Brexit is broken

UK Prime Minister May today delayed a parliamentary vote to approve the allegedly temporary deal she negotiated with the European Union to allow Britain to begin to leave the Union without creating a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The contradictions should not be lost: she is trying to prevent a parliamentary vote from defeating her Brexit plan in order to ensure implementation of the referendum result without all the consequences that Brexit referendum necessarily entails.

The simple fact is that Brexit is a bad idea. It will make the UK poorer than it would otherwise be, cost billions of pounds to replace European services of many different sorts, cause international companies to relocate, and diminish the UK’s clout world wide. Popular sentiment has turned against withdrawal from the EU as the costs have become clearer. The Russian role in promoting the #leave campaign has also become clearer. President Putin set out to weaken Europe, America’s strongest ally, and has come close to succeeding. 

Meanwhile Brussels has sent a gesture of friendship: a court decision that gives the UK leeway to suspend the process and return to the status quo ante.  President Trump, as is his wont, sent the opposite signal: that the US would negotiate a quick free trade agreement with the UK once Brexit was finalized. There are no quick free trade agreements, and it is unclear how the UK could get as good a deal with the US as the EU, which has far more leverage due to its market of 500 million people, almost 10 times the population of the UK. Nothing about the Trump Administration trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico as well as China would make anyone think Britain could get a good deal quickly. 

At this point, May’s options are grim. She can try to get some concessions from the EU that will convince Brexit supporters that her “back stop” will not be permanent and then put the deal to a vote in parliament that she could still lose. Or she can opt for a new referendum on the deal she has negotiated, the options being a “no deal” Brexit, which has predictably catastrophic consequences, her still unappealing “back stop” with whatever concessions she can squeeze from the EU, and no Brexit at all.

I would prefer that “no Brexit” win in a referendum, though admittedly defeat of May in a parliamentary vote would point in the same direction. Either result would help to push back Putin’s efforts to divide the Western alliance, re-invigorate Europe, and undermine those who look to overwrought nationalism as a serious alternative to liberal democracy. President Trump is already on the ropes fighting an investigation that gets closer every day to demonstrating his criminal behavior. Brexit broken is a fitting accompaniment to Trump’s well-deserved nose dive.

For more on the “back stop”: