28 August 2018

The Federal Trust: Brexit: The Conservative centre cannot hold

Brendan Donnelly argues that outstanding divisions within the Conservative Party throw considerable doubt upon the capacity of Theresa May's government to conclude any Withdrawal Agreement with the EU before March 2019.

[...]internal paradoxes and contradictions reflect a deeper and more troubling reality: the governing Conservative Party is irredeemably split on the form that Brexit should take. The notifications attempt to address two entirely different Conservative audiences, those who believe that leaving without an agreement is at worst a manageable inconvenience; and those who have considerable doubts about the whole Brexit project but need to be reassured that the government is aware of the particular danger of leaving the EU in an abrupt and chaotic fashion. In consequence, business and other economic interests have found very little new of use for their planning in the notifications. As always over the course of the Brexit negotiations, it is the disputatious conversation within the Conservative Party that has priority over any attempt to come to grips with external reality, in the UK or elsewhere.

DISPARATE AUDIENCES

It was originally the ERG and its allies that pressed Mrs. May and her government to make public its plans in the event of “no deal”. Their thinking was that by so doing Mrs. May would improve her negotiating position in Brussels and avoid being forced by an absence of pre-planning into making later this year what the ERG would see as excessive concessions. These hopes will hardly have been met by the notifications, which on anything other than a superficial reading make clear the pressing dangers of a “no deal” Brexit for the British economy and the weakness of the British negotiating position. Particularly striking is the repeated recognition in the documents that even if there were no overall Withdrawal Agreement the United Kingdom would still be dependent after March next year upon specific agreements with the EU [...]

In any normally functioning party his disloyal public lecturing of a Conservative Party leader would attract widespread condemnation and possible disciplinary action. No such reaction has taken place, nor is there any prospect of anything similar occurring. Jacob Rees-Mogg knows that Mrs. May is in no position to restrain or discipline him. As far as European policy is concerned, the Conservatives have lost any sense of shared political identity that would lead either to self-discipline or central sanctions accepted as legitimate in defence of a common project. [...]

In truth, the internal contradictions of the notifications and the provocative tone of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s letter aptly summarize the bitter conflict currently lacerating the Conservative Party.  [...]

Within 72 hours of its painful settlement, the Prime Minister’s rickety Chequers compromise was publicly and humiliatingly rejected by precisely the senior ministers whose ministerial tasks it would have been to implement it and who had initially accepted its terms. Mrs. May has neither the political nor personal authority to bring about political coherence on Brexit within her party. [...]

In the same way as the referendum of 2016 was the direct result of internal Conservative disorder, that same disorder will make it impossible for Mrs. May’s government to negotiate any Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. It is an as yet unresolved question of British politics whether our Parliamentary system will be able to develop any coherent response to this challenge. If it does not, the UK will inevitably leave the European Union on 29th March 2019 in the most brutal and chaotic circumstances possible. Anarchy within the Conservative Party will have inflicted anarchic confusion on  the United Kingdom’s relations with its most important political and economic partners.

Full article on Federal Trust 

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