As the Good Ship Brexit – holed multiple times beneath the water
line – limps to the end of its two-year voyage, four distinct islands are now in
view.
The first is the one that everyone seems to agree we simply
cannot approach. It’s the island favoured by the beleaguered Captain May and,
through our telescope, we can just make out the tiny figure of Donald Tusk
waving from a crag.
Some people think the island is too big. Some think the
island is too small. Some believe it to be inhabited by monsters. But all agree
it’s a desperate place to head for and they shake their heads at Captain May
for her folly.
The second potential destination is the one favoured by a
group of officer mutineers, who plan to throw the Captain overboard. It’s an island
of sunny uplands, where the inhabitants trade freely with neighbouring
provinces and business proceeds unfettered by any regulation. If we head there,
we’re assured by Lieutenant Boris that grog will be replaced by milk and honey.
Island number three is just off our port side right now and
is a workers’ paradise. People labour for only four days a week and shelter
under the ever-plentiful Magic Money Tree on their three-day weekend. Ship’s
cook Jezza – inspired by the Spithead and Nore mutineers of yore – believes that
if he sinks the Good Ship Brexit, this will be the destination of choice for
all his fellow seamen.
The final island has an attractive allure. It’s the one where
all dreams come true. It is rumoured that when you set foot on the sands, time
is reversed and all the bad decisions you previously made disappear. After a
day or two in this idyll, the holes in the Good Ship Brexit will repair
themselves and after a week or so, everyone will forget that the vessel ever
set sail.
The bewildering array of choices now in front of us comes
with a caveat. Only one of them is real. That’s the destination favoured by the
Captain. The others are mirages conjured from two years of drinking sea water
and battling scurvy.
It’s time that we faced up to a very obvious fact. There is
no good outcome to Brexit.
Although the choices we make in the coming days and weeks
will, of course, be hugely important and have momentous consequences, none of
them will solve the UK’s divisions and each comes with a whole heap of new problems.
If May is overthrown by her own party and replaced by a
Brexit extremist, does that fundamentally change the arithmetic in Parliament?
Of course not. The balance of power remains pretty much the same. There is no majority
for a hard Brexit and a no-deal disaster.
If May ploughs on, but loses on the key votes, would there
be a general election? Possibly, but it’s by no means certain. She could be
replaced by the Tories (see above) and the DUP have already signalled that they
might vote her Brexit plans down and still support her in a vote of confidence.
If the government did fall, we’d be faced with the prospect
of a general election – probably at the beginning of 2019. The campaign would
be a confusing and fraught. Corbyn and McDonnell would want to fight on their hard-left
manifesto, but everything would be overshadowed by Brexit. This would be the actual EU election that May promised in
2017, but which never materialised.
If Corbyn said he would stop Brexit, he would risk his
heartland seats. While it’s true that a large majority of Labour voters want to
stay in the EU, there are still enough people of the opposing view in key seats
to cause him a nightmare.
He could go into the election promising a second
referendum, but this is tantamount to saying he wants to reverse Brexit. And
his fence-sitting schtick has now run its course. People will want to know where
he stands.
Jez’s best chance by far would be if Brexit provoked a fundamental
schism in the Tory Party, to the point where right-wing MPs actually broke away
and stood against official Conservative candidates. It’s possible to imagine ending up with a
far-left government by default.
Of course, any election might produce another hung
parliament. And there’s an additional factor at play. This time, a Labour
victory will be taken seriously, so the issue that caused so much trouble in
2015 for Ed Miliband will start to resurface. People will worry that Corbyn
would govern under orders from Edinburgh, while propped up in Westminster by
the SNP.
So what of the referendum? Many people believe that the way
out of this terrible quagmire is not a general election, but a so-called ‘people’s
vote’. I find it hard to believe there is really a majority for this option in Parliament,
although never say never if all other possibilities seem out of the question or
if May sees it as once last crazy gamble.
The PM would hope for a deal v no deal poll, which she
would probably win. That will never be acceptable to those who see the
referendum as a way of reversing Brexit. They will demand there is an option on
the ballot to stay in the EU. Some have the arrogance to believe that such an option
would be automatic, but why would it be? The questions on the voting paper
would be hotly contested, as would the rules and financial regulations for any second
vote.
If we could overcome these practical obstacles in the intensely
short timeframe that lies ahead, could the referendum become a panacea? I very
much doubt it. We would be faced with acrimony and rancour over a period of several
weeks, possibly culminating in another very close vote. I see this as solving
nothing fundamental at all.
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