Theresa May 2011. Flickr/FCO. Some rights reserved.Largely
concealed from the electorate during the referendum campaign is the question
that has recently taken the foreground in the post-Brexit debate – the sheer
difficulty of disentangling the UK from the EU, even given the will and the
necessary support.

It actually
suited both Remain and Leave to avoid this knotty problem: Remainers were
trying to make an economic and political case for staying in the EU, so arguing
that extrication is immensely difficult legally and technically is scarcely the
first line of attack. Leavers had little incentive to draw attention to the
sheer complexity and uncertainty of the departure process, which might have
deterred even the most intrepid Brexiteers.

The irony,
of course, is that until the Lisbon Treaty was signed – allowing Tony Blair to
wriggle out of his own promise to hold a referendum on the proposed new EU
constitution, which the Treaty essentially replaced without triggering a UK
vote – there was actually no provision for any country to leave the European
Union.

Even then,
the famous article 50 of the Treaty gave no guidance as to how a departing
member might replace the decades of legal enmeshment in EU laws and rules, let
alone the trading and other relationships that had been established in that
period: there was just a two-year time period for some kind of negotiation,
with a nominal possibility of extension (itself requiring unanimity amongst the
remaining EU members – a rarity at the best of times).

The
post-referendum debate in the UK since June 23 has therefore been profoundly
skewed. The many recriminations – on both sides – have essentially missed the
point, which is that a very large majority of MPs approved the holding of a
referendum where only one of the two possible outcomes had known consequences.
It was as if Parliament had cynically concluded that the British public could
not possibly vote to leave the EU, so it was perfectly acceptable to hold a
vote on that issue without the slightest preparation on the part of the
executive for one of the possible outcomes. A very
large majority of MPs approved the holding of a referendum where only one of
the two possible outcomes had known consequences.

It has
become standard for supporters of Remain to blame the Leave campaigners for
lacking an exit plan. This seems wholly unrealistic: how were a handful of
cabinet ministers and other like-minded people, such as Labour’s Gisela Stuart,
whilst being denied all access to the machinery of government (which was
actually entirely focused on campaigning to Remain), to conjure up a unified
and coherent route-map, when – as we have seen – even a troika of empowered
ministers dedicated to such a task will need at least ten months to come up
with something?

Indeed, it
was virtually irrelevant what the official Leave campaign said during the
referendum: none of their “pledges” was redeemable, and none featured on the
ballot paper. That ballot question, loftily approved by the Electoral
Commission with the overwhelming blessing of the Commons effectively offered a
choice between continuing – indeed, permanent – acceptance of an unpopular
membership, or a leap in the dark. And what both sides of the debate carefully
avoided mentioning, as far as possible, was that the leap could easily turn
into a stumble and even an ignominious pratfall

Post-referendum
perplexity

Having
chosen to leap, the narrow majority of those who chose to vote Leave on June 23
now must feel perplexed by the nature of the post-referendum wrangling.

Can the
Prime Minister legally give notice to the EU of the UK’s intended departure,
under article 50, or does she require Parliamentary approval? Would a simple
resolution to that effect, passed by both chambers, provide the braces to go
with the executive belt? If the government persists with its appeal to the
Supreme Court to overturn a High Court decision that required Parliamentary
approval for triggering article 50, might the original litigants then challenge
a Supreme Court rejection of that decision at the European Court of Justice?

Apart from
the delays thereby caused, the deep irony of requiring EU permission before we
can even commence an exit process will surely confirm Brexiteers in their
determination to escape the tentacles of the EU.

Yet against
this background of previously undeclared procedural resistance, and facing a
solid wall of hostility from the EU27, determined to ensure (at whatever cost
to themselves) that Brexit hurts the UK, the government faces a steady drizzle
of tactical nit-picking that seems oblivious to the stark underlying truth: it
is pointless negotiating amongst ourselves – it is the EU27 who constitute our
negotiating partners/antagonists.

Those who
call for a “soft” Brexit, or an exit that protects workers’ rights (which is
really a matter for domestic legislation, not EU exit negotiation), or
“transitional” arrangements, or an EEA refuge, or recognition of the “needs” of
Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland (or Nissan, for that matter) simply miss
the point. Nothing that we might – with immense difficulty – agree amongst
ourselves as our “negotiating position” will make any difference if either the
EU27 Council (by a qualified majority) or the European Parliament turns down
our proposal. We can have all the red lines that we like, but as soon as we
inform the EU27 that we will no longer, after March 2019, allow free movement
of people, all bets will be off. We can have all
the red lines that we like, but as soon as we inform the EU27 that we will no
longer, after March 2019, allow free movement of people, all bets will be off.

