Sunday, September 23, 2018

Brexit: the best way out for Britain now


The received wisdom at present is that a Brexit ‘deal’ will be scrambled together between Britain and the EU at the last moment because that is how it has always worked in the past.

I still believe that myself - just - on the basis that such a ‘deal’, in reality another face-saving fudge, can be carried over into the transition period to buy time for the desperately placed British prime minister following the rejection of her Chequers plan in Salzburg.

But, after Salzburg, there is an alternative. 
 
If Theresa May goes now or soon, and if Jeremy Corbyn narrowly won an ensuing election, a radical left Labour programme mistrusted by many voters would struggle to remain the priority. The new government would be as bogged down in Brexit as the hopelessly divided Tories. More likely worse.

However, Brexit on the failed Tory lines, and on any of the currently disputed options, would be buried or wide open to review. The new Labour government or, failing that, an ad hoc coalition of some kind, would have to go back to the drawing board.

A fresh start. Not another futile referendum, but a new realism, with 'the will of the people', the mantra that sanctified the 2016 referendum despite its obvious shortcomings, silenced as past its time and unrealisable.

Is it a possibility? Is the leadership there for it?

Back to time-honoured representative government, the bubble of populism popped?