01 February 2019

Federal Trust: Brexit: Will Parliament decide in February what it failed to decide in January?

Brendan Donnelly warns that the Parliamentary vote in mid-February will be the last opportunity for the House of Commons to prevent a “no deal” Brexit. This will require considerably more radical cross-Party action than the Commons was prepared to contemplate in its most recent votes on Brexit.

Four conclusions emerge from the series of votes on Brexit in the House of Commons this week (29th January):

• First, this government is so paralysed by internal division that it is incapable of pursuing any coherent policy in the negotiations. As long as it is in office but not in power, the UK is therefore on track to leave the EU on 29th March 2019 with “no deal.”

• Second, there is a majority of MPs, probably a significant majority, who wish to avoid the UK’s leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement.

• Third, this majority is not yet willing or able to impose its will on a government that runs the risk of bringing this about.

• Fourth, tensions and divisions within the major parties will make it difficult, although far from impossible, for Parliament to impose its will on the government before the end-March deadline. The possibility of the UK’s leaving the EU in two months with “no deal” having been agreed remains as high as ever. Whether this anarchic event occurs will depend on the interaction between the above distinct and contradictory conclusions emerging from this week’s vote. [...]

Stark choice

In mid-February, the choice for MPs will therefore be stark. If they keep the present government in office, they will objectively be voting for the overwhelming likelihood of a “no deal” Brexit.  The substantial majority wishing to exclude that possibility will therefore need over the coming weeks to take action across party lines much more radical than anything debated and rejected this week. Recent history certainly makes it questionable whether MPs will be capable of such free-thinking radicalism. But the only certain lesson from the past two years of volatile British politics is that the improbable can rapidly become the inevitable. There is an instability beneath the surface of British politics masked by conventions and procedures specifically designed to constrain fundamental change. The UK’s political future is, however, not condemned to continue indefinitely upon its present erratic course. The imminence of the Article 50 deadline allows and compels MPs soon to make a fundamental choice about that future. It may well be that if they postpone this choice until after 29th March it will simply return in yet more urgent and unpalatable form. A cataclysmic Brexit might well make the necessary restructuring of British politics easier, but at the cost of making it infinitely more painful. The Brexit debate has raised fundamental questions about the viability of both the Conservative and Labour Parties in their present form. The chaos of “no deal Brexit” will undoubtedly be the final nail in their twin coffins, but it is likely to come at the cost of great suffering and instability for the United Kingdom as a whole.

Full article on The Federal Trust

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