There is a relentless logic about the whole Brexit saga. Like a series of deductions in a mathematical proof, one step leads to another until a firm conclusion is reached. The reasoning process can be lengthy and complicated, and sometimes the outcome can be surprising. So it will be with Brexit.

To the immense frustration of Brexiteer politicians who believed they could break apart the four fundamental freedoms of the European Union in goods, services, capital and labor in order to secure a bespoke “deep and special partnership” based on extensive cherry-picking, the EU is holding firm. It just won’t play ball. Instead, it continues very politely to force Britain to choose between a Brexit in which we stay locked into the whole European economic system of the customs union and the single market and jumping off an economic cliff.

It’s a miserable choice for Britain. Either we have a Brexit in which the only thing we’ve achieved in the name of “” is to give up our seats on the European Council and in the European Parliament, thereby becoming a vassal state of the EU, or we leave the EU in March 2019 without a deal, wreck our economy and inflict grievous harm in every corner of the realm.

The bipolar choice we face should be becoming brutally clear to all but the most ostrich-like of MPs in Parliament. Even the slow learners amongst them will have worked it out in the next few months. The interesting question is how they will react when this choice can no longer be evaded.

Some will undoubtedly want to head for the cliff and take the plunge, dreaming of liberation and freedom after the fall. We know who they are. Some are ideologically-driven right-wingers dreaming of a brave new world free of annoying EU rules and regulations. Some are traditional far-left socialists wishing to ensure that they can take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange unhindered by the tedious single market enforcement mechanisms of the EU. Others simply don’t like living with a Polish family next door, or at least worry that many of their constituents don’t. These odd bedfellows have been dominating the political agenda in the last few years, but this might soon change.

KICKING THE CAN

If you were to ask the vast majority of MPs which choice they would take — the cliff edge or the full European package with which we have lived for nearly half a century — many would initially wriggle and squirm. They would still try rather pathetically to grab a piece of European cake that they could greedily devour. But if you were to force them to choose between the two options, they would choose the European package. Some would do so happily, most rather grumpily, but that is what they would choose.

So how does the majority of MPs rejecting the cliff and therefore by default supporting the European package impose its will on the others? The cliff-jumpers are a powerful faction within the Conservative Party, but even there they are probably not the majority. The current pro-Brexit Labour leadership is already in a weak political position given the overwhelming pro-remain sentiment in both the party and its electoral base, but jumping might still be seen as the more appealing option by a small number of Labour MPs. We can therefore be pretty certain that both major parties will stay deeply divided.

And so the metaphorical can continues to be kicked down the road while the literal clock continues relentlessly to tick. A delay here, a fudge there. It’s becoming quite an art form in the last few years in Brexit Britain. The most talented practitioner is the prime minister, but Theresa May is certainly not alone in developing this particular skill set. The so-called Chequers deal was really just another example of can-kicking, because even its authors knew that the EU would never accept it. Another recent manifestation is a “”, whereby the UK enters a surreal “transition period” for nearly two years or perhaps longer as a powerless vassal state of the EU, still safely embedded inside the single market and the customs union. During this time we would not have even the foggiest notion of what might come next.

Political logic dictates it will be the pro-European Conservatives who will finally bring things to a head. When the choice can no longer be evaded, they will urge the prime minister to finally turn her back on the hard-line Brexiteers and accept the European package on offer by the EU in order to avoid the cliff. If she needs more time to negotiate the details, they will urge her to seek a lengthy extension to the Article 50 deadline in order to do so. If she agrees, she will inevitably have to see off a challenge from the committed cliff-jumpers in her party. She might or might not win the resulting vote of no confidence, but either way the Conservative Party will effectively split.

With or without the current prime minister, the pro-European faction within the Conservative Party will then be forced to rely on the support of Labour MPs to win key votes in the House of Commons. These MPs will extract a high price for their support, but they will not refuse. By the time this happens, the stakes will be too high and the time still available to stop the clock too short.

