The deadline for the UK to present the European Union with a new proposal for its exit from the bloc or crash out without a deal is fast approaching. A top EU official has warned that Britain is “facing the abyss.”
After the UK Parliament once again rejected alternative options to Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, European politicians were quick to react.
DW reports that the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator said the UK has a “last chance” to break the deadlock on leaving the European Union when Parliament meets again on Wednesday or “face the abyss.” Guy Verhofstadt said: “The House of Commons again votes against all options. A hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable.
Some have suggested that Britain faces a constitutional crisis. It does not. It faces a political crisis because MPs will not follow through on the logic of their decisions. Having passed the EU Withdrawal Act, they have consistently rejected the means of implementing it—nor have they been willing to repeal it. So they have willed the end without willing the means. They are, as Winston Churchill characterized the governments of the 1930s, “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”
The Foreign Policy journal analysis that Britain doesn’t have much options. The first is for Britain to leave the EU without a deal. Although a majority of MPs are opposed to it, that is the legal default position, unless Parliament legislates to alter it, since the withdrawal act remains on the statute book. Even if one rejects the much-discussed terrifying scenarios of food and medicine shortages, there would be an immediate impact in that the EU would be required to treat Britain as it does all nonmember states by immediately imposing tariffs and regulations on British exports. Since Ireland remains a member of the EU, there would be a hard border on the island of Ireland, and this would contravene the spirit of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which has brought peace there. A no-deal Brexit, therefore, is not a happy prospect. It would force many hard-pressed companies into bankruptcy and unemployment.
The second alternative is to seek from the EU, by April 12, a longer extension to avoid a no-deal scenario. But the EU is not required to grant Britain’s request. It needs unanimous agreement from all 27 member states; any member state could veto it. They would certainly not be eager to grant a further extension since it would require Britain to participate in the European Parliament elections. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights gives every EU citizen the right to stand and vote in these elections; if May’s government sought to deny this right, it could be sued in the courts.
FP adds “Were Britain to take part in the European Parliament elections, there might well be large gains for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party, fueled by voters frustrated with the failure of the Conservative government to deliver Brexit. In the 2014 European elections, two years before the Brexit referendum, the UK Independence Party, then led by Farage, won more votes than any other British party. Other member states, already plagued by their own populist parties, would hardly welcome the accession of a British contingent in addition to their own. They might decide they have had enough of British dithering and that no further extension is possible. And if the EU does grant a longer extension, it has declared that it will do so only if the government presents it with a viable alternative strategy. Presumably a request for an extension because Parliament cannot make up its mind would not count.”
There are three possible strategies. The first is for Parliament to call a general election. But May can’t call an early election herself; that requires either a no-confidence vote in the government or a two-thirds vote by Parliament. In practice, if the government seeks an election, the opposition could hardly declare that it was opposed to one, and a two-thirds majority triggered an early election in 2017. But Conservative MPs are unlikely to vote for it today.
Another general election is unlikely to break the deadlock because both parties are deeply divided. A second strategy would be to hold a second Brexit referendum. But it would take Parliament some time to agree on the enabling legislation. A third strategy would be to remain in the EU, renegotiate the political declaration so as to achieve a softer form of Brexit with a closer relationship to the EU or even full membership of the customs union and internal market, and then, once again, seek to pass the withdrawal agreement—the essential gateway to the negotiation on the final relationship.
Via Foreign Policy / DW
