has a government in name alone this weekend; unfortunately it also has an opposition in name only. Theresa May is stuck, imprisoned by her own party, but there is no cavalry riding to the rescue.
The withdrawal agreement reached by the UK government and the EU is a mess. It has little in it to please anyone. Brexiteers complain that leaving like this is worse than remaining, which, in an acute irony, is exactly what “remainers” warned about two years ago. Meanwhile, the lack of a Commons majority for anything tempts MPs to dream about sending the entire mess back to the people who voted for it in the first place. We don’t know what to do; perhaps a second referendum will sort it all out for us. Spoiler alert: it won’t.
As you read this, the plotting continues. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group may — or may not! — have the 48 letters needed to trigger a vote of confidence in the prime minister. Meanwhile, dissident members of the cabinet are reported to be conducting their own manoeuvres. Mystifyingly, these disgruntled ministers appear to believe a deal that has taken more than a year to reach can be renegotiated now and signed off in time for the March 29 deadline next year. Well, good luck with that. Why would the EU reopen a negotiation it considers closed and that some members worry is already too generous to the United Kingdom?
Again, there is no new deal that can be negotiated. So it is this deal or no deal. Half a loaf of stale and suspiciously mouldy bread or no loaf at all. Not the loaf of anyone’s dreams but the only rations available right now. In a saner time, this would concentrate minds.
Nicola Sturgeon, for instance, is clear that a no-deal Brexit would be a calamity. On that, if little else, she agrees with the prime minister and Ruth Davidson. There are many Labour MPs who also accept that no deal is both a live option and a terrible one. They, too, have choices to make. Politics is a question of priorities. The Brexiteers have demonstrated what happens when ideological purity is elevated above the national interest; now opposition MPs have to weigh their own disinclination to help the prime minister against the national interest. They did not create this crisis, but they can help to find a way out of it. If they choose to.
It is worth remembering that the “backstop” — by which the UK would essentially remain within the customs union — is both closer to what Labour and the SNP have demanded than it is to the prime minister’s own preferred outcome. However the backstop only becomes operational if the negotiations on a future trading agreement fail. It is a reserve clause or an insurance policy, then. It is not certain to be needed.
If Northern Ireland is to be treated differently in the future that is partly because it is treated differently already. Davidson has insisted that no fresh or new layers of “differentiation” between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are introduced; this is a nuanced but just about tenable line even if, plainly, this has neither been a great nor a comfortable week for the Scottish Tories.
Still, as ever, other factors intrude. At first minister’s questions Patrick Harvie essentially accused Sturgeon of going soft on independence. The Greens are ready for a new independence campaign, he said, but is the first minister? Give us a break, you could sense Sturgeon thinking, but “when we have clarity” on what Brexit means, she “will come back to the chamber and set out my views on the precise detail” of what should happen next. From which, once again, it was hard to escape the feeling that the SNP still sees Brexit as the kind of disaster that’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity. No deal is terrible, but if it produces a springboard for independence perhaps it’s not so terrible after all?
Hitherto, the SNP’s intentions have escaped scrutiny. But the party’s 35 votes at Westminster could yet prove significant. As matters stand, there is no prospect of the nationalists saving the prime minister. Every SNP politician with whom I have spoken has been adamant that rejecting the prime minister’s deal does not mean embracing no deal at all. I believe they believe this; I also think they are kidding themselves.
Out there, in what we still think of as the real world, the choices available do not include a “better” deal or a second referendum. They are, instead, limited to this deal or no deal. We might wish it otherwise but this is the way it is. There is no middle ground, no third way.
The question of a second referendum may be dispensed with swiftly enough. The Conservative Party is not in favour of this for all the obvious reasons. More importantly, Jeremy Corbyn is opposed to a so-called “People’s Vote”. So that’s that and the demand for a second referendum is really not much more than a howl of impotent despair.
The stark truth is that this fiasco leaves everyone unhappy. It has broken British politics and while this is a shambles made by the Conservative Party, other parties have some responsibility for how they respond to it, too. Few can be credited with passing marks.
Again, one stubborn truth is unavoidable: this is as good a withdrawal settlement as the United Kingdom is going to get. That does not make it a good deal. But if you think any deal better than no deal — the no deal of food shortages, grounded aeroplanes, a run on the pound and an immediate recession — then you have, as an MP, a choice: you can vote for the least bad option available or you can accept the default position of no deal.
That is a question that every MP, from every party, should be forced to answer. Do you choose the disappointments of reality, or do you prefer to place your hopes in miracles? At present, far too many members of parliament seem to think miracles can happen.
@alexmassie