There will no doubt be vocal calls for yet another general election, especially from the Labour leadership, but the last thing the Conservative pro-Europeans will do is support a simple vote of no confidence in Parliament, which might result in Jeremy Corbyn entering Downing Street as prime minister. As a group, they are far too clever for that. The next general election isn’t scheduled until 2022, long after the key Brexit decisions will have been made. Pro-European Conservative MPs will therefore insist that it is the responsibility of those elected in the recent 2017 general election to sort out the enormous mess in which the country finds itself. So Labour MPs will face a brutal choice between accepting an offer of cooperation with an organized Conservative faction in Parliament on an agreed and negotiated program, or nothing at all.

STOPPING THE CLOCK

Having possibly tried and failed to persuade Labour MPs to support the program of a minority government led by a Conservative politician, the pro-European Conservative faction will finally be forced to offer Labour and perhaps other parties in Parliament a full coalition government in order to prevent Britain from falling off the cliff. They will present this as a proposal for a “government of national unity” although of course it will be no such thing. It will instead be a government with one central purpose and that is to stop the Brexit clock ticking down to zero at 11pm on March 29, 2019.

Faced with the formal and very public offer of a coalition by the pro-European Conservative faction, Labour MPs will then find themselves faced with a terrible dilemma. If they refuse to support the formation of a new cross-party government of national unity in which they would be the biggest force and, as a direct consequence, Article 50 is neither suspended nor revoked, the Labour Party collectively and each Labour MP individually will be co-responsible for the all the economic consequences of the cliff fall alongside the hard-line Conservative Brexiteers. The vast majority of their voters would never forgive them for this.

So, however reluctantly, they will eventually be forced to accept the offer and enter into formal negotiations leading to the formation of a new government. Even if the Eurosceptic Labour leadership were to decline the offer, there will be a sufficient number of Labour, Liberal Democrat and nationalist MPs absolutely determined to protect their constituents and stop the Brexit clock to make up for the inevitable loss of the hard-line Conservative Brexiteer MPs in crucial Parliamentary votes.

A formal coalition agreement will have to be negotiated, just as was the case before the coalition government was formed between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in 2010. It will include large parts of Labour’s anti-austerity program, watered down by the other elements in the coalition. The negotiations will not be easy, but given the urgency a way will be found. Nobody will get everything they want, but everybody will get something.

Since someone has to do the job, a future prime minister will have to be identified. Even assuming they wanted to participate, the two obvious contenders for the job — Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May — will both no doubt be ruled out because they would be unable to command sufficiently broad support across the coalition. So a compromise figure will have to be found. Fortunately for Britain, there are a good number of widely-respected and well-known pro-European politicians who could comfortably fulfil this role, certainly on a temporary basis.

Having formed a new government, the coalition prime minister’s first task will be to write to the president of the European Council formally requesting a lengthy extension in the Article 50 deadline in order to allow for further discussions to take place without duress. Following a change of government in Britain, this will be swiftly agreed by the other 27 member states and there will therefore be no need for Britain to attempt to formally revoke Article 50 unilaterally.

The new government will then negotiate a withdrawal agreement, providing for continuing frictionless trade with Europe. This will necessarily incorporate the EU’s minimum demands of continuing full UK membership of the customs union and single market outside the EU. This will satisfy those in the coalition who feel it is important that the British electorate, who voted narrowly in June 2016 to leave the political machinery of the European Union, should have a negotiated option to do so. This withdrawal agreement will then be put to a ratification referendum in which the alternative would be to revoke Article 50 and remain as full voting members.

The funny thing about political logic is that it never stops. As so often with mathematical proofs, it just gets a little harder sometimes to see the deductive steps that lie ahead. So it is here. The national coalition that will be formed to take control of the executive and stop us leaving the European economic system will create its own dynamic. It will face enormous political opposition, certainly from the furious forces of the populist right, but also from the far left. The British first-past-the-post system of elections will therefore coerce the major players in the coalition to stand together when a general election finally arrives, finding a way to field a single national government candidate in every constituency on a common program.

In the electoral meltdown that will then occur, it might look as if anything can happen. But once again, it is political logic that will actually dictate the outcome. But that, as they say, is another story.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Pro-European Conservatives Will Soon Call Time on Brexit appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

My country is in a dreadful mess. Everybody knows it, although some of our politicians are still trying to pretend that they don’t.

