25 April 2017

Fed Trust: The Brexit Election will not make Brexit easier for Mrs. May

May reportedly believes that an increased Parliamentary majority after the election will strengthen her hand in dealing with internal dissent on the European issue within her own party. Mrs. May’s hopes are likely to be disappointed in both cases.

It appears that recent discussions with her European colleagues and their initial reaction to her triggering of Article 50 have finally convinced the Prime Minister of the daunting task she faces in making a “success” of the Brexit negotiations. She may perhaps approach this task with greater self-confidence if she has a larger Parliamentary majority to sustain her. But it would be naïve in the extreme to assume that the tactics and positioning of the EU’s negotiators will be affected in any significant way by the size of her majority. Donald Tusk’s uncompromising letter of 30th March accurately reflects a deeply-held and near-unanimous view in the rest of the EU that Brexit represents an act of self-harm which must be limited as far as possible to the perpetrators of this self-injury. Mr. Tusk’s neat phrase about the Union’s not wishing to punish the United Kingdom because the UK is punishing itself by leaving the Union encapsulates this reality.

Mr. Tusk and his colleagues harbour no petulantly punitive thoughts towards the UK. But their overwhelming goal in the Brexit negotiations will be to ward off the threat posed to the Union’s stability and solidarity by any suggestion that as outsiders the British can “have their cake and eat it.” The EU is constructed on the thesis that all its members benefit from the network of rights and obligations that they undertake towards each other.  The British desire to continue essentially to enjoy these benefits on the basis of reduced obligations is an assault on the Union’s founding principles which its remaining members cannot tolerate, however many Conservative MPs may wish for the contrary. It may be that in the coming years a new economic and political relationship between the UK and the EU can be worked out that is acceptable to both parties. But it is insular in the extreme to imagine that the difficulties inherent in such an enterprise can be significantly mitigated by a larger Parliamentary majority for Mrs. May. For most European governments and the politicians who run them, the EU represents an indispensable component of their country’s political identity. [...]

If Mrs. May is unlikely to be able to impress her European negotiating partners with an enhanced Parliamentary majority, it is far from clear that she will end up impressing her Party in the way she wishes either. To have any chance of noticeably increasing her authority within the Parliament, she will need to attain a significantly bigger majority. Anything less, against a divided and ineffectual opposition, will be a distinct disappointment. [...]

In any case, an enhanced majority for Mrs. May will simply present her with another set of problems, deriving initially from the likely composition of the new House of Commons. The cohort of Conservative MPs elected on 8th June will be a much more radically Eurosceptic group than their predecessors, a small majority of whom favoured remaining in the EU in last year’s referendum. [...] It was a bizarre misreading of political reality by some operators in the financial markets when they apparently believed a new General Election would give Mrs. May more scope to conclude a “softer” Brexit than might otherwise be the case. This is precisely the reverse of the truth.

[...] The acquired rights of EU citizens living in the UK and the financial obligations of the UK arising from the EU budget are likely to be particularly intractable issues. It is almost inconceivable that a settlement on these matters can be achieved which will be acceptable to the EU27 as well as to Mrs. May’s new Parliamentary party. There must be a better than even chance that the Art 50 negotiations fall apart at the first hurdle before the question of the long-term economic relationship between the UK and EU is even broached.

Ironically, such a failure of the initial negotiations would spare Mrs. May another set of problems: those of defining, let alone achieving a “successful” Brexit. No such thing exists. There are only gradations of damage done to the UK by the manner in which it leaves the EU. There is no reason to believe that the Conservative Parliamentary Party after 8th June will be any better judge of these gradations than the current one. [...]

Full article on FedTrust

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