2018 July

Theresa May seems to be playing a Brexit blinder.   Slowly, slowly, she is nudging the shambling Brexit process towards an ever-closer alignment with European Union regulatory and trading rules – the rules we currently work with, as a full member of the EU.   Time will run out to negotiate a clear UK government position satisfactory to the EU before March 31st 2019.    Theresa May will ask to extend the time allowed for Article 50 to operate.

Before time runs out people will say this Brexit, after which we will be worse off, looks very much like staying in the EU without the responsibilities we currently bear as EU members and the benefits we presently enjoy.    The alternative, staying as a full member of the EU and getting on with the job, is clearly more valuable both to the EU, of which we are a member, and to the UK, which seeks, it thinks, to leave.

Last week, Theresa May at last managed to lose two of the worst departmental ministers of recent decades.   Neither David Davis nor Boris Johnson will be missed.   No-one is able to point to any achievements of the Brexit ministry under Davis or the Foreign Office under Johnson.   Johnson has reduced the UK to a laughing stock intentionally and his great office of state to an ornate sideshow.   He is a disgrace to all the diplomats he purported to lead.    The Brexiteers, from whom no practical vision has ever emerged, are losing the wind, apart from their own huffing and puffing.

But Anthony Barnett’s article How to Win the Brexit civil war kicks us up the backside and castigates all who voted to remain for not taking the battle to the streets.   We are, he says, too fond of convincing ourselves we are right.  We have to convince people who voted to Leave to change their minds.   The British parliament has passed the EU Withdrawal Bill, so leaving is now the law of the land.   There is some comforting movement on the streets in the number of people who have signed a petition demanding a People’s Vote on the final deal.   But a People’s Vote won’t change the law.

Only a general election will do.   Gaby Hinsliff agrees.  Theresa May will subtly creep towards Brexit in Name Only.   The raging Brexiteers may try to unseat her but she would win a vote of no confidence in the House.   Unless….

Jeremy Corbyn did a spot of open-goal thundering in Parliament.   It lies in his hands to raise the roof of the House of Commons and inspire all those who voted for him last year, plus some, to do so again.   No-one believes the Tories can deliver the Britain that would slowly reduce the ills and inequalities that drove the Brexit fury.   Labour and the Lib Dems don’t have the numbers on their own, but if they made common cause with Tory MPs who want to unseat May there would be such chaos that only an election would do.   And whilst all that was going on, Article 50 would have to be extended, since time would run out.

Once extended, a new government could rescind it – but it would have to be with the consent of the electorate – which means persuading enough people who voted leave to change their minds.

See also Dunkirk is a searing argument for defeating Brexit