ADVERTISEMENT

Even Jeremy Corbyn Can't Kill the No-Deal Beast

Even Jeremy Corbyn Can't Kill the No-Deal Beast

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The British parliament has said over and over again that it doesn’t want the U.K. to leave the European Union without an exit deal. On Wednesday night it made that binding in a vote that was won on a razor thin 313-312 margin.

Even that (assuming it’s okayed by the House of Lords) doesn’t end all the risks of a no-deal Brexit. For one thing, the vote requires the government to seek an extension from Brussels, and that will have to be approved unanimously by 27 EU member states. The bloc’s leaders still need to be convinced that they’re delaying for a worthy reason; not just allowing the U.K. more time to wallow in its own political mire.

There’s also the matter of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. That’s the key piece of legislation needed to implement any Brexit deal finally agreed by Parliament. If Theresa May’s government can reach some kind of accord with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party in the coming days, she will try to rush it through. But given the acrimony in parliament, its success is not a given.

May’s Brexiter MPs – who make up a strong and noisy bloc in Parliament – are already furious about her compromise talks with Corbyn, and the withdrawal bill contains plenty more to stoke the flames of their anger. It would give EU law that’s reflected in the agreed deal primacy over U.K. law, for instance, and would grant ministers the right to make divorce payments to the EU, along with other sweeping powers. 

It’s worth remembering too that getting a deal and the implementing legislation through Parliament is merely the end of the beginning. That just pushes the U.K. over the Brexit line and into a transition period, during which the country would keep all the same access to the EU’s markets but without any say in its institutions. After “Brexit Day,” whenever that may be, the real fun starts: Britain and Brussels start negotiating the terms of their future relationship. What happens if they don’t agree by the end of the transition deadline? Another cliff edge?

And this all assumes that May and Corbyn – two leaders famed for their inability to compromise or shift position – agree on what deal will be presented to lawmakers for approval.

May’s overture to Corbyn was both desperate and clever. If he refused help and Britain crashed out with no deal, Labour’s remain voters (crucial to its success in big cities) might decide he shared the blame. If the U.K. ended up in limbo, staying in the EU for a period or perhaps forever, the leave-voting constituencies in Labour’s industrial heartlands would feel ignored.

Despite all the differences, there is some alignment of interests between the two party leaders. Delivering Brexit has been May’s central mission as prime minister, but Corbyn has long wanted it as well. His vision of a more interventionist, socialist Britain depends on being free from EU strictures on state aid and other policies. He too is skeptical about the merits of the free movement of European workers to Britain.

But the common ground mustn’t be overstated. May’s chief goal is to deliver Brexit before the EU parliamentary elections on May 23, giving her a fleeting chance of avoiding a permanent fracture in her beloved Conservative Party. Corbyn’s strategy is to keep both Labour’s leavers and remainers happy, a coalition he must maintain in order to win the next general election.  

Neither side trusts the other, and you could hardly blame them given the stakes. Get it wrong and either side could end up splitting their own party, or their vote. Labour, in particular, worry that May or her party will renege on any deal. For their part, the Tories fear Corbyn will try to tie their hands in a future election by demanding new workers’ rights and other guarantees. They’re like two climbers who need each other to reach the summit, but who know there’s only oxygen for one to make it down alive.

As things stand, it looks like the cohesiveness of the Conservative Party is in greater peril. Corbyn would probably settle for a permanent customs union, which goes a long way to resolving the problem of how to keep the Irish border open. His party is also clamoring for a second referendum to put any agreed deal to a vote, and it’s hard to see how he can agree to any plan that doesn’t include that.

The Tories were elected on a manifesto to take Britain out of the customs union and May has strongly opposed a second referendum, but she could be shifting her position on both. In a late-night TV interview on Wednesday, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said a confirmatory referendum was “perfectly credible.”

His Brexiter colleagues will be apoplectic about that idea, but he’s right. Such a vote would give the British public a clear choice between what they already have (EU membership) and whatever deal Parliament approves. There would be no guesswork or interpretation required, which was the problem with the simplistic original “in-out” vote, where “out” meant different things to different people.

Should May and Corbyn make progress, the U.K. would have to ask the EU for a long extension, with the possibility of a break clause once the U.K. approves a deal. The country would probably have to participate in those imminent European Parliament elections. Would the Conservative Party survive that degree of compromise from their leader? It’s entirely possible that the next campaign for lifelong euroskeptics, the “Great Brexit Betrayal,” began in earnest on Wednesday night.

For now, the strain on Britain’s governing stability from following a compromise path will be enormous. How would legislation get passed by a parliament with no working majority, and where the ruling party is in open warfare with its leader? It’s hard to imagine May remaining beyond the agreement of the deal, or the country avoiding fresh elections. Maybe a fracturing of the two-party system is needed to better navigate the deep divisions exposed by the 2016 referendum.

A no-deal outcome is now ruled out (as far as it can be without the EU’s say so). But the future of Brexit is no clearer, even if its delivery has ironically ended up in the hands of Corbyn and Brussels rather than the party that has obsessed about this subject for decades.

“When you are climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable,” said the great climber Edmund Hillary. Doesn’t Theresa May just know it.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.