This is a very good and welcome antidote to what is in danger of becoming an accepted, but false, re-writing of the history of what happened 2017-2019. I cover some of the same ground, and made some similar points, in a blog post in December 2020 when that revisionism first began to gain ground: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-problems-with-if-only-debate.html
One point which is in that post, and strongly implied in yours, that needs to be emphasised is that even if the Indicative Votes had yielded a decisive outcome there was no government to enact it - and there would have needed to be, not just for one vote, but for what would then have been the months or years to turn that vote into an agreement. For all that around that time there was talk of a 'National Government', and arguably that would have been a good way forward, there wasn't the tiniest prospect of May and Corbyn (or their parties) creating one, and without their participation none could could have been formed.
Another point, which I don't make in my blog and you don't make in yours, though I do mention it in my book Brexit Unfolded, is that, despite the Lancaster House speech (and I entirely agree with your analysis of that) there was another pivotal moment in which the possibility of soft Brexit was killed off, and that was in May 2018 when the EU Withdrawal Bill was amended in the Lords to require the government to seek EFTA membership. When it came back to the Commons, Corbyn whipped his MPs to reject it. Had he not done so, there's at least the possibility that there would have been enough Tory rebels to pass it (as shown by the 'Amendment 7' rebellion the previous December, which was the reason why May had to hold the 'meaningful votes on the WA, votes which ironically were used by the ERG, who had called Amendment 7 treachery, to scupper May's deal). Of course, even if that had happened it can't be said with certainty that soft Brexit would have happened, but it was certainly possibility.
Hi Chris - thank you for reminding me about the May 2018 Lords amendment, which I had actually, I have to admit, totally forgot about (there was so much chaos going around in that era, it's sometimes easy to forget about even some rather large events). Yes, you are correct - that would have been another chance for Corbyn to have helped get us a soft Brexit. As you say, not for sure, as there would have been ways around it, but there was an opportunity there.
I think when this whole sorry period is fully analysed in full glare of reality, and this laser is coming into full focus, we'll find that it was systemic failure in both main parties that's led to where we are today.
Corbyn the Lexiter, but too cowardly to split the Red Wall trad Labour vote for the metropolitan newer vote, Corbyn the wrecker who was happy to let the Tory government and thus by extension, the country, immolate so he could inherit a Brexit he would quite like but did nothing to deserve, if it meant Tory humiliation at the polls, Corbyn the revolutionary who was as unprincipled and frankly batshit crazy as the Brexit Ultras on the ERG benches. And by extension, McDonnell, Milne etc.
The UKs ultimate curse was not just in having an opportunistic and unprincipled govt, but an opposition that failed at the very first definition of being an opposition, plagued by a leadership equally as sociopathic as the Tories.
Starmer, Milliband (Ed or David), Brown, Blair, Kinnock...do you think any of these would have run the opposition to a Tory Bxt the way Corbyn did. Even Lexiters like Foot and Benn would have run policy differently.
"Starmer, Milliband (Ed or David), Brown, Blair, Kinnock...do you think any of these would have run the opposition to a Tory Bxt the way Corbyn did." - How can we possibly know? They weren't there! Keir Starmer of today would certainly do the same, knowing what he does about the Labour vote in the 2019 GE. Tony Blair probably would have done differently, but he was leader way ahead of all this and would not have known the consequences.
There was also a strong democratic argument for seeking EFTA membership - since we were founding members in 1960, and only left for the superior opportunities in the then EEC. Therefore, if we had to leave the EU, the proper democratic course was to return from whence we came, EFTA.
I am pretty sure that any other ex-EFTA/now-EU member would have secured return to EFTA membership before triggering A50 if they had ever come into the situation to leave.
In other words a return to the situation before EU membership.
Which for many would even imply EEA membership.
None of their governments would be able to get electoral support for returning to the 1950s.
I am always surprised how many seem to cling to the idea that all was still possible in 2019.
The indicative votes were more like a "last stand" effort and woefully uncoordinated for that purpose.
I think the only realistic change to move off the path to hard Brexit has been right after the 2017 election.
With May's majority gone, it would have allowed for a change in government and thus a change in Brexit strategy.
Given the massive consequences of leaving the EU after 40+ years, the most suitable way forward in any other country would have been a "grand coalition" between Tory and Labour parties.
