UK’s Brexit Maze

The Citizen

LONDON: On Tuesday, 22 October 2019, Parliament voted twice within half an hour on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to leave the European Union. While there was a majority on the “principle” of Brexit, just 15 minutes later MPs stopped the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, leaving the EU by his arbitrary deadline of 31 October. Brexit postponed. Parliament had wrested control of the agenda from the government, along with the freedom to amend the bill, including a possible confirmatory People’s Vote. Boris Johnson’s Brexit government does not want a confirmatory referendum, fearing it might overturn the result of the June 2016 referendum, in which the UK voted to leave. 

What the MPs told the Prime Minister in those two votes, an old colleague put it this way –

“Yes, maybe, but we would need more time and probably some changes.” The government wanted Parliament to pass the entire bill within three days.  

So, the United Kingdom was back to the mechanism to request the EU for an extension of the Article 50 notification until 31 January 2020, as required by a law known as the Benn Act. The extension has just been granted. The Prime Minister, meanwhile, wants an election. However, in the middle of Parliament’s current five-year term, it requires a two-thirds majority to hold an early general election. In recent days, cracks have opened up in the opposition, with the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists in Parliament pushing for a December election, but on a date which the Prime Minister does not find advantageous to him. The country is therefore in an immensely complicated constitutional and legal maze. To try to understand what is going on, a step-by-step look at events is necessary.  

Just three days before, in a rare sitting on Saturday, 19 October – the first in 37 years – the House of Commons had passed an opposition amendment to the Prime Minister’s motion on leaving the EU. The amendment said: “… this House has considered the matter but withholds approval unless and until implementing legislation is passed.” 

It was remarkable. The amendment was introduced by a veteran MP and former Conservative minister, Oliver Letwin, who had been expelled with 20 other lawmakers from the governing party. Opposition MPs, with few exceptions, supported him. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a flamboyant, overconfident politician, had introduced his plan to force through Brexit legislation in three days despite being in a minority of minus 43 in Parliament. He asserted that it was the executive’s prerogative to run the country; MPs were there to facilitate it. Johnson’s calculation was that the divided opposition would never unite. He had misjudged. 

Against the government’s wishes, the Letwin amendment won. MPs supporting it argued that they needed more time to go through nearly 600 pages of the draft Brexit agreement in a matter of hours after they were given the document. They wanted to avoid a no-deal exit that would be very disruptive, economically and logistically, for an island state surrounded by the European Union. And the Prime Minister’s “do or die” deadline of 31 October was too tight to be realistic. 

So, the United kingdom is in the midst of a mighty battle for sovereignty between Parliament and the executive, and Parliament has been winning – so far. As MPs debated on 19 October, huge crowds took part in London streets in a “People’s March” against Brexit. German TV estimated that there were as many as 2.2 million protestors. 

Even before that day, Prime Minister Johnson’s government had suffered six defeats in Parliament. When he tried to shut down Parliament, he lost in the UK Supreme Court (11-0) and in Scotland’s highest court. The case remains open in the Scottish court until, as the judge said, it was clear that the obligations under the legislation had been “complied with in full”. 

Boris Johnson continues to insist he would not resign even though he is 43 MPs short of a majority in the House of Common. His government is dysfunctional, because it cannot get its legislative programme through. Anger, frustration and a deepening sense of crisis exist in the country. A number of seemingly unanswerable questions arise. How does Boris Johnson’s minority government survive? Can the opposition in Parliament not bring a no-confidence motion in his government and force it out? Why can new elections not take place? Why Parliament seems indecisive and reluctant to go for a clear break from the European Union? 

Such questions look simple, but answers are very complicated. Many MPs appreciate the complications while voters necessarily do not.  

The origins of this Brexit crisis go back to 2014 when Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party suffered significant setbacks in the European Parliamentary elections, coming third behind the Brexiteers of the UK Independence Party and the main opposition Labour Party. At the time, Cameron was in coalition with the pro-EU Liberal Democrats. The coalition’s economic austerity was increasingly unpopular. Welfare cuts, low wage rises and falling living standards were causing strong resentment against immigrants from the other 27 European Union countries taking advantage of the EU’s freedom of movement and legally present in the United Kingdom to work, study and live – as a million or more UK citizens were legally resident in other EU member-states. 

