Are you a Bob? That is someone who in the terminology deployed by the Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt at the weekend is bored of Brexit. Out in the country are the BoBs, those beyond the bubble going about their business. They have had enough and just want the government to get on with it, Hunt said.
If you are bored of Brexit, I bring suboptimal news. The BoBs are destined for disappointment. Although I share your pain, Brexit is very far from being over. Whatever the outcome of the Commons vote next month on the deal that Theresa May signed with the European Union on Sunday, the British are going to be fighting over Brexit for years to come.
Even if the deal is passed by MPs before Christmas, the UK will get only a short respite from arguments about Brexit before the government, its supposed partners the DUP, and assorted opposition parties, begin the next stage of the punch up, this time over what the future relationship should be.
The negotiation window for the UK and the EU to agree that deal on the future is small. It must be done by December 2020, at the end of transition, although in reality before that to give both sides warning and a chance or prepare. The European elections in May 2019 and the selection of a new Commission in Brussels mean that nothing much will get done before November next year. That leaves a year at best, and more like eight months, during which everything is supposed to be settled by the two sides. All of this will be accompanied by demands for various public votes.
It does not take a genius to work out that after the spectacle of the last two years, the chances of UK and EU negotiators concluding a whizz bang trade deal in under a year are not high. Remember that this time the member states will have a potential veto.
This makes the process so far – 19 months of fraught negotiations on a divorce – an appetiser, perhaps even a mere canapé, for the main course to come, in the memorable phrase of Katya Adler, the BBC’s Europe Editor, today.
If, on the other hand, the deal falls in the Commons vote, this outcome raises the curtain on a full-blown festival of parliamentary chicanery and carnage, stretching on month after month, all against a backdrop of a potential general election in which Magic Grandpa and the Marxist maniacs (what a name for a band) could get the keys to Number 10 and Number 11.
Given how fluid the situation is, it would be foolish to rule out the possibility that Theresa May’s deal somehow passes the House of Commons in the end if minds change. May’s supporters point out that the deal on the table is the only deal available and time is short. All weekend Tory MPs have been in their constituencies, and even more so than usual they will have been talking to voters, their local office bearers and their own families. If past form is anything to go by, some grassroot Tories will have raised doubts about the deal, yet others will have counselled caution. It’s the best deal available, runs the argument. Corbyn might get in amid the chaos of no deal, so why not just vote for it and move on?
Pragmatism and practicality are central to the worldview of the Tory tribe.
But is such pressure going to be enough to change the minds of MPs to get them to vote for the deal? Right now, it appears not, because pragmatism is in conflict with another Tory trait, a sense of pride in nation and a reluctance to allow the country and its government to be pushed around. The problems are partly of Britain’s making, of course. Nonetheless, in the wake of the deal the menacing image of Juncker and the prattlings of the ludicrous President Macron, the egomaniac trainee boy Emperor, will have done nothing to assuage concerns.
With little more than a fortnight until MPs vote on the deal, the Prime Minister is at least forty to fifty votes short because the key group – Tory MPs considering voting against – are worried about an existential, elementary threat to sovereignty. The deal carries the risk of the backstop, that is membership of someone else’s customs territory, going on for ever with no right to give notice.
As it stands, the deal looks highly likely to fall thanks to Tory rebels and the DUP.
The looming chaos has caused a further surge in excitement and anticipation among those campaigning for a second vote, or a rerun of the referendum. Are they about to get what they want? Is a rerun going to be added to the mix early next year?
I won’t at length rehearse, again, the reasons why such a vote would be a catastrophe for our democracy, or cite the myriad practical problems and unanswered questions. Among those one might include: What’s the wording on the ballot paper? Is it multiple choice? What if leave voters boycott it and set up a new populist party dedicated to respecting the 2016 result? Why not a third, fourth or fifth referendum?
Anything is possible in the prevailing febrile atmosphere at Westminster but it is very difficult to see how a referendum gets on the statute book, or even how the measures leading up to it get through parliament successfully.
In that context, the assurances of Remain Tories – parliament will stop it – look increasingly hollow. They dodge the question whenever asked how exactly it can be stopped or how their second referendum gets through.
No wonder they are worried about the constitutional reality. Parliament can vote for all manner of appeals for a pause or a halt, and with the help of the Speaker these will carry great weight. Those appeals are not, however, the same as changing the law. The government controls the business of the Commons, and unless there is a frontbench committed to stopping Brexit or to holding a second referendum, the law trundles on. All the time the clock ticks down. Every day of squabbling and shouting is another day closer to departure with or without a deal.
As it stands, leaving the European on March 29th is the law. Parliament is up to its neck in this process. It legislated for the referendum, in which the British state promised to implement the result. The Commons voted to trigger Article 50 in March 2017. Both major parties campaigned in the general election of that year on the basis that they would honour that process. To change course will require legislation, within four months. A government might try to halt or suspend Article 50, aided by a court case or two, but to do what? It instantly runs straight into the same problem that it then needs to be able to get an alternative to Brexit through the Commons.
Belatedly, a group of cabinet ministers is trying a third way, that is the Norway model advocated by Tory MP Nick Boles and campaigner George Trefgarne (declaration, a friend of mine). An EEA/Efta outcome cannot be ruled out, and it has merits. It could emerge as the compromise. But those campaigners face the same time constraints, and to deliver it they probably need a new Prime Minister and a cross party accord with Labour moderates. Thus their scheme requires a sudden remoulding of the party system, and a government that can get it through, and the EU to cooperate. It sounds unlikely by March.
The clock keeps ticking. After Christmas and the start of the new year, there will be just thirteen weeks until the UK leaves the EU. The unavoidable cold, hard fact is that without a government committed to stopping it, and legislation which passes the Commons, the UK leaves. Unless the law changes, leaving is the law.
It’s why I keep saying get ready. Not because I relish no deal – I don’t – but because if May’s deal falls then it is where we are headed. Better to work on that basis than hope for something to turn up.