This week opened Act III of a five-act drama called Brexit. The play will take at least five years, more likely 10, and only Act V will reveal whether it is a tragedy, a farce, or some very British theatre of muddling-through. The many millions of us in Britain who identify ourselves as Europeans must not give up now, as if the show were over. It’s not, and we’re not just the audience. We are actors in this play and our main task is to persuade our fellow actors.
Act I was the referendum, Act II the run-up to triggering article 50. Act III is the two-year negotiation that, according to the Lisbon treaty, must conclude in spring 2019. Obviously that’s an important moment, but not drama’s end.
Theresa May says in her letter to Donald Tusk, president of the European council, that she wants the free trade agreement between Britain and the EU to be “of greater scope and ambition than any such agreement before it”. It is most unlikely that such an ambitious, comprehensive agreement can be negotiated in two years, even if that negotiation were to start in earnest at the same time as the exit one, which the remaining 27 EU members are saying must come first.
There is therefore almost certain to be Act IV, in which Britain has a transitional arrangement with the EU, while what article 50 vaguely describes as the “framework for its future relationship with the union” is turned into a full-blown, comprehensive agreement. All precedent on free trade negotiations, especially those with this multinational union, suggests that this will take years, probably stretching to 2021 or beyond. Only then will we enter Act V, in which the consequences of that final deal gradually emerge, well into the 2020s.
Even this timetable understates the uncertainties. Divorce between man and wife is complicated enough, but this one is between two complex unions, each of which is going through an existential crisis: the British union, mainly because of Brexit; and the European Union, for which Brexit is only one of many crises.
All the current scenarios might be blown out of the water in just five weeks, if the French elect Front National leader Marine Le Pen as their president on 7 May. If, however, a President Emmanuel Macron can join forces with a Chancellor Martin Schulz – after the German elections in September – then there could be a new push to deepen the integration of a core Europe. What’s certain is that most European leaders are now focused on saving the EU and addressing their own pressing political problems, not on helping Britain. Since they all have to agree the deal (although ultimately it can be by qualified majority voting), and there is a hard two-year deadline, Britain is in a very weak negotiating position.
On the British side, the big “known unknowns” include Scotland, Ireland, and the economic impact on Britain of the shape of Brexit, as it is seen to be emerging during Act III. This will depend on market sentiment, but also on how millions of Britons view their own position. This is where we, the other half of British society, and just as much “the people” as those who voted for Brexit, come into the picture.
Britain is a democracy, and democracy does not mean “one person, one vote, once”. Nor does it mean “one people, one vote, once”.
“In democratic nations,” Brexit secretary David Davis said in a speech about Britain’s relationship with Europe a few years ago, “we hold regular meaningful elections where voters can stick with what they have or wipe the slate clean. Crucial to this principle of people power is the rule that a government cannot bind its successors.” And, he added wisely: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” Exactly so.
But for that, some of the people who elect the politicians have to change their minds. This is unlikely to happen soon. It’s human nature to be reluctant to acknowledge that you were wrong.
Although market sentiment can change rapidly, the negative economic consequences of Brexit seem unlikely to become undeniably apparent to ordinary voters in the next year or two. And we face a Eurosceptic press that, having led the charge for Brexit, is now pumping out an extraordinary propaganda of success. “Freedom!” trumpeted Wednesday’s Daily Mail, following up on Thursday with “Cheers to a Great British future!” “EU owes Britain billions,” the front page of Tuesday’s Daily Express misinformed its readers.
Our experience of contemporary populism suggests that such simplistic, emotionally appealing, nationalist narratives often trump evidence-based, reasoned argument. Or more optimistically, that it takes time to burst the populist bubble.
Here is where the five-act timetable comes in. The parliamentary vote on the interim result of the negotiation in autumn 2018 will be an important moment, but it currently seems unlikely that public opinion will have swung so decisively that a parliamentary majority, including Labour MPs with heavily pro-Brexit constituencies, would actually vote to send May back to Brussels with a flea in her ear, buzzing at her to get a better deal. It’s even more unlikely that it would vote for the second referendum proposed by the Liberal Democrats.
But if I’m right, and there will be Act IV, then it’s a different story. In those crucial years, the economic consequences will become clearer. There will probably be a second Scottish referendum on independence (likely compromise date: autumn 2019); the pain caused by drawing an EU external frontier across the island of Ireland may become apparent; and above all, there must be a general election in 2020.
With a better leader of the Labour party, and the Lib Dems and other smaller parties pushing in a similar direction, a different popular mandate could emerge for a new government negotiating the final terms of Brexit. And, as David Davis rightly observed, the essence of British parliamentary democracy is that no government can bind its successor.
I don’t say this scenario is likely, but it’s possible. In order to get there, we British Europeans have to work out ways of reaching some of those Brexit voters, recognising that they are in no mood to be lectured by metropolitan liberals. We need to penetrate the echo chambers of populism with plain facts and good British common sense.
Instead of going on about “stopping Brexit”, which allows us to be quite effectively pilloried as whingeing remoaners, we should state the new goal positively.
Of course I still want Britain to remain a member of the EU, just as a Brexiteer would still have wanted Britain to leave it if the referendum had gone the other way – and we should never say never. But as I wrote just after the referendum, our strategic goal should be “to keep as much as possible of our disunited kingdom as fully engaged as possible in the affairs of our continent”.
Theresa May talks of a “deep and special partnership” with the EU: let’s make that very deep and very special. And who knows what opportunities the next years might bring? We are only at the opening of Act III, and there is still much to play for.