♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Europe
at 6/10/2017 03:12:00 PM
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| Before her boneheaded, majority-killing snap election, May was sending self-deportation vans around the UK as home secretary. |
However, the unexpected loss of the Conservative Party's majority for any number of reasons, including calling a snap election when she said one wasn't needed (she's a liar, liar), brings up a whole host of limitations to what she can now do. Essentially, they make the task of extricating the UK from the EU much harder instead of easier as she had intended by calling the snap election.
Theresa May’s electoral humiliation has raised hopes among pro-Europeans that she will be forced to abandon her plan for a “hard Brexit”, or that the process of Britain leaving the EU could grind to a halt completely.
George Osborne, former chancellor, said that her aim of leaving the EU single market and customs union could now be impossible: “I don’t think that hard Brexit has a majority in the House of Commons any more,” he said.Her position in parliament has become very tenuous when several bits of legislation must be passed in support of Brexit. Many are betting she simply cannot get these passed now:
Some in Mrs May’s team even believe that her position is now so precarious that she will be unable to deliver Brexit, because of her vanishing authority and the problems of pushing a mountain of legislation through parliament. “How can you deliver Brexit when you don’t have any negotiating authority and no majority in the House of Commons?” asked one pro-European minister. “In practical terms, Brexit is a dead duck.”
Several things have changed. Firstly Mrs May’s slender majority in the House of Commons has vanished just at the point where she has to start the massive task of legislating for Brexit, including introducing the sprawling “Great Repeal Bill” that will transfer EU laws to the UK statute book.Lacking a majority, she's looking to partner with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the loyal-to-the-queen Protestants in Northern Ireland. While the DUP shares a pro-Brexit stance, it wants to keep trade and transportation access privileges to Ireland proper. Which, I suspect, means preferring to stay in the EU if leaving it means losing such access:
Not only does Mrs May have to legislate for the detail of Brexit but there will also be an estimated seven major bills, including measures changing the law on immigration, customs and agriculture that will have to pass through the Commons and the House of Lords. Mrs May also has to pass contingency laws to allow her to leave the EU without a deal — even if they are never needed.
The second complication for Mrs May is that her arrangement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party: while the DUP is pro-Brexit it wants to avoid checks at the border with Ireland, which could be required if the UK leaves the EU customs union.
Arlene Foster, DUP leader, has said: “No one wants to see a ‘hard’ Brexit, what we want to see is a workable plan to leave the European Union, and that’s what the national vote was about — therefore we need to get on with that.On top of all that--and this hasn't been pointed out a lot--the Conservatives' representation among pro-Remain Scots has increased, thereby lessening the viability of all sorts of Leave legislation:
“However, we need to do it in a way that respects the specific circumstances of Northern Ireland, and, of course, our shared history and geography with the Republic of Ireland.”
A third factor weighing on Mrs May is that her parliamentary party now includes 12 new MPs from Scotland, a country that is strongly pro-EU and where the Scottish National party is arguing for Britain to stay in the single market.If I were the EU, I would be even more encouraged to play the hardest of hardball with May--assuming she remains prime minister over the course of exit negotiations, which is hardly a sure thing given her precarious position. Because UK constituencies would balk at a deal stacked heavily against Britain, I'd make sure that it was. With May having no clear mandate to make a clear or "hard" Brexit, the end result is likely the status quo. EU anti-Brexit measures to ensure this result should include:
One pro-European Conservative MP said the prime minister would be wise to change course. “The country has turned against Brexit. There has been a youthquake. We are not in touch with younger voters.”
Another minister who backed Remain said there was scope for a “more nuanced” approach to Brexit, but John Redwood, the veteran Eurosceptic, pointed out that both Labour and Conservatives had ruled out staying in the single market.
- Hit the UK with a "divorce bill" in the hundreds of billions of Euros;
- Do not negotiate an FTA alongside Brexit talks;
- Make Brexit mean Northern Ireland loses near-total trade and transport preferential access to Ireland;
- Generally make the UK negotiators' lives as hellish as humanly possible by seeking next to no concessions on anything they wish
Oftentimes busybodying makes no sense. At any rate, here's hoping the EU offers May the worst possible deal to ensure the alternative of remaining looks far more palatable to the UK parliament. She can no longer make the threat of pulling out unilaterally, so take advantage of it, EU. Apparently May's homegrown brand of Trumpian, isolationist bigotry isn't too popular even in the UK.
