The new Brexit reality

[Pelle Svanslös]

Key elements of the new [Brexit neg] reality:

- The election result has significantly weakened Theresa May and means
she is unlikely to survive for long as prime minister and party leader –
how long is a moot question.

- However long she stays, she now needs the support of political rivals
inside the Conservative party, including “pragmatists” such as the
chancellor, Philip Hammond, who favour a softer Brexit.

- The prime minister is also reliant for her majority on Northern
Ireland’s DUP, whose demand for a “frictionless border” with the
Republic could necessitate staying in both the customs union and the
single market.

- The support of pro-European Scotland’s cohort of new Conservative MPs
will also be critical. Their newly powerful leader, Ruth Davidson, has
already called on the government to pursue an “open” Brexit.

- The so-called “Norway option” is back. Previously dropped because it
requires free movement of people, this would see the UK retain full
access to the single market by rejoining the European Free Trade
Association (Efta).

- Which is not, of course, to say that any of the above will happen.
Other factors may prevail (and increase the chances of a car-crash
Brexit), including:

- Although only a soft Brexit may now command broad parliamentary
support, any softening of the government’s approach risks angering
Eurosceptic Tories and precipitating a rebellion (in the pro-Brexit
press, too).

- The EU27 will demand a price for full single market access that will
include accepting budgetary contributions, the continued jurisdiction of
the European court of justice, and free movement of labour.

- Labour looks conflicted on the single market, with the shadow
chancellor, John McDonnell, saying voters would interpret staying in the
single market as “not respecting the result of the referendum”, but
other MPs say different.

In any event, it seems as though the start of Brexit talks – like the
Queen’s speech – may now well be delayed.

The view from Europe

Concretely, the election result changes little for the EU27: they still
want to get on with it, they will still insist the UK respects their
schedule of “divorce first, trade talks second”, and their Brexit red
lines remain unaffected – just as they would have if May had won a large
majority.

Europe is worried, however, that a weakened prime minister will no
longer be able to bring her party to compromises. Senior EU diplomats
also say the election has magnified their uncertainty about what the UK
really wants, as London has not sent Brussels a single position paper.

Several leaders and EU officials warned about delaying the start of the
talks by too long, pointing out that the clock was already ticking on
the two-year time period allowed for the article 50 divorce negotiations.

Others called the election a “disaster” and an “own goal” that would
“make already complex negotiations even more difficult”, and risked
increasing the chances of the talks breaking down altogether.

Senior EU sources also said that if London insisted on talking about a
free trade deal before the issues of the divorce bill, citizens’ rights
and the border in Ireland, the EU would take a year to draft a new
mandate for its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in effect killing the
negotiations.

OTOH

In The Guardian, Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform
thinktank is optimistic about a softer Brexit, arguing that May’s
crumbling authority offers a new chance for compromise:

"The EU will make it clear that if you want more economic integration,
you must give up sovereignty. In recent months they have grown
increasingly frustrated with May, her team and the key Whitehall
ministries, accusing them of being ill-prepared, lacking expertise and
making too many unrealistic demands ... The 27 hope for a softer and
more realistic British approach – whether they have to talk to May Mk II
or a new prime minister. If the British oblige, the EU could scale back
some of its demands, for example on money. And then a deal would become
more likely."

On Project Syndicate, Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik school of
government at Oxford University, offers negotiating tips for a weakened
UK government, saying that thus far it has been too combative and too
self-interested, and has created altogether unrealistic expectations:

"May called the recent election because she wanted a stronger mandate to
negotiate a good deal for her country. She didn’t get it. Now more than
ever, securing a deal will require shifting to a collaborative,
outward-looking, and realistic negotiating strategy."

And in a brilliant essay in the New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole
argues that this tumultuous election showed above all that the Brexit
chickens were finally coming home to roost:

"Brexit is a back-of-the-envelope proposition. Strip away the
post-imperial make-believe and the Little England nostalgia, and there’s
almost nothing there, no clear sense of how a middling European country
with little native industry can hope to thrive by cutting itself off
from its biggest trading partner and most important political alliance …

The Brits want what they can’t possibly have. They want everything to
change and everything to go as before. They want an end to immigration –
except for all the immigrants they need to run their economy and health
service. They want it to be 1900, when Britain was a superpower and
didn’t have to make messy compromises with foreigners. To take power,
May had to pretend that she, too, dreams these impossible dreams. And
that led her to embrace a phoney populism in which the narrow and
ambiguous majority who voted for Brexit under false pretences are be
re-imagined as “the people” …

May’s appeal to “the people” as a mystic entity came up against Corbyn’s
appeal to real people in their daily lives, longing not for a date with
national destiny, but for a good school, a functioning National Health
Service, and decent public transport. Phoney populism came up against a
more genuine brand of anti-establishment radicalism that convinced the
young and the marginalised that they had something to come out and vote
for."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/13/brexit-weekly-briefing-shock-election-result-means-new-negotiation-calculus

--
“Donald Trump is the weak man’s vision of a strong man.”
-- Charles Cooke