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ARGUMENT
Brexit Is Destroying
Britain’s Constitution
Whatever the outcome, Brexit has triggered an irreversible collapse of
Britain's political, legal, and social order.
BY GARVAN WALSHE | DECEMBER 18, 2018, 4:34 AM
The first development strengthened remainers, and the second gave the
prime minister vital breathing space that could theoretically be used to
advance their agenda. But despite the fervent hopes of remainers, nothing
that happened last week makes an “exit from Brexit” more likely. Instead,
Brexit compromises conceivably capable of bridging the country’s divides,
such as the “Norway plus” option proposed by moderate Conservative MP
Nick Boles, are now harder than ever to reach. Meanwhile, Britain is
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crisis.
That system is now broken. It relied on the big Conservative and Labour
parties being able to win “working majorities” that limited MPs’ ability to
rebel against their party lines. There’s no point in 10 or 15 MPs rebelling
when a government has a majority of 50. All it achieves is to damage the
rebels’ prospects of promotion. But that system has been fatally undermined
from multiple directions.
First, the strength of the Scottish National Party has made working
majorities a thing of the past. It made its breakthrough in 2015, after an
independence referendum it lost, but at which it vastly exceeded
expectations. Its geographical concentration allows it to win Westminster
seats in Scotland, and without Scottish seats it’s almost impossible for the
two big England-based parties to win a working majority.
Without a working majority, party leaders must pay attention to their hard-
liners, or, as some Conservative Party members have been known to call
them, “swivel-eyed loons.” The loons forced David Cameron to offer a
referendum on Britain’s EU membership, which he, as everyone knows,
narrowly lost. Normally, Britain’s flexible political system could
accommodate one party’s indulgence of extremism: if the Conservatives
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would typically open up space in the center for Labour to position itself as
the defender of economically pragmatic close relations with it. However,
Labour is currently led by the far-left and anti-European Jeremy Corbyn,
keen to facilitate Brexit and take advantage of the economic chaos to
implement a radical socialist agenda.
Superimposed on these new, more polarized parties are the new, essentially
sectarian political identities created by the Brexit referendum itself. Leavers
and remainers move in different social circles and have different
understandings of the central facts of Brexit. Though there are still
pragmatists in the center, political careers are now made by appealing to the
tribes’ core beliefs. Thus Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, a remainer in 2016,
has now declared himself unafraid of the harshest, “no deal” Brexit, while
former Education Secretary Justine Greening has been working on bringing
about a new referendum since Theresa May sacked her in the summer.
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The true limits of their power now revealed, no-deal Brexiteers are now
contemplating a legislative strike, which would deprive the government of
its majority for everything except confidence votes, or even forming a new
hard-right party. That would allow them to vote against the government in a
confidence vote and provoke an election. The effect of a new party would,
however, be to split the anti-Labour vote and give Jeremy Corbyn a good
chance of entering Downing Street.
But nor is there any easy path to a second referendum, as remainers hope. If
nothing changes, Britain will leave the EU on March 29, 2019. Holding a
referendum requires an Act of Parliament, and thus continuous control of
the legislative timetable to avoid a filibuster. In practice, that too requires a
change of government, as well as for the EU to grant an extension to the
Article 50 negotiating period to allow one to take place. Even if remainers
managed to get this far, referendum proposals would be accompanied by
intense and polarizing debates about the referendum question (or
questions—a two-stage referendum has been suggested), the franchise (one
prominent anti-Brexit group wants to give EU citizens in the U.K. and British
citizens in the EU the right to vote in it), the regulation of political spending,
and the conduct of a campaign. Extreme Brexiteers have already begun civil
disobedience, though their competence leaves something to be desired.
The only certainty is that Britain’s political rewards now go to men and
women who promote polarization, not compromise. And because the
country is divided in two almost exactly equal halves, neither side can win
decisively. Just as remainers have not accepted the legitimacy of the 2016
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Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy advisor to the British
Conservative Party and the CEO of Brexit Analytics. @garvanwalshe
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TAGS: ARGUMENT, BREXIT, BRITAIN, EUROPE, EUROPEAN UNION COMMENTS
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