Unless something dramatic happens, as the clock strikes midnight in Brussels at the close of March 29, 2019, we will leave the European Union. We know we will leave because we gave two years’ notice under Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon and it expires at that precise moment. Without a comprehensive agreement fully ratified by the EU, our country will jump off a cliff, although pushed might perhaps be a more accurate metaphor.

Over five months have gone by since we served the Article 50 notice and not one single thing has yet been resolved in our negotiations with the EU. There is no reason to think that the next five months will see any more progress, or indeed the next 10 months. By summer next year, it will be brutally apparent to even the most ostrich-like Members of Parliament (MPs) that we face a harsh choice. We will be able to opt for continued membership of the single market and the customs union outside the EU on terms dictated by the EU or we will have to endure the full horrors of the economic cliff-edge.

Now some hard-line Brexiteers in the House of Commons relish the idea of the cliff edge. They see it as a kind of cleansing ground zero for British society. After the jump we can build a new world of freedom and independence unchecked by the evil empire of the EU. Like Berlin after 1945, we will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

But most MPs in the recently-elected House of Commons don’t share this view. Faced with a bi-polar choice imposed on us by the EU between continuing single market membership and the cliff edge, they will not want to jump. Whichever party they belong to and whatever their tribal loyalties, they will simply wish to protect their constituents from the catastrophic economic harm the jump will cause.

THE CENTRAL DILEMMA

So how can we escape the trap into which we have managed to get ourselves?

Alone, Theresa May can’t get us out of the trap. Whatever the prime minister’s private views on Brexit as an erstwhile supporter of staying in the EU she is now a captive of the hard-liners in her party. If she eventually performs another of her famous U-turns and opts for agreeing to the EU’s imposed terms for continuing single market membership, she will face a leadership challenge. In the ensuing contest, she will be replaced as prime minister by a hard-line Brexiteer because the majority of party members will vote for one in a run-off for the leadership of the Conservative Party. It’s back to square one. The Conservative Party will never be united on this issue.

Alone, the Labour Party can’t get us out of the trap either. Even if they eventually come out fully in favor of the single market option as they surely will, they don’t have enough MPs to command a majority in Parliament.

Somehow or other, pro-European Labour and Conservative MPs are eventually going to have to find a way to cooperate with each other in the national interest. Only by doing so can they defeat the hard-line Brexiteers. Moreover, since the EU will only negotiate with a government, they are going to have to take control of the executive branch in order to save Britain from catastrophe. Endlessly sniping from the legislature might be able to create paralysis by amending or blocking the domestic laws required to enact Brexit, but this strategy will not be sufficient to resolve the crisis.

The central difficulty in achieving this task is that Conservative MPs wishing to remain in the single market will never allow a left-wing Labour leader to enter Downing Street, and Labour MPs will never agree to support a Conservative politician as prime minister. But confronted with the enormity of the imminent economic disaster facing Britain and their own constituents, they might just agree to cooperate in a temporary government of national unity if they could identify a compromise prime minister acceptable to them all.

ENTER VINCE CABLE

Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, could fulfil this role. His small centrist party in the House of Commons has just 12 MPs. Yet he is well-known by the general public and widely respected across the political spectrum. He also has a great deal of experience, ranging from chief economist at Shell to five years as business secretary in the last Conservative-led coalition government. At 74, his advanced age would generally be viewed as a drawback in politics, but here it becomes an advantage, since he has no long-term political career in front of him. He is a political heavyweight leading a small party and without a future — perfect for the job in hand.

Now the idea of Cable leading a government of national unity as prime minister sounds rather dramatic at first. It seems to break all the rules. Yet we would only be replacing the present arrangement between the Conservatives and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party with a different governing coalition between the parliamentary Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and a pro-single market group of Conservatives. An emergency coalition agreement would have to be negotiated between these three groups, each of which would be represented in the Cabinet. The coalition agreement would also need to be fully supported by the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist Parties, whose backing would be required for votes in the House of Commons.

These negotiations would no doubt be tricky, as they must cover all areas of government and not just Brexit. However, if we recall that the negotiations between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in 2010 only required a few days and successfully resulted in a stable coalition government that lasted for a full parliamentary term of five years, the task would not appear impossible. There is nothing like political urgency and the high cost of failure to focus the minds of politicians.