To shore up anti-EU Conservative supporters who had abandoned the party in large numbers, Cameron proposed a referendum if the Conservative Party won an outright majority in the next general election due in 2015. Until then, he knew that his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, would veto any such plan. Cameron was overconfident of winning the public vote to stay in the EU, and that, he thought, would be the end of his problems. The Conservative Party, somewhat unexpectedly, won the 2015 election by a small but clear majority. Cameron proceeded to hold an advisory, nonbinding referendum in June 2016, as he had promised in his manifesto. 

His decision backfired fantastically. Despite Cameron’s optimism, the electorate voted to leave the European Union by a small margin. It was the end of his political career. The Leave campaign was greatly emboldened. And the crisis has since been intensifying. Cameron’s successor as prime minister, Theresa May, has come and gone. 

Just as the governing party, opposition parties are not very functional either when it comes to removing Johnson’s minority government. The biggest opposition party is Labour, but its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is seen as a hard left politician who has tolerated antisemitism. It is an accusation he denies. But many in his own and other parties refuse to accept Corbyn as an alternative prime minister, and he cannot command a majority in Parliament. Many opposition MPs are also against an early election for three main reasons. First, Boris Johnson is already making it a choice of People vs. Parliament. Second, those who represent constituencies which voted to leave the EU may lose their seats. And third, a general election is much more than delivering Brexit, because it is about electing a government that must work to deliver a wider policy agenda. 

So, an opposition that cannot agree on a strategy to remove the current Prime Minister and replace him with one of its own would rather let a dysfunctional minority government stay in office, and see it make mistakes almost every day. A phrase often heard from opponents is “Let them stew in their own juice”. Granting Boris Johnson an early election is not most of his opponents’ preference. 

Predictions are risky. But even if the United Kingdom does leave the European Union, the next stage will be even longer and more complicated. The UK will need to decide what kind of economic, political and strategic relationship it should have with the rest of Europe that surrounds it. New free trade agreements will have to be negotiated with the EU and the rest of the world. What will it mean? Five years, ten years or more splitting joint assets and negotiating a new trading relationship with the EU.

Competing pressures from different nations to change standards, laws and regulations, including, for example, chlorinated chicken from the United States. And demands for preferential treatment on visas for citizens of other countries like India. As the Atlantic magazine recently commented, “Brexit is forever”.   

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The United Kingdom in 2017: Divided, Scandalised and Lost

The Citizen

In 2017, the United Kingdom continued to experience the trauma of the previous year’s referendum on the country’s membership of the European Union. The advisory referendum in 2016 had split the country almost evenly. A year on, divisions brought out into the open have started to work through. We are witnessing the economic and social aftershocks of the earthquake which the narrow victory for leaving the EU produced. A new battle for Brexit is on.

Schisms are around us to see. Between those who want the UK to remain integrated with the rest of Europe — and those with a fanatical determination to disengage from Europe in all but trade. Europhiles, on the one hand, are nervous about becoming too dependent on the United States as President Donald Trump reshapes America in his own vision. Fervent Eurosceptics, on the other, have no qualms about that prospect. Voices of reason are often drowned in the shrill and narrow nationalist rhetoric of a disorderly group claiming to have a majority, albeit small, behind them.

Often described as “Remoaners”, “traitors” and “enemies of the people” by Brexiteers and the right-wing press owned by media tycoons, onetime pro-EU Britons are becoming resigned to the inevitability of the country leaving the European Union. British businesses, anxious about the prospect of tariffs and long queues at border points, have been warning the government repeatedly. The UK currency has declined sharply since the 2016 referendum. Economic growth, too, is declining as migrant workers from Eastern Europe leave Britain in significant numbers.

Foreign companies such as Honda, Nissan, Toyota and BMW, banks and financial services, are making contingency plans to relocate before the United Kingdom leaves the EU on 29 March 2019 if no free trade agreement appears in sight by the exit date. But negotiations, which normally take years, are not expected to begin at least until the end of March 2018.

The British negotiating team has just completed the first phase of talks with the European Union. The aim was to finalise a deal on three major issues: the UK’s financial settlement when it leaves; the status of open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, and the Irish Republic, an independent country within the EU; and protection of the rights of EU citizens in the UK as well as UK citizens in the 27 other EU countries.

Brexit Secretary David Davis

No sooner than the UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, announced the agreement paving the way for the second phase in which complex trade negotiations could start, the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, said that promises made by the UK in just concluded talks were “not legally binding” and they were “meaningless”. His remarks made the remaining EU 27 members furious, for it meant a lack of good faith to the EU and perhaps the rest of the world.

