Can Brexit be stopped? Anything is possible
Leaving the EU is harder than anyone thought, but so is defying the will of the people
Four days after Brexit, is there any way back?
A petition calling on MPs to overturn last week’s Brexit decision is up to 3.3m signatures and counting. Young people, three-quarters of whom voted to stay, have turned to social media to voice anger and dismay that their future has been decided by retired baby boomers. Former prime minister Tony Blair has suggested a second referendum is possible and, with financial markets shaky and Brussels already closing doors on Britain, buyer’s remorse may well spread. So could the nation change its mind? Is there any way back? Well, anything is possible, but, as things stand, one can make only two statements with confidence. And, no, they are not consistent.
The first is that the Brexiters are about to discover that unravelling Britain’s relationship with the EU will be costly and hugely disruptive. Politically, legally and constitutionally it will be immeasurably harder than imagined in the bluff statements of Outers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
The second is that something truly extraordinary would have to happen before parliament — which remains the sovereign decision maker on the matter — decided to overturn the will of the 17.4m people who voted for Brexit in the referendum. A few million signatures on a petition will not do it. The absolute minimum requirement would be a general election victory for a party that had promised explicitly to think again.
After the party . . .
Leading Brexiters have been celebrating what Nigel Farage has called “independence day” and Boris Johnson is planning his bid for 10 Downing Street. Now the hangover looms.
The more thoughtful among the Outs have realised that tearing up four decades of foreign and economic policy will not be as easy as they thought. The obstacles are formidable, even if you put aside the determination of some EU states to make things as difficult as possible. Back in Britain the leavers have yet to agree even on when to trigger Article 50 of the EU treaty, which would start the clock ticking on a two-year process of withdrawal.
More fundamentally, two-thirds of the MPs who must put the decision into law were on the Remain side of the argument. Few of them would be prepared to defy last week’s vote, but the referendum said nothing about what should replace full membership. At present a majority would probably back some form of association agreement that would keep Britain in the single market. But this is explicitly at odds with the leadership of the Leave campaign. The result could be political paralysis. Parliament must approve any eventual settlement.
The differences do not stop there. One argument deployed by the leavers is that money would be freed up to spend on the NHS and other public services. But the Outs also include a large group of rightwing market liberals who want to cut public spending and reduce taxes. Someone is going to be disappointed.
It is hard to see how these conflicts will be resolved — particularly if Tory party activists send Mr Johnson to Downing Street. The former London mayor is loathed by a significant segment of Tory MPs and would struggle to command loyalty in the Commons.
The problems do not stop at Westminster. EU membership is embedded in the devolution settlements for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Disabling EU law in those jurisdictions would require the consent of the Scottish parliament and the Northern Ireland assembly. Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, has already made it plain that the Scottish National party-dominated parliament will refuse. A constitutional crisis looks inevitable as does a second referendum that, this time, could see Scotland leave the UK.
Second thoughts?
So if it is all so difficult why not think again? Well, most obviously when parliament legislated for a referendum it made clear that it would respect the outcome. The vote was won by the Brexit side and discarding the votes of the majority by any stretch would be an extraordinary constitutional act. Sure, other European nations have reversed themselves on EU issues but they have different constitutions and there was far less at stake.
The Tory Outs are not about to change their minds. So any reconsideration would require the election of a new government with a clear mandate to negotiate a new arrangement with the other 27 EU members and put the outcome to a second referendum.
In other circumstances this might be imaginable — just. But the Labour party is at present led by Jeremy Corbyn, a politician widely regarded as unelectable and, anyway, at best lukewarm about the EU. The weekend mass resignations of members of his shadow cabinet might lead eventually to Mr Corbyn’s departure, but it a huge leap from there to imagine a new leader of the opposition sweeping to victory in a general election.
And even this assumes that the other 27 members would be willing to stand by for another couple of years while Britain argued with itself as the expense of gridlock in Brussels. Yes, even at this late stage Germany’s Angela Merkel would probably like Britain to stay. And a change of heart would be possible even after Britain had invoked Article 50. It is the politics that gets in the way.
Anything is possible
So pro-Europeans should give up? No. So as long as a British government does not trigger Article 50, Britain remains an EU member. The political forces unleashed by this referendum are unprecedented and unpredictable. It is far from fanciful to imagine that the next two years or so will see the complete recasting of the nation’s politics, quite possibly with the creation of a new, centrist, pro-European party. So those who want Britain to stay close to its own continent could think the unthinkable and work to make it thinkable.