Charge of the Light Brigade
Eurointelligence for months had Theresa May’s deal the odd-on favorite. I notice a change in tune tonight, via email.
Theresa May’s strategy to portray Tuesday’s vote as an open-ended three-way game – deal, no deal, no Brexit – has clearly not worked. Instead of scaring her opponents, she achieved the exact opposite. The hard Remainers and the hard Leavers both believe that they will better off by rejecting her deal. The can of course not both be right, but what matters for now is the fact that they hold those views. BBC research shows that the deal would currently be rejected by a majority of 228. Support for the deal has actually declined over the holiday period.
We should therefore brace for a Charge of the Light Brigade incident on Tuesday, unless May takes some dramatic action beforehand. If she were to lose on such a scale, both her premiership and the deal might be beyond redemption. A defeat by 30 or 40 votes would be bad enough, but it would at least allow her to agree tweaks in the political declaration that could win over enough support. But there is no way the agreement could be tweaked in such a way as to persuade well over 100 MPs to change their vote. In this case, she would have no alternative but to hand over the process to parliament.
We believe that her only viable strategy is to frame this debate as a straight choice between deal and no deal. She could still do so before Tuesday, or alternatively accept the inevitable defeat, sit back, and run down the clock. The latter has the disadvantage of uncertainty. A 200-vote defeat could end her premiership instantly. Nor does it make sense to hand over the process to the parliament now, having sidelined the Commons during the Brexit negotiations. We thus conclude that Downing Street has committed another serious strategic error – like calling an election in 2017. We think it would have been a better strategy to get the European Council to pre-emptively frustrate third options from the outset, for example by committing not to extend Art. 50 except to make a little more time for ratification. Such a pre-commitment would, at a stroke, effectively rule out a host of perceived alternative options – including a second referendum or the Labour Party’s version of a Brexit. There can never be a majority for the withdrawal agreement unless everybody understands that the alternative is no deal.
What about the Norway option? Right after the Brexit referendum we argued that the UK’s best choice would be to join Efta and the EEA. While this would not have solved the Irish border problem, since customs procedures would still have been necessary, it would have made it much easier to deal with the problem through technical facilitation. Norway still might end up as the compromise if Labour were to support it. We noted a column by Owen Jones, a Corbyn-supporting columnist in the Guardian, who writes that Norway is not the ideal option for Labour but the best of a bad bunch. Like us, he does not see a second referendum as a solution to the standoff, not least because there is no decisive majority for Remain. A poll of polls shows a very narrow majority for Remain, 52-48, a lead we consider not robust enough to survive a campaign that would without a doubt turn into a plebiscite on democratic procedures. And we simply cannot see the UK government campaigning for Remain or the EU accepting an Art. 50 extension for a second in-or-out referendum if the government campaigns for Out.
In his speech yesterday, Corbyn gave no indication that he had shifted his scepticism on the second referendum though he remains formally committed to the process agreed by the Labour conference in the summer. A second referendum formally remains on the table, but only after a no-confidence vote fails. He said he would only commit to a vote of no confidence if he had a realistic chance of winning. We would not rule out the possibility that Corbyn’s prevarication may be what pushes the Commons towards a reluctant 11th-hour acceptance of May’s deal, or towards no deal.
Default Action
Yesterday, I stated Telegraph writer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Gets it Wrong. He said a no-deal Brexit is off the table and to buy the British Pound.
I have no comments about the pound at this moment but I pointed out that a no deal Brexit is the default option. It clearly is on the table, by default.
What Britain Really Thinks of the Brexit deal – Latest Polling
The Telegraph gets it wrong again. Please consider What Britain Really Thinks of the Brexit deal – Latest Polling
Despite this apparent disappointment in the “mess” of leaving the EU so far, key to understanding how Mrs May’s deal could still pass is in laying out the other options on the table.
The public, in principle, preferred both Remain and no deal to the withdrawal, but there was also a majority of people who wanted MPs to vote through the deal.
No Majority For Anything
The problem with this analysis is the public does not get to vote. Importantly, there is no majority for anything.
Unless there is agreement on something else, hard Brexit is the default option. And whatever the something else is, it must be acceptable to the EU. And it probably needs to be acceptable to DUP.
A three-way public vote with second choices is a joke, and the Telegraph has to know that.
Magic Wands
I do not rule out a magic wand. A few weeks ago a loss by 50 votes would have seemed huge. All of a sudden we are discussing losing by 200. A loss by 75 could be a moral victory.
And what if the EU decides to give May some sort of legal guarantee?
Thus, I do not rule out May’s deal passing. I simply rule out bad reporting by The Telegraph.
Policy Errors
My baseline scenario remains the default option. Theresa May did not play her cards very well and the EU overplayed its hand expecting the UK would buckle.
There is no reason to fear a no-deal brexit. The term itself is silly. The relationship between the UK and EU will simply fall back to WTO rules.
