The United Kingdom is having to pay heavily for a moment’s folly. Former Prime Minister David Cameron lost his job and plunged the country in prolonged uncertainty, holding a referendum on Britain leaving or remaining in the EU.
The result was narrowly in favour of leaving: 52:48. But the British arrangement with the EU offered it the best of both worlds. It did not join the currency union nor the 26-nation Schengen Area.
The great imperial power nostalgia and a few maverick businessmen drove the leave campaign helmed by Boris Johnson, the current prime minister.
He vastly exaggerated the benefits flowing from leaving the EU. More than three-and-a-half-years later, the UK is still grappling with Brexit which alone has preyed on its collective mind to the exclusion of everything else.
Theresa May, who succeeded Cameron as prime minister, lost her job, trying to get the Brexit deal through parliament. MPs rejected her deal thrice. Johnson, her successor, has sought to ram through his deal, parrot-like repeating that Britain would be out of the EU before October 31.
Fearing a no-deal Brexit, the Commons passed a Bill obliging him to seek further extension beyond October 31 in case no deal was accepted by Parliament. Last Saturday, the Commons voted 322:306 against the deal that Johnson had renegotiated. His deal was 95 per cent, the same as May’s.
Britain would still have to pay the EU $ 37 billion for leaving; it would still grant British and EU citizens reciprocal rights of residency in respective jurisdictions. The vital difference was on the arrangement regarding Northern Ireland. May’s ‘backstop’ was the bone of contention.
MPs feared a separate customs jurisdiction for Northern Ireland would jeopardize the Good Friday Agreement which ended decades of sectarian violence between the Irish Republic and the Unionists. Johnson’s deal removes the backstop but proposes customs checks in the Irish Sea. The Democratic Unionist Party, with 10 MPs, is not impressed.
It voted against the deal. Given that the ruling Conservatives are technically in a minority, having lost a crucial by-election a few weeks ago, the loss of DUP support robbed Johnson of any chance of pushing his deal through the Commons.
However, Brexit has loosened traditional party loyalties, with a number of Labour MPs representing pro-leave constituencies to support the deal. Underlining the huge dilemma that has divided the UK was the fact that Parliament sat on a Saturday for the first time in 37 years, the last time was during the Falklands war.
On Saturday a new motion was approved directing the PM to seek extension from the EU instead of going in for a no-deal Brexit. Johnson, having publicly sworn not to do so, nonetheless wrote to the EU President seeking a short three-month extension but, crucially, did not sign the said letter. Instead he did much worse.
In a covering letter he ranted against further delay and asserted he was committed to leave EU by October 31. Whether his not signing the letter constitutes contempt of parliament is now being tested in a court of law.
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Johnson was still hoping to push through his deal in the Commons. The Speaker Joe Roots might not allow it on the sound precedent that the same Bill cannot be introduced twice in the same session.
With MPs insisting on dissecting the deal threadbare, it is uncertain that Johnson would succeed in bamboozling the House into giving its nod before October 31. Meanwhile, though reluctant the EU is set to grant yet another extension to the UK.
On Saturday, a million-strong rally outside Parliament pressed for a fresh referendum on leave or remain, a demand backed by a large section of the MPs. However Johnson still banks on the sheer exhaustion the country has suffered grappling with Brexit, hoping to persuade fence-sitters to support his deal and be done with it.
Britain has never been so divided over something whose gains are illusory. The leavers believe the UK will be able to enter into separate trade deals with the US, the EU and a host of other countries on its terms and grow faster. It is sheer day-dreaming.
It is like leaving a bird in hand for the two in the bush. The membership of the EU, UK’s biggest trading partner, without the burden of a common currency and a common visa, added heft to the British voice. It will lose that but what it would gain remains unclear.