The boast of Brexiteers since the 2016 EU referendum that “we will have our cake and eat it” has caused anger throughout Europe. Too many in the British government, in Parliament and the populace remain oblivious to the unalterable geographical fact that the United Kingdom is surrounded by EU countries and these countries remain united in their approach to Brexit.

Sharp divisions afflict the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Theresa May’s full cabinet rarely has discussions on government policy or the final destination when the country leaves the EU. Ministers express their disagreements openly in the public. Individuals freely announce what looks like policy without consulting others in government, sometimes to be rebuked by the Prime Minister.

Her cabinet is dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct. The Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, was forced to resign for “falling short of acceptable standards”. The International Development Secretary, Priti Patel, resigned after holding a series of unauthorized meetings with Israeli officials during a private “holiday” visit. Most recently, a third minister, Damian Green, has also resigned after an official investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct found that he had breached the ministerial code.

Theresa May’s Conservative Party MPs are uneasy about the high degree of control exercised by a right-wing minority of Brexiteers and 10 MPs of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland sustaining her in power. In early December, a small number of Conservative MPs rebelled. They voted against a clause of the EU Withdrawal Bill that would have given ministers sweeping powers to change laws without parliamentary approval.

Despite every conceivable tactic to entice, cajole and pressure those threatening to oppose, the government was defeated. Since that vote, rebel MPs have received death threats which are a matter for police investigation. Parliament regained power to scrutinise the terms of any withdrawal agreement negotiated with the EU. The opposition Labour Party is purposely vague about what kind of relationship it wants with the European Union after exit for fear of losing votes among both supporters and opponents of EU membership at the next general election.

The Brexit referendum whipped up a lot of hostility against immigrants. Crime statistics show a marked increase in attacks against, and harassment of, ethnic minorities such as Muslims and people of East European backgrounds. Angry Brexit nationalists and white supremacists tell those who do not look English, or who speak a foreign language, are told to “go back to your country”.

Under-the-surface tensions have always existed in British society and erupt from time to time. Following the referendum, unrestrained chauvinism, including official threats to make the environment hostile for immigrants, are becoming accepted norms. As the political debate degenerates, courts and European human rights instruments are left to serve as the main bulwark against further descent.

Steve Bell in the Guardian

A country in crisis due to political failures often tends to evoke the past and embark on a journey to imagined greatness once again. When those dreams are not realised, anger and frustration follow. As the United Kingdom approaches the New Year, the country is at that point. For a small country of 65 million, with about 150000 active military personnel in total, including a navy and an air force of some 30000 active personnel each, the Brexiteers’ vision of Britannia ruling the waves means having to carry heavy load indeed.

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Sex, Lies and Incompetence: Britain’s Ruling Establishment in Crisis

CounterPunch 

Photo: BBC

Barely five months after a general election in the United Kingdom, the government of Prime Minister Theresa May looks doomed. It could fall any day, next week or next month. Within her Conservative Party and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in other European countries and beyond, speculation is rife that Theresa May’s days in office may be numbered. Scandals involving sex, lies and incompetence unfold day after day. The rot has set in at the heart of Britain’s power centre.

As the deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union (March 29, 2019) approaches, rival factions in the government and the Conservative parliamentary party are engaged in fierce battles over what kind of Brexit they want. Once a Conservative Member of Parliament and now a distinguished commentator, Matthew Parris, says, “The sooner Theresa May goes, the better.”

Ministers operate like freelance diplomats and traders, not like members of a cabinet which has collective responsibility, without reference to the protocol and the Prime Minister’s Office. Claims of sexual misconduct by politicians of various parties, but more seriously by ministers, abound. Allegations of groping have ended the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon’s career, after his confession that at times his behaviour had fallen short. And the First Secretary of State (in effect deputy prime minister), Damian Green, has been accused by a much younger woman activist, Kate Maltby, of making sexual advances and sending “suggestive” text messages to her. These accounts are widely reported in the media.

Further, there are claims, backed by a former senior police officer, that pornography was discovered on Damian Green’s office computer some years ago. He denies the allegations, and the Prime Minister has ordered an investigation. But, unlike Michael Fallon, Damian Green remains in his post.

Sleaze at the heart of power goes back to the time when Theresa May’s predecessor, David Cameron, was in office. A well-known television producer, Daisy Goodwin, has alleged that she was groped by a staff member in the then Prime Minister David Cameron’s official residence. According to Goodwin, when she challenged the man who was much younger than her, he dropped his hand from her breast and laughed nervously. Ex-Prime Minister Cameron now says he is “alarmed, shocked and concerned.”

