Brexit: No deal under Hunt or Javid gets ever more likely

Thank goodness I ditched plans to spend yesterday writing a 1500 word analysis of all the potential outcomes of the various votes on Brexit due on Tuesday. Now it turns out there won’t be a vote, or not yet. Just a few minutes after press officers assured lobby hacks that there would be a vote, the Prime Minister conducted a conference call with the cabinet at 11.30am to say that she is pulling the vote.

“Welcome to Number 10 conference systems. Enter your conference code May 1940 and add the hash key. Please say your name. Boris Johnson has joined the call…”

What happens now?

Listen, no-one has any firm idea what is going to happen in the next hour, let alone by the end of the day, never mind next year.

With the Tory leader’s authority in ruins, she seems ready to go back to Brussels to ask for some reassurance on the terms of the backstop that kicks in if the UK and the EU fail to agree a deal on the future relationship by mid-2020. But there is no sign of movement from the other side. For months, May was too frightened to ask for a right to give notice to quit the backstop, in case the EU didn’t like it. Although it was drafted, The Times revealed, it was never presented, an unforgivable negotiating failure.

There is no no doubt that of the various factions, Remainers are most emboldened by the events of recent days, however. Excitement is high and rising among those who want to reverse the referendum and among their allies in parts of the media. They think that the ruling today by the totally unpolitical ECJ (not a political court at all, oh no, not remotely) means a referendum rerun is now the main option. Remain have had a fun few days, rallying with Michael Heseltine and assorted actors, and the Labour shadow sports spokesperson, and now they are convinced it’s game on for a referendum.

While such an outcome is possible, of course, a referendum requires legislation. Parliament can try for the first time to run the executive, but that is not how the British system functions. If you want a referendum rematch you need a government with a Prime Minister to propose it, a front-bench to unite behind it, and the votes in the Commons to control business and pass a bill making it law.

If there is a majority in the Commons for a referendum rerun – and it is questionable – it is spread across various parties. How could a Remainer Tory PM (who is this mystery person?) announce a second referendum and then get it through the Commons with Labour, Lib Dem, and SNP votes? Will they form a National Government of Disunity? How will this person survive as leader of the Brexity Tory party that they have magically become leader of? It all sounds a stretch.

A general election might – might – get you to the position when a referendum rerun happens, but that requires Tory Remain fanatic MPs to resign from the Tory party to bring down the government. I count five who will do that, but not many more than that seem inclined on a course of action so mad. There are also a handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs, and others who voted Remain but who represent heavily pro-leave seats. They may not be minded to support getting Jeremy Corbyn and the Marxist Maniacs into government to subvert the 2016 vote we were all assured was final.

The Norway compromise has merit, and its most vehement and deceitful critics in recent days have been hardline Remain, I suspect because they fear the consequences of admitting that an alternative to what they have always sought (remaining) exists. The practical difficulties with Norway are substantial, though. A leader of the largest party, the Tories, would have to emerge to advocate it and then rely on Labour rebel votes to get it passed. Again, how is such a government formed and who leads it? How can it get business through?

All of which points towards no deal, under an emergency Tory leader, being as of now the most likely outcome.

Leaving, as the result of serial votes by the Commons, is the law. To be sure of changing that, you need a new law, and I have illustrated the problems inherent in that issue.

And all the time the clock ticks down, every day closer to March 29th. It seems a new Conservative leader will be chosen either (quickly) by the Tory parliamentary party, or (slowly) by a full vote of the membership. I suspect it won’t ever get to a membership vote, by the agreement of the candidates and the party’s officer bearers. It’s Christmas and there is a crisis on.

The new leader will either be a full-blown leaver, such as Boris or Dominic Raab. Or they will be a former Remainer determined to get on with it.  They are highly unlikely to come from the small “continuity Remain” wing of the Tory party.

My view is that the two key players at this stage are Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Both voted remain, but both are committed to leaving and, I understand, are prepared to countenance what has been termed “managed no deal”. Both are ready to ramp up preparations. Presumably this would require a new Chancellor with a touch more dynamism.

One of the key questions in the next few days will be whether Hunt and Javid can come to an accommodation, or whether they both go for it trying to beat the other. If they do not unite, they could risk letting a wildcard through. That might happen anyway.

There is no doubt even managed no deal would be tough. But we have all become trapped by the relentlessly downbeat Mayite way of thinking. There are numerous examples in history of a change of leader improving morale and sharpening decision-making. As well as dramatically scaling up no deal preparations in case of no agreement at all, the first step would be to offer the EU a slimmed down Withdrawal Agreement, minus the backstop, but keeping the transition that both sides want.

What’s in it for the EU? Almost £40bn quid, the sum May insanely agreed to hand over before we knew what the deal would be.

At any talk of a managed no deal up goes the cry from the pro-Brussels Brexit nerds of Britain: “Can’t be done! Won’t allow it! Britain is small and hopeless, as I learned on my last trip to Brussels, and the ghastly Martin Selmayr says hi!”

In the face of this, and further parliamentary warfare, a new Prime Minister will have to say, calmly to the country and the overwhelming bulk of the Tory party, that the time for faffing about is over. Theresa May tried in good faith, but it led to a backstop on terms which no sovereign country could possibly accept. Those who urged her to keep going believed her when she claimed she could never agree to it. And then she did agree. Without even proposing a tougher line on the right to give notice on the backstop, and against ministerial advice, she folded.

There will now be a lot of screaming that there is no majority for a managed no deal or any kind of no deal. But there is no majority or government to be built for the alternatives either, it seems, short of an election which needs to be triggered by Tory Remain fanatics prepared to let in Corbyn. And amid all the noise, leaving is, as of now, the law.

This being the case, as I keep on saying, shouldn’t we with some urgency get ready?

Iain Martin,
Editor and publisher
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