If Britain leaves the EU with no deal, we shall have Gina Miller to thank. It was her court case that gave Parliament the decisive say over the disengagement.
She hoped that MPs would use it to block Brexit. Instead, they are blocking Theresa May’s withdrawal terms, thus making it likelier that Britain leaves without an agreement. Never underestimate the law of unintended consequences.
I don’t want to single out Ms Miller. A number of Remain-supporting politicians have made a similar miscalculation. By loudly and pompously declaring that they “won’t allow” a no-deal outcome, they have encouraged Brussels to dig in, and so, paradoxically, made a no-deal outcome more probable.
In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, there was an almost universal assumption that a bargain would be reached. Neither side, after all, wanted a disorderly breach, which could risk a disruption in trade, a loss of market confidence and a renewal of the euro crisis.
True, Eurocrats reckoned they had the stronger hand, because cross-Channel commerce is disproportionately important to the United Kingdom (and Ireland, come to that). But they didn’t want a breakdown – an outcome that Donald Tusk described as “unthinkable”.
Then along came a succession of British politicians assuring them that there was no need to worry. Sir Vince Cable, Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry and others asserted that no deal was “not an option”.
Sir John Major and Sir Nick Clegg took to a German newspaper to urge the EU to hang tough. Cabinet ministers openly declared that they wouldn’t permit Britain to leave without an agreement.
Look at it from the point of view of an EU negotiator. If the British won’t walk away then, by definition, they have only two options – either to drop Brexit or to sign whatever terms Brussels puts before them. The EU can hardly be blamed, in the circumstances, for hardening its line. Repeatedly assured that Parliament would force British negotiators back to the table, it made increasingly aggressive demands: a massive financial payment, a spell of non-voting membership, the regulatory annexation of Northern Ireland, control of UK trade policy even after Brexit, a continuing role for Euro-judges – and all without any promise of a trade deal in return.But what if the EU’s assumption is wrong? There may not be enough MPs to halt Brexit – which, after all, remains the official policy of both main parties.
And even if there are, there is no obvious mechanism to convert that majority into the necessary legislation. Last week, the Institute for Government considered five procedural ways in which Parliament might seek to block Brexit, and found none of them wholly convincing.
While MPs could sabotage the Bills needed to mitigate a no-deal outcome, it is far from clear that they could reverse the referendum without the active connivance of the Executive.That might yet happen, of course. It is conceivable that, following the defeat of the proposed withdrawal terms in mid-January, the government might flip, withdrawing Article 50 and scheduling a second referendum.
But, with less than 100 days until Brexit takes effect, isn’t it at least possible that we shall trundle toward that legal default?For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t relish the prospect. I wish, though the moment has now passed, that there had been an early compromise around a Swiss-style relationship. But no deal is plainly a less painful outcome than either accepting the vicious terms now being demanded or overturning the referendum result – and with it public confidence in our parliamentary system. Is there any other way out? Possibly.
Of the 585 pages in the Withdrawal Agreement, almost all the criticism is focused on the 175 pages that lay down the operation of the Irish backstop. Remove those pages and the rest would probably pass.
In a completely rational world, Brussels would put that section to one side and agree the other 410 pages. After all, it makes no sense to reject the uncontentious parts of the deal, such as reciprocal rights for each other’s residents, over a backstop that London, Dublin and Brussels all say they never want to see used.
In its own no-deal planning, published last week, the Irish government made clear that even with no deal it would not place any checks at the land border. The UK has said the same thing from the start. So given a choice between no backstop and no deal on anything else, or no backstop but agreement on everything else, both sides should logically pick the latter option. That logic is especially strong for Ireland, which stands to lose more from no deal than any other state, including the UK.
Then again, countries don’t always act logically. Or, to put it more precisely, the interests of the people leading them do not always align with the wider national interest.
Consider what we might call the Freakonomics interpretation of the situation – or, if we are of a more historical bent, the Namierite interpretation. Look, in other words, at the personal incentives. If you were Leo Varadkar, would you rather lead a slightly poorer Ireland while positioning yourself as the nation’s champion against its ancient oppressor, or would you rather lead a slightly wealthier Ireland (for which you’d get no credit, because people attribute prosperity to their own efforts) while being howled down by your opponents for having buckled before the Brits?
As for the rest of the EU, why bother reopening the deal when you keep being told by the British politicians you most like that they will make the UK (in the telling phrase of the former Eurocrat Lord Kerr) “come to heel”?
I keep reading that hardline ERG types have aimed at a no-deal Brexit all along, but it’s not true. Almost everyone would prefer to have a friendly institutional relationship with our immediate neighbours. With a little unity of purpose, we could have secured one. Perhaps we still could. The trouble is, we lack any such unity. Two-and-a-half years after the referendum, we are still fighting the sodding thing.
Almost from the moment the result came in, a group of Continuity Remainers hit on a way to overturn it, namely to ensure that the eventual exit terms were so bad that even Eurosceptics would prefer to stay in. They have succeeded amply in the first part of their plan: the proposed exit terms are indeed abominable. But I feel they have underestimated their countrymen’s bloody-mindedness. I wrote in this column six months ago that we had a bad habit of switching from vague conciliation to terrible resolve just when it seems too late. I sense such a moment now.
‘Fear not,” said the angel at Christmas, “for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Good news is the essence of the Christian message, though some clergymen struggle to see that it can have an earthly as well as a celestial manifestation.
If you go to church at this season, you are likely to hear a slightly downbeat sermon. Almost as traditional as the solo that opens “Once in Royal David’s City” is the plea from the pulpit that, “especially at this time of year”, you should remember the hungry.
Quite right, too. All the major religions teach us that we have a duty to care for poor people. But it would be nice if, occasionally, Christian ministers also acknowledged that human action here and now is drastically reducing their number.
“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty,” observes the President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim. “The global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history.”
In a single generation, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty – that is, on less than $1.90 (£1.50) a day – has fallen from one third of the human race to one twelfth.
The complete elimination of penury lies within our grasp – something that was unthinkable as recently as the Nineties. Arguably even more dramatic is the fact that, after 10,000 years of pyramid-shaped oligarchy, the middle classes now outnumber the poor.
The Washington-based Brookings Institute has developed a series of criteria that define “middle-class”: being able to afford motorbikes and refrigerators; having discretionary income to spend on entertainment or holidays; being able to get through illness or unemployment without being plunged into destitution.
By these measures, in September 2018, the consumer class overtook the vulnerable class for the first time in human history.
We are living through a series of miracles. We may not be able to heal the sick as Jesus did, but we have eradicated smallpox, are on the point of eliminating polio, and can reasonably aim to wipe out malaria. Modern farming, including genetic modification, lets us multiply our loaves and fishes.
Yes, of course there is more to do. It is horrifying that 1.7 million children died from malnutrition in the first decade of this century. Still, that figure was 60 per cent lower than in the Fifties, despite the world’s population having doubled.
These wonders have largely been accomplished, not through charity, but through specialisation and trade. The surest way for a country to cut its poverty rate is to drop its economic barriers and join the global market. A lot of people vaguely resent that idea, and cast around for ways to disbelieve it.
The fact that profit-seeking investors have done more to end poverty than generations of altruistic aid workers can seem almost sordid. Yet the eradication of want surely matters more than the motives of the donors.
When Jesus returned to the synagogue in Nazareth, he quoted Isaiah, saying that he had been sent to bring the good news to the poor. Ours may be the generation that witnesses the effective end of poverty. What a time to be alive.