There would have to be two deputy prime ministers in Britain — one from the Labour Party and the other from the rebel Conservative group. The two deputies would effectively be in joint charge of the government, since either could bring Cable’s administration crashing down in the House of Commons. Even if they didn’t actually force a vote of no confidence, no legislation would be able to pass the House of Commons without their mutual consent.

Faced with such a formidable coalition in Parliament, the Conservative prime minister would be forced to resign. As the leader of the second largest party in Parliament, it would then be for the leader of the Labour Party to propose to the monarch that the leader of the Liberal Democrats be requested to try form a government of national unity.

After visiting Buckingham Palace, Cable would come out onto the steps of Downing Street flanked by the two deputy prime ministers and officially request the EU to negotiate a withdrawal treaty with the United Kingdom based on continuing membership of the single market and the customs union. The EU would swiftly accede to this request.

But that is not where it ends. All three politicians standing on the steps of Downing Street that day would understand that membership of the European Union with a seat on the European Council would be better for Britain than the second best option of membership of the single market and the customs union outside the EU with no say on the rules. Yet they may well feel constrained by the 2016 referendum result, in which a narrow majority voted to leave the EU. They would not wish to ignore the “will of the people.”

They could, therefore, decide to offer a second referendum in which the electorate could choose between leaving the EU on the basis of the withdrawal treaty negotiated by the government and remaining in the EU. In this referendum, unlike the earlier one, each of the two options on the ballot paper would be clearly defined. If the electorate again voted to leave, the withdrawal treaty would be swiftly ratified. But if in this second referendum the voters opted to remain, that would unambiguously trump the outcome of the first.

There is of course a tricky issue. Like an unexploded bomb with a timer, there is a ticking clock here. By the time the new government has been formed, there may well not be sufficient time to organize another referendum before we have already left the EU. So a delay in our scheduled departure date would be required. The legal position has not yet been tested, but it might be possible to suspend or withdraw Article 50 unilaterally. However, even if a delay required the unanimous consent of the other EU states, it would be hard to see such consent being denied in these political circumstances.

There will of course be an outpouring of rage from the hard-line Brexiteers at the choice presented on the ballot paper, no doubt powerfully echoed by elements of the tabloid press. Yet the first referendum never defined what a Leave vote meant other than we would leave the EU. The vote did not say we must curtail European immigration, quit the customs union, leave the single market or walk away from the European Court of Justice any more than it said that we must stop using metric units and revert to imperial units. In the event of Leave winning, it was inevitably going to be the government of the day that would have to interpret the result, and that is exactly what will have happened here. There will have been no democratic deficit.

AFTER THE STORM

Having resolved the immediate crisis over Europe and avoided the economic cliff edge, the government might immediately step down. Yet it would be hard to see the Conservative rebels being welcomed back with open arms by the Brexiteer wing of the Conservative Party under these circumstances. So a more likely scenario would be that the national government would continue in office for some time, perhaps even until the next scheduled general election due in 2022. The Labour Party would have a great deal more power than it currently enjoys in opposition. The Liberal Democrats, the rebel Conservatives and the nationalist parties could between them prevent Labour from doing anything of which they seriously disapproved. Nobody would get it all their own way, but there would be something in it for everyone.

Sooner or later, however, another general election will arrive. The various political groups supporting the national government might then fragment and fight each other, but they would be confronting a furious and almost certainly united attack from the combined forces of the populist right, who would correctly have felt they had been cheated of their prize. Fragmentation under Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system would spell electoral suicide. So perhaps we would see a single national government candidate standing in each constituency, with each of these candidates committed to the introduction of proportional representation after the election to be swiftly followed by a further general election to be held on that basis.

The strange coalition of forces coming together in the government of national unity could then safely disperse, each free to offer the electorate its own nuanced version of Britain’s future. Overnight our democracy would start to look much more like the multiparty democracies of most other modern European states.

It would be the final irony of the Brexit drama.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: /

The post British Politician Vince Cable Could Lead a Government of National Unity appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.