Not only will the UK avoid needlessly paying billions of dollars to the EU, it will escape idiotic EU customs rules and regain fishing rights. Fishing rights and payments alone will have huge bargaining power down the road.
May sold the farm for nothing. A hard Brexit is the best option. And with both the UK and EU preparing for it, it is not the least bit scary.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
No Deal is a lie. It simply falls back to WTO rules.
Have a post in mind on this.
May is truly a dunce.
There will be a NO deal Brexit but NO deal is not “crashing out” like fear-mongers claim it is just trade on WTO rules and there will be NO hard border between Ireland and UK since both have stated they will not create a hard border.
NO deal Brexit aka WTO-Brexit is actually much better for the markets and business since there will be certainty.
Trade under WTO rules and since UK imports much more from EU than UK exports to EU WTO-Brexit means UK made products will be more competitive in UK markets and UK will get Billions in tariffs to use to lower taxes for UK businesses exporting to EU thereby removing the economic impact of tariffs from UK companies.
Under May’s incompetent deal UK would have continued negotiating with EU for several more years after May’s deal was accepted and BINO (Brexit-in-name-only) happened in March 2019 for the permanent agreement and EU would have had the final say due to May’s stupid back-stop and if EU would have not received enough groweling and concessions from UK they could in practice keep UK chained to EU indefinitely due to May’s back-stop.
The back-stop (to “avoid” a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland) itself was created to fix a non-existent problem since Juncker, Macron and Merkel are not going to send troops to close the UK-Ireland border and both UK and Ireland have stated they will NOT create a hard border in the event of NO deal Brexit since this would lead to governments/parties doing a hard border being voted out and spending the next 50 years in opposition.
EuroIntelligence is uninformed and spreading FALSE claims.
There are NO customs between EU and EFTA/EEA.
The clue is already in the names European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and European Economic Area (EEA).
Therefore if UK had joined EFTA/EEA there would have been no customs problem.
With this kind of major blunder on a basic fact I would take everything EuroIntelligence says with a shalt-shaker full of salt.
This is the FALSE claim spread by EuroIntelligence:
“Right after the Brexit referendum we argued that the UK’s best choice would be to join Efta and the EEA. While this would not have solved the Irish border problem, since customs procedures would still have been necessary”
“customs procedures would still have been necessary”
I’m not sure that’s a lie . . . there need not be customs procedures for goods but there would still need to be some kind of inspection to deter illegal immigration.
Schengen area is completely separate from Customs.
UK is NOT in the Schengen area of free movement so UK has always inspected ID or Passport upon arrival to UK.
Ireland is also outside of Schengen area so free movement between them is OK since both stop migrants roaming continental Europe at the border.
Ok so then only Ireland and the UK need to harmonize their immigration and the border would be a non issue.
This is not accurate. Once nationality and identity is established and there are no European or UK warrants outstanding or exclusion orders extant then all EU citizens are allowed to go on their way with no further questions. The whole process takes 60 secs and is the same as that followed for UK citizens.
Free movement of labour is one of the four freedoms that constitute the single market.( This will change if we crash out at the end of March if this incompetent government gets a new Immigration Act on the Statute book in time.)
Yes, UK gives free movement for EU citizens after checking that they have no EU or UK warrants or exclusion orders.
However UK is outside of Schengen and does not give free movement for all persons inside EU/Schengen like Schengen countries do by default.
To ML1: The base Norway agreement requires freedom of movement and prohibits the UK from forming bilateral treaties. Bad Option
Mish the base EFTA agreement allows free movement of EFTA/EEV/UK persons but would NOT require UK to join Schengen.
Norway is in Schengen and allowed total free movement for even migrants roaming Europe until Norway started border controls and stopped migrants from taking ferries from Denmark to Norway and Norway also told Sweden that they will put border controls also in the southern part of Norway-Sweden border and will start stopping all migrants and turning them away and ask for asylum from Sweden.
This is what led Sweden to start border controls in late 2015 so those migrants trying to reach Norway would not end up staying in Sweden and Sweden also stopped all migrants going to Sweden since the checks were inside Denmark on trains and the bridge between Sweden and Denmark has no way to walk through it and walking is forbidden.
This led to Denmark also starting border controls on their border with Germany and stopping migrants so the migrants trying to go to Sweden and Norway and Finland would not end up all staying in Denmark.
When it comes to EFTA you are wrong in claiming that it does not give option for countries to have their own trade agreements.
EFTA gives free movement of goods between EU and EFTA countries but EFTA itself has 38 trade agreements with countries outside of EU that were negotiated by EFTA.
In addition to this each EFTA country can negotiate their own bilateral trade agreements.
May be that is why we have this…
No-deal Brexit would be ‘catastrophe’, says Juncker
If it gets serious you lie!