I clearly remember during the referendum campaign Brexiteers being warned that Britain would be a supplicant during the withdrawal negotiations. This was dismissed as talking Britain down. Unfortunately it has been proved painfully true over the last three years, although it is now being portrayed either as the EU being intransigent or a botched negotiation on the part of Theresa May and Olly Robbins. Johnson is doing his best to change that whole narrative but it isn't going to work.
I think it's now perfectly obvious we have drastically overestimated our negotiating strengths.
All the talk of the EU needing access to our financial services industry or German car makers influencing Brussels has been forgotten. The claims were never true anyway. Johnson is falling back onto the only lever he has, or thinks he has. This is the threat of leaving without a deal. Very soon this will prove to be just as useless as all the others.
Let us look at the problems with the threat.
(a) It will do lasting catastrophic damage to the nation's economic health.
(b) It risks the United Kingdom's disintegration, with Scotland and Northern Ireland breaking away.
(c) It will damage the economies of our negotiating partners, creating a lot of ill feeling and making the prospect of good relations and a beneficial FTA afterwards even harder.
(d) There is a trickle of companies moving operations into the single market, weakening Britain and benefiting the EU. This will increase as October nears, especially in financial services.
(e) The pound has slumped against both the euro and the dollar and will continue to fall, raising the cost of imports, risking a full blown sterling crisis, an increase in inflation and a consequent increase in interest rates.
(f) If we carry out the threat, we will find ourselves out of the EU on November 1st and in an even weaker position than we are now, with the prospect of trading on WTO terms for years and years. There are no easy routes back from the cliff edge.
When all you have on your side of the table is the threat of self-harm it is time to admit you are not going to succeed. In fact, just about the only upside to threatening no deal is if it does in fact force the EU to blink. I confidently predict this will never happen. In the unlikely event that it does, it would be from sympathy and nothing else.
Now considering all this, lets have a look at The Institute for Government's latest report on what options Johnson has in the coming weeks. They say there are four possible Brexit outcomes, which are that the UK:
• leaves with a withdrawal agreement (or ‘deal’)
• leaves without a withdrawal agreement (‘no deal’)
• requests another extension to Article 50, or
• revokes its Article 50 letter, bringing the current Brexit process to an end.
Johnson, paradoxically, if he gets the first option, will almost certainly not be able to take us out on 31st October since so much legislation will be needed and this won't be easy, according to the IfG. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) is fraught with problems. Getting a deal is one thing, getting a deal that a majority of MPs will agree on is quite another.
The IfG suggest;
"Once introduced, MPs could use the WAB to exert influence over not just the tabled withdrawal agreement, but also the next phase of Brexit. For instance, May’s last attempt to pass her deal – her “bold, new offer” – included a greater role for Parliament in the next phase of Brexit negotiations and promises to legislate, in the WAB, to protect workers’ rights and the environment regardless of the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU. These ideas are likely to resurface – either from government or opposition as amendments. More amendments could come forward as well, in particular ones that aims to tie the government to specific negotiating objectives".
Johnson will almost certainly be forced to ask for an extension. He may cloak it in xenophobic language and claim he got the EU to blink and give us a better deal, but this doesn't resolve the difficulty of the parliamentary arithmetic. It is likely to proceed in exactly the same way as it did under Mrs May, a long cat and mouse game between the executive and parliament with another impasse at the end of it.
In truth, this is the probable outcome. The no deal exit is, for the reasons I set out above, so stupid as to be simply unthinkable for any government. I confidently predict it will never happen and not necessarily because MPs would prevent it. When push comes to shove, Johnson will not want to have his name stamped forever on a self-inflicted economic disaster that his successor will be wrestling with for years while constantly blaming him for it all.
Former Chancellor Phillip Hammond has weighed in this morning with an article in The Times saying there is no mandate for a no deal Brexit and the PM is making demands that he knows the EU cannot accept. It's also interesting that the accusations are pointed at Dominic Cummings, our de facto unelected prime minister, rather than Johnson, his pathetic deputy.
"In his first intervention since resigning as chancellor, Mr Hammond accuses Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s most senior aide, of attempting to force through a no-deal Brexit by making demands that Brussels 'cannot, and will not, accede to'.