Photo: Canary.co

At the same time, it emerged that another minister, the International Development Secretary Priti Patel, went on “holiday” to Israel and held 12 meetings with Israeli officials, including the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. First, Patel said that she had informed the Foreign Office about her visit. It turned out that she had not. She apologised and was let off the hook. Then, news leaked out that she had had more meetings with Israeli officials and had not declared them. That was too much. Priti Patel was summoned back to London from a visit to Africa and left the Cabinet soon after.

Leaks also revealed that Patel had visited the occupied (Syrian) Golan Heights. She inspected an Israeli army hospital where Syrian “refugees” and anti-Assad rebels are treated. And she was in talks about ways to divert British foreign aid to the Israeli army. The United Kingdom does not recognise Israeli control in occupied Arab territories. British ministers do not visit those areas. When they do they have to maintain a strict protocol and meet Palestinian as well as Israeli officials to give the appearance of balance. The International Development Secretary broke all the rules.

Theresa May’s minority government is beset by crises of its own making. Having supported the option to stay in the European Union in the 2016 EU referendum, she has become a fervent Leaver since becoming Prime Minister. And her calculations have gone badly wrong. She called a general election in June 2017, dead certain of winning a big majority in Parliament and thereafter doing what she liked in exiting the EU and shaping the country in her own post-Brexit vision. Instead, she lost her majority in Parliament. A number of sitting MPs of her party were defeated. She snatched defeat from the jaws of victory many in her party had anticipated.

Now, she barely governs as head of a Conservative minority government. She is sustained in office by 10 MPs of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party which has promised to support her in any motion of confidence. She has bought the DUP’s support with a billion pound additional funding for Northern Ireland. But the deal has raised serious questions over the British government’s impartiality in the peace process and power-sharing between the province’s Catholic and Protestant communities that ended decades of conflict in April 1998.

In her party, Theresa May’s position is made even more precarious by about 35 hard-line MPs who would not accept any compromise in forging a new relationship with the European Union. Since triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty in March 2017 to exit the European Union, she is under relentless pressure from these uncompromising anti-EU MPs to make no concessions to the other side. Whether it is about paying the exit fee to meet the UK’s commitments to current EU projects and pension liabilities etc., accepting the EU requirement of four freedoms (movement of goods, services, capital, people) in a future trade relationship or the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice for settling disputes between the UK and the EU.

A number of her MPs want the British government to simply walk away from the talks, arguing that it will be the EU that will come back to negotiate trade with the United Kingdom. Others want a soft Brexit and trading as open as possible thereafter. Still others insist that the UK must leave the EU in March 2019, and any transition arrangement must be as short as possible.

In a leaked secret letter setting out their terms of exit, the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, and the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, have written to the Prime Minister that after the UK ceases to be a member of the EU in March 2019, any transition period must end precisely on the last day of June 2021. Writing in the Guardian, the newspaper’s political columnist Rafael Behr called it ego-wrestling in the British cabinet. The Prime Minister can neither sack Boris Johnson nor Michael Gove, because by doing so she will risk bringing down her government.

The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has a history of making off-the-cough remarks, a bumbling style and public buffoonery. Currently, he is in serious trouble following his careless, and false, comments before a parliamentary select committee. Speaking about Iran and a British-Iranian dual citizen being held in jail on accusations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, the Foreign Secretary said that the woman was only teaching journalism there. Actually she had gone to see her elderly parents and was arrested by Revolutionary Guards as she was about to board a flight to return to Britain.

The Iranian authorities jumped on Johnson’s comments, claiming that his remarks proved that the woman was guilty, and are threatening to double her five-year jail sentence. In prison, Nazanin Zaghary-Radcliffe’s health is declining. Her daughter is being looked after by her parents while her British husband, Richard Radcliffe, battles to get them back home. For several days, Boris Johnson resisted calls to apologise for making a false statement which has caused a British family a lot of trouble. Finally, he did apologise, but the woman’s fate remains in the hands of the Iranian authorities.

So, the government of Theresa May stumbles from crisis to crisis as the United Kingdom approaches exit from the European Union, the biggest trading bloc which surrounds it.

When she succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister in July 2016, many people had assumed that she would be a safe pair of hands. However, her actions, her dependence on a small number of advisers personally loyal to her and her inability to win the party’s and people’s confidence have proved otherwise. In the midst of scandals involving sex, lies and ineptitude at the highest level of her government, she now fights for her own political survival as Parliament scrutinises the EU Withdrawal Bill.

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