UK drifts towards Brexit nightmare

It is, I’m afraid, not over yet. Not even close. This weekend, Britain barely looked like it had a government. Or an opposition. Certainly not a strategy. Over the last few days, many of Britain’s leading political figures appeared to be in hiding. They included most of those deemed possible successors to Prime Minister David Cameron or equally embattled opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.

A handful have since reappeared, but their statements have inspired little confidence. Last week, in the aftermath of the close but still decisive verdict, it looked plausible that Britain might act swiftly on the result. That now looks much less likely. It is, bizarrely, no longer clear if or even when it might trigger the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 to leave the EU.
British voters are the first to outright reject EU membership in a referendum.

Ireland and Denmark also initially voted against elements of major EU treaties, only to ultimately reverse that decision in a second ballot. A popular vote in Greece to reject the terms of its international bailout last year was simply ignored. This, however, looks different - if only because of the much broader groundswell of discontent on a host of issues across the continent.

A lot is Cameron’s fault. He pledged repeatedly that if Britain voted out, he would immediately trigger Article 50, but he has now gone back on that promise.

The irony is that there are a number of potential immediate paths forward - but none of them look likely to be taken. And the longer the economic certainty, the worse the economic and political pain may be.

The vote was narrow. If European leaders could come up with even a cosmetic offer of further concessions, particularly a renegotiation on open borders and access to benefits, a second referendum might yet see Britain agreeing to stay. That’s still not impossible. After last year’s refugee crisis, many Europeans countries see the need for some kind of reform.

If German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, took the lead by arranging a major summit to hammer out the issue in six months’ time it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Britain to hold fire on Article 50 and then have a second referendum afterwards.

For now, most European leaders are pushing for a rapid exit for Britain so they can get on with their other priorities. That’s not unreasonable, although Merkel was rather more nuanced in her weekend comments, saying there was no need to be “nasty” or overly hasty.

Even if Britain doesn’t activate Article 50 immediately, it is already going to find itself increasingly frozen out of key European decision-making and meetings. It may well want to remain part of the European Economic Area - the larger free-trade and movement bloc that also includes non-EU members Norway and Switzerland - but that also is not a foregone conclusion.

Europe has plenty of its own problems, not least the ongoing troubles in the euro zone, and would like to move on. Under the Lisbon Treaty, however, it’s difficult for Europe to force the UK out unilaterally. The British prime minister has to trigger it before EU nations can have the final say on whether Britain can stay.

For now, the assumption remains that the most likely replacement for Cameron is pro-”leave” former London mayor Boris Johnson, a charismatic but controversial figure.

In a newspaper column on Sunday night, Johnson attempted to be reassuring. Little would change, he said - free trade and most of the other benefits of EU membership would continue. All that would happen was that Britain would begin to extricate itself from EU regulations and bureaucracy. Through ducking out on Article 50, Cameron has handed his longtime rival a clearly poisoned chalice.

Johnson already risks being blamed for the referendum outcome by those who resent it. By leaving him to activate the EU exit process - likely to usher in another round of the market falls that accompanied the “leave” result - he is putting Johnson in an almost impossible position.

Alternatively, the Conservatives could choose a leader from the more Eurosceptic edge of the “remain” campaign. Home Secretary Theresa May is increasingly touted as the obvious choice. A pro-remain Conservative leader like May would face the same nightmare.

She could trigger Article 50 immediately on the ground that there is no choice but to follow the clear democratic choice of the British people. The longer that process is delayed, the easier it becomes to claim that the electorate might have changed its mind.

Cameron’s Conservative government won re-election barely a year ago because many voters saw it as a safe economic pair of hands. That reputation for competence is now gone. The main opposition Labour Party, meanwhile, faces its own crisis. It had assumed, like the rest of the country, that it would not face a general election until 2020.

Now, it is waking up to the prospect of a more imminent vote. A new Conservative leader might well seek a new electoral mandate - or the government could collapse outright. That helps explain the current highly visible plotting against Corbyn, a genial leftist popular amongst grassroots supporters, but whose national poll numbers are terrible. If Article 50 has been triggered by the next election, the Labour Party can just accept that and move on. But that might not happen.