"Writing in The Times he claims that the suggestion from Brexiteers such as Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, that Leave voters were informed before the referendum of the risks of a hard exit is 'a total travesty of the truth'.
"He says that there is neither a public nor parliamentary mandate for no-deal and warns the prime minister that parliament will 'make its voice heard' to stop it happening.
"Leaving the bloc without an agreement will cost jobs, lead to a decline in living standards and risk breaking up the Union, reducing the UK to an “inward-looking little England”, he warns. He says that it could trigger the collapse of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland and ultimately lead to a referendum for a united Ireland, as well as a second referendum on Scottish independence."
What does it all mean? In my opinion, it means we will wake up on November 1st still a full member of the EU. All Johnson's vows to leave by the 31st October 'do or die' will look even more ridiculous than they do now and the ERG will be spitting blood. The man who was said to be the only person who could do it will have failed.
Brexit itself will be on the verge of failure.
Now considering all this, lets have a look at The Institute for Government's latest report on what options Johnson has in the coming weeks. They say there are four possible Brexit outcomes, which are that the UK:
• leaves with a withdrawal agreement (or ‘deal’)
• leaves without a withdrawal agreement (‘no deal’)
• requests another extension to Article 50, or
• revokes its Article 50 letter, bringing the current Brexit process to an end.
Johnson, paradoxically, if he gets the first option, will almost certainly not be able to take us out on 31st October since so much legislation will be needed and this won't be easy, according to the IfG. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) is fraught with problems. Getting a deal is one thing, getting a deal that a majority of MPs will agree on is quite another.
The IfG suggest;
"Once introduced, MPs could use the WAB to exert influence over not just the tabled withdrawal agreement, but also the next phase of Brexit. For instance, May’s last attempt to pass her deal – her “bold, new offer” – included a greater role for Parliament in the next phase of Brexit negotiations and promises to legislate, in the WAB, to protect workers’ rights and the environment regardless of the nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU. These ideas are likely to resurface – either from government or opposition as amendments. More amendments could come forward as well, in particular ones that aims to tie the government to specific negotiating objectives".
Johnson will almost certainly be forced to ask for an extension. He may cloak it in xenophobic language and claim he got the EU to blink and give us a better deal, but this doesn't resolve the difficulty of the parliamentary arithmetic. It is likely to proceed in exactly the same way as it did under Mrs May, a long cat and mouse game between the executive and parliament with another impasse at the end of it.
In truth, this is the probable outcome. The no deal exit is, for the reasons I set out above, so stupid as to be simply unthinkable for any government. I confidently predict it will never happen and not necessarily because MPs would prevent it. When push comes to shove, Johnson will not want to have his name stamped forever on a self-inflicted economic disaster that his successor will be wrestling with for years while constantly blaming him for it all.
Former Chancellor Phillip Hammond has weighed in this morning with an article in The Times saying there is no mandate for a no deal Brexit and the PM is making demands that he knows the EU cannot accept. It's also interesting that the accusations are pointed at Dominic Cummings, our de facto unelected prime minister, rather than Johnson, his pathetic deputy.
"In his first intervention since resigning as chancellor, Mr Hammond accuses Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s most senior aide, of attempting to force through a no-deal Brexit by making demands that Brussels 'cannot, and will not, accede to'.
"Writing in The Times he claims that the suggestion from Brexiteers such as Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, that Leave voters were informed before the referendum of the risks of a hard exit is 'a total travesty of the truth'.
"He says that there is neither a public nor parliamentary mandate for no-deal and warns the prime minister that parliament will 'make its voice heard' to stop it happening.
"Leaving the bloc without an agreement will cost jobs, lead to a decline in living standards and risk breaking up the Union, reducing the UK to an “inward-looking little England”, he warns. He says that it could trigger the collapse of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland and ultimately lead to a referendum for a united Ireland, as well as a second referendum on Scottish independence."
What does it all mean? In my opinion, it means we will wake up on November 1st still a full member of the EU. All Johnson's vows to leave by the 31st October 'do or die' will look even more ridiculous than they do now and the ERG will be spitting blood. The man who was said to be the only person who could do it will have failed.
Brexit itself will be on the verge of failure.
