Idiot's Guide to Brexit

Boris finally got what he’s been wishing for, but most people think he should have been more careful about that. In Season 2 of Idiot’s guide, I will spare you my bloviating and regurgitating, and instead offer coverage by others that I find illuminating. In  this piece in The American Interest , my friend Michael Mandelbaum offers a lucid appraisal of Boris’s options, concluding that “none of the four paths he can follow is likely to lead to a happy ending, or indeed any ending at all.” And in  this piece in the Guardian,  Johnathan Freedland moans that  “ The leave vote is consolidating before our very eyes, while the remain vote is hopelessly fragmented.” Freedland  pleads with Remainers to form a bloc, “with or without Labour,” to oppose the no-Dealer bloc now crowding around Boris.   Then, there is this email from my friend Julian Huppert, who served as Lib Dem MP for Cambridge during Cameron’s tenure as PM, and who is still much...

We should be campaigning for a different referendum. The first posed a voice between a well-defined policy (remain) and an ill-defined policy (leave). Today! 's no-dealers insist that in 2016, 52% voted "to leave with or without a deal." this is plainly wrong. More nuanced is the claim A 2nd ref is unlikely, becaue it seems undemocratic to ask the same question about policy a 2nd time, though none thinks it undemocratic to ask the same question about who their MP should be a second time. But we shouldn’t be discussing whether it is appropriate to ask @Leave or remain?@ a second time. Most people agree it was a stupid question, because voters could believe that “leave” would mean whatever they hoped (or were told by Boris and co) that it would mean (“cakeism”). New parliamentary elections could be a form of second referendum if the parties staked out clear positions on remain and leave with no deal, since those are the only to realistic options. However, bo...

May’s visit to Brussels on May 12 ended as expected, with EU leaders ignoring her plea for an extension to June 30 (as she knew they would), and offering her the choice between holding elections for the European Parliament on May 23, or crashing out. If the elections happen, then the UK gets an extension until October 31, and the option of leaving sooner if and when Parliament approves a deal acceptable to Brussels.   With this breather, let’s take stock of how the multi-player game of chicken has pllayed out since my first post on February 22. Simply put, every player but one has pulled to the side of the road, shut off his engine, and gone into the pub for a pint – the Hard Brexiteers, the various stripes of Soft Brexiteer, the 2nd Referendees, the Remainers, and of course May and her dwindling cabinet. Only the EU has kept its hands on the wheel and the pedal to the floor. And the reason why is that the EU needs the EU a whole lot more than the EU needs the UK, and a w...

During the last week, Parliament stopped even trying to find a majority for any version of Brexit. Theresa May announced on Tuesday that she was reaching across the aisle to try to agree a solution with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. But to noone’s surprise, it was clear following their meetings on Wednesday and Thursday that the aisle is way too wide for them to reach each other, even if both tried, which neither has. On Friday, May said she would go to Brussels on May 10 to propose that 1) the April 11 Brexit date be postponed again, to June 30;    2) Brexit could happen sooner if something close to Her Deal wins a majority vote in Parliament; and 3) the UK will not participate in the May 23 EU parliamentary elections if a Brexit deal is approved by May 22. This would remove the April 12 cliff date, giving the government and Parliament more time to muddle. But it’s obvious by now that, so long as Parliament refuses to adopt a knock-out voting procedure, the ayes will...

On March 27, the noes had it on 8 different options (May’s Deal not included) that were put to a vote. Second referendum received more than any other, but still lost by 27 votes. Two days later, May put Her Deal (the legal part, but minus the non-binding “political understanding” document that had been appended) to a third vote, and sought to entice support by declaring that she would let someone else take over as Prime Minister if it passed. It lost by a margin of 58. This was not a vote of confidence in May (which is below zero). Rather it was another demonstration that the extremes -- 2 nd  Referendum and Leave With No Deal -- together make a majority against May’s Deal. There will be further attempts on April Fool’s Day to find a majority for one of the options that did well on March 27 (but again excluding May’s Deal). And if a winner emerges, there is then likely to be a runoff between that winner and May’s Deal. Meanwhile on the Continent, Alizee’s 2013 hit  J...

n the days and hours leading up to the vote on May’s deal scheduled for March 19, it looked as if her chickens were finally coming home to roost. Hard Brexiteers were reportedly deserting the barricades and waving white flags to indicate they could hold their nose and support May’s Dea. And some Labour moderates were also looking likely to defy Corbyn’s whip to support May. But the March 19 vote never happened. It was disallowed by the Speaker of the House, John Bercow, who determined that according to a Parliamentary precedent dating back to 1604, the Government cannot submit the same motion to Parliament twice in substantially unchanged form twice. (I comment on the absurdity of this rule at the conclusion of this post.) No-one was more stunned and appalled at Bercow’s manoeuvre than the EU leaders, who had been praying for May’s deal to pass on March 19 so that they could meet her at their summit in Brussels on May 20 to put a final stamp of approval the withdrawal agreeme...