As it
happens, Mrs May could well have in mind some kind of offer to the EU27, to the
effect that its citizens – up to a given limit – could enjoy privileged access
to the categories of desired migrants a future UK government might establish.
Yet the strong indications are that any breach of the free movement principle
will automatically disbar the UK from membership of the single market. Finding
some kind of equilibrium between full access and a WTO-style tariff wall for
trade in goods may prove to be so difficult to achieve that we might as well
reconcile ourselves to WTO tariffs from the start.

The notion
of “transition” is doubly unrealistic. Even one negotiated agreement is likely
to prove beyond reach: the prospect of two is surely a non-starter. Likewise,
the calls for a second referendum – to approve, or not, the terms that the UK
might actually achieve in talks with the EU27 – makes little sense. What would
a “no” majority mean in such a vote? That we exit the EU without an agreement?
That we revert to the status quo ante June 23 (which no longer exists, as the
concessions made by Cameron as part of his February deal would have allowed the
EU27 to make further moves towards integration by 2019)? Indeed, the promise of
a second vote would surely encourage the hardliners amongst the EU27 to make
any deal they offer the UK so unpalatable that it might force Britain back into
Europe on its knees.

It follows
that there is little to be gained from an attempted negotiation with Brussels,
other than considerable ill-feeling on both sides. Indeed, even if the UK were
simply to announce that – as of March 2019 – it would revert to WTO tariffs
with respect to imported EU goods (and accept, by implication, the imposition
of the same tariffs on our EU-bound exports), so by-passing any notion of a
trade “deal”, we would still have a major argument with the EU27 over residual
obligations, such as contributions to pensions (of course, if the EU’s finances
had been honestly managed, all pension obligations for the future should have
been built into each year’s budget – but that’s another story).

“Sorry, we
didn’t mean it”?

What this
tells us is that there is really no difference between a “hard” Brexit and a
“soft” one: because a “soft” option (other than saying “sorry, we didn’t mean
it”) will not be on offer. Nature – and prevailing law – will take its course
on services (the EU might try to damage London as a financial centre, but
almost certainly the only beneficiary, were it to succeed, would be New York,
not Frankfurt, Paris or Milan). We need to face the reality that simply
slogging our way to the finish line will take a great deal of doggedness and
bloody-mindedness.

Meanwhile,
lip service will be paid to all sorts of lobbying and tactical harrying: but
the government has committed itself to getting the UK out of the EU, willy
nilly, and will need to grit its teeth whilst shrugging off all the
nit-pickers. The most honest opponents of Brexit will – as is their right –
continue to argue that June 23 can be reversed in due course: but only after it
has been delivered. Trying to frustrate it, openly or covertly, will – equally
rightly – be resisted by the government, committed as it is to trying to
deliver what the electorate appeared to have voted for: exit, however tricky,
however painful and however hard precisely to define.

And, of
course, the Remoaners amongst the Remainers will never be reconciled. Even
someone as cogent and level-headed as Neal Ascherson recently criticised
Theresa May (in the London Review of Books) for embracing Brexit despite having
argued against it: yet what else was she – and indeed, all the other Tory MPs
who voted Remain – meant to have done? Refuse to serve in any Brexit
government? Even Cameron – before he baled out – had promised to deliver Brexit
if Leave won. Or bring down a narrowly-Brexit government at the first
opportunity, and force an election, in which scores of Tory Remainers would
have been de-selected, and Labour ones replaced with UKIP MPs? Neal even
complained that Mrs May is following “the most damaging” form of Brexit (in his
view), as if she could pick and choose, uncharacteristically failing to
understand that we don’t have a choice of Brexits – only in, or out. We don’t have a choice of Brexits – only in, or out.

The disdain
with which the all-wise Remoaners regard those who voted for Brexit, or are
trying to deliver it (another LRB writer, David Runciman, regards himself and
his ilk as the “grown-ups in the room”), speaks of a permanent divide in the
UK, which will harden over time.

Only when
history overtakes it, decades from now, will Brexit – like Catholic Emancipation,
the Great Reform Bill, Corn Law repeal, Empire preference, Irish Home Rule,
votes for women, capital punishment, legalising homosexuality, abortion law
reform and privatisation – cease to exercise its power to turn friends, family
members and party colleagues against each other.

So be it.
What is harder to forgive is the cynicism with which the EU inserted a “leave
mechanism” in the Lisbon Treaty, fully intending to make it as close to
undeliverable as possible, and the UK government, with the bland assent of
Parliament, offered voters a referendum with only one choice fully mapped out,
and terra incognita as the other. That is the real Brexit scandal.