They’re back but nothing has changed, so happy 2019 Groundhog Day. Ahead lies more perpetual Brexit hell, so get used to it. Don’t imagine the next fortnight of high parliamentary drama will lead to an ending where we can all return to politics as usual. This won’t end with the 15 January vote on the prime minister’s deal, nor with reprised attempts to revive it soon after. It won’t end by the supposed 21 January deadline either, nor will it all be over on 29 March, exit day. Barring extraordinary and dangerous shocks (yes, dreadful things are possible), Brexitry will go on and on for the foreseeable future. Awful prospect? Yes, but all alternatives are frighteningly worse than extending the process as we back off the precipice.
For now this push-me-pull-you directionless government is leading us to the very edge. They want us to take a good look at the no-deal Tarpeian rock below which we will be dashed to pieces by the likes of Boris Johnson, who on Monday ditched his old Canada deal to back a naked no deal as soon as he saw the Tory membership swing that way.
Now we are treated to a no-deal charade, as those 89 lorries travel from a disused airport simulating the gridlock of 10,000 driving daily through Dover. No-deal preparations reveal epilepsy drugs at risk; medicine refrigerators full; chillers overbooked for food warehousing; stockpiling of just-in-time manufacturing parts; and import-export accountants expensively hired to face mountainous red tape. Phone roaming charges are ready to be reimposed, drivers are warned about international licences, and road hauliers are panicking over only 4,000 permits available for our 40,000 lorry drivers – while useless ports are needlessly dredged.
Every day new no-deal problems emerge. Soon the total cost of this absurdity will be totted up – the Treasury’s £4bn set aside, with shed loads more spent by companies urged to prepare by ads on the airwaves, as if warning of incoming air raids. But this is all phoney war, Maginot lines and gas masks for a “managed no deal” that will never happen.
In the midst of year nine of austerity, each sector whimpers at the sight of so much squandered on a mirage. Hauliers could use this money on much‑needed roadside lorry driver facilities and state aid to train drivers in desperately short supply. The Nautilus mariners’ union protests at the state hiring non-UK crews, wasting money needed to train our own.
All this was done due to the self-defeating stupidity of cabinet Brexiteers protesting that Theresa May was deliberately leaving us unprepared for their “clean-break” exit. Show the EU we mean business, they cried! So that’s what she’s doing, but now she has led everyone to peer over the edge, the Brexiteers don’t like it after all. What they thought would be reassuring is, of course, petrifying. Johnson fulminates in his Telegraph column at these “downright apocalyptic” forecasts, claiming no-deal is “closest to what people actually voted for”.
How tempting to wish revenge on prime minister Johnson, by watching him take chaotic charge of a No Deal Britain. Queen Mary and Sussex University’s party polling shows Tory members strongly back no deal. Paul Waugh of Huffington Post reports a no-deal former cabinet minister blithely predicting: “We won’t be able to get certain foods like bananas or tomatoes but it’s not like we won’t be able to eat.” Oh, the war-time nostalgia. Bring on the Woolton pie and dried egg! Let’s all Dig for Brexit! Given the chance, these lemmings would choose Johnson to lead them charging over the white cliffs of Dover: he who was our most embarrassingly inept foreign secretary truly deserves to go down with them.
But the rest of the country doesn’t. Nor will it be allowed to happen. Britain may have lost its bearings, but not all of its marbles. As May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, this is “uncharted territory” when her deal is voted down; and Labour seems certain to lose its no confidence motion, leaving no hope of a general election. She can reprise many versions of her deal until the last second – but if neither her MPs nor the EU swerve, what then?
To call May sphynx-like makes her too interesting – but this is when her opaque character is revealed. If she lets time run out, by law we fall into no deal. From all we know of her, I do not think she will lead her country into that hell. A higher sense of duty would stop her. She is no David Cameron, nor has she anything more to gain by listening to her extremists. Johnson likes to ape Churchill, but the wartime leader defied his party to stand alone for his beliefs. May will prove the real Churchillian, ignoring party to put her country first.
Backing her would be the great majority of MPs appalled at the prospect. She may be assisted today by the passing of Yvette Cooper’s amendment to the finance bill (as she sets out here) – making no deal impossible without the command of parliament. The 200 MPs and business people, led by the MPs Jack Dromey and Caroline Spelman – begging her on Monday not to allow a no deal to wreck industry – will strengthen May’s arm, as will other anti-no deal amendments. Whatever it takes, with MPs breaking party ranks, parliament will express its overwhelming will in ways no prime minister could ignore. On Monday her grandly announced “powerful” new Brexit no-deal preparedness committee was just more fraud, feint and cardboard scenery for an event that, mercifully, cannot happen.
What Mrs “No Plan B” does next, no one knows. But if her deal fails and fails again, then extending article 50 looks certain. The EU might allow it – but probably only for an election or referendum. By then, enough MPs may be ready to hand over this mayhem to the people, as they mull the remarkable shift in public opinion.
YouGov finds a 6% swing towards remain. Doesn’t sound much? That’s a greater swing than for any postwar election bar Tony Blair’s 1997 victory. Most people don’t change their minds – do we? So this is a big switch.
What’s more that’s just on the old question – leave or remain. If voters are given a defined leave option the swing is even greater. Remain v no deal gives remain a stonking 16-point lead. Remain v May’s deal gives an even more gigantic 26 points to remain.
Is it a risk? Yes, times are volatile and once another Dominic Cummings/Arron Banks/Nigel Farage racist fear poster campaign spews its poison, no outcome can be certain. But one certainty is any Brexit means national decline. Whatever else her grievous failings as a leader, whatever damage done by her relentless austerity and her Go Home van cruelty to migrants, I detect in Theresa May a core patriotism that would stop her leading the country over the no-deal brink.