Not only would this have allowed to sideline hardcore positions in either party, it would have resulted in negotiation goals that an actual majority of people would have been OK with. Not ideal but acceptable.
Two problems with the grand coalition idea, beyond the fact that the Tories could govern with the help of the DUP and thus didn't need to resort to such measures: even if the Tories had been say, 10 PMs light and didn't have a majority even with DUP votes, I don't think they would have considered the grand coalition as a possibility. And that's academic anyhow given Corbyn never, ever, ever would have considered it (he wouldn't even vote for May's deal when it was very close to what he wanted himself, would have got him out of the second referendum hole he was in and further, would have destroyed the Conservative party. Given that, it's impossible to see him having ever formed a government with the Tories).
As I said, other countries might have gone down that path but it was never a realistic option for the UK.
Neither party nor their respective leader would have been capable of even thinking about it, let alone doing it.
I was mostly theorizing on what would have potentially resulted in the best outcome for the country. A broad consensus based approach to existing the EU instead of following an increasingly extremist course
I'm afraid it was the worst of times, and I freely admit, as a normally cautious, risk averse citizen, I was somewhat caught up in the whole fervour.
The combination of a leader who bailed the moment the Leave vote was confirmed, one of the biggest acts of political cowardice you'll ever see, followed by the usual Tory random bad luck outcome (see Liz Truss, but in 2016, foisting Theresa May on us), our new PM not believing in Brexit (she was resolutely in Remain camp) but who all the same had an almost xenophobic hate of migration here especially via Free Movement, Article 15 fired before we had any national conversation about what type of Bxt we wanted, the double jeopardy of Lexiter/don't ask me to help Jeremy Corbyn (who would have fired A. 15 on day one if he could), and the almost feral kinetic energy of Farage, aided by the tabloids, ongoing losses in local elections, debacles for Conservatives at European elections, and a House Of Commons literally resembling an asylum full of patients with Tourettes, and greater and greater froth amongst British citizens as we saw the literal disorganisation of the UK bargaining proceedure, most aptly illustrated by the photo of Barnier plus assistant on one side of desk loaded with documents and briefing papers, and on our side, Brexiteer "par excellence" David Davis plus dogsbody, armed with, well, nothing at all, not even a notepad and pen, just his list of pithy quotes "We'll have a better deal outside the Single Market and Customs Union/German carmakers will come to the rescue of Bxt" yada yada.
Put that all in a pot, bring the temperature up, stir a lot, take your eye off the cooker, and come back to your stew all over the cooker and floor.
That's the toxic frankly cosmically black comic set of circumstances that set our course.
And of course Alexander Boris De Pffefel Johnson as the magic last minute ingredient...
Despite my feeling of agency during this period, and not one British citizen, Leave or Remain, not talking about anything else during this period, I don't think I'll ever be party as a citizen to a more humiliating act of national self harm, not so much Bxt itself, but the inability of the British political structure to cope in any meaningful way.
I agree with Nick that in retrospect Remainers have zero to apologise over. This was Conservative bloodletting and psychodrama writ large, just exacerbated by the most useless oposition, the blame for which doesn't rest with Starmer, but 100% with Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne etc.
You can always debate what might have been, if 'what if' scenarios had been pursued... But the political circumstances meant it was always incredibly unlikely that Remainers could have got a different outcome.
I suppose for me the argument comes down to this: if we had a functional political system, then yes, a compromise softer Brexit might have been possible. But we didn't (and still don't). And if we had a functional political system we would probably never have had the circumstances that lead to the holding of the 2016 referendum in the first place - or the losing of it.
For a few weeks after the Referendum result shocked not only Remainers and sensible people (because Leave was a populist campaign based on lies, and that spreading wide is bad for a democratic country), but even Leavers, in the position of dog-caught-the-car-now-what; I hoped that British politicans with decades/centuries of political saviness to draw from, would institute a cross-party council/group that would spend the next 3-5 years developing the 3-5 possible routes of Brexit: soft Brexit like Norway, special model like Swiss, hard Brexit like Canada - not campaign promises, but experts modelling real life.
The prime minister could point to this group working very hard and say "but the will of the people is being done, this stuff is complex, wouldn't want to mess it up and cause harm" - then, when detailled analysis came back, put those to Parliament, and when no option got clear majority "Well, very sorry, but apparently nobody knows which type of Brexit exactly they want, so let's rest this for 5 years and come back after next elections".
That's not just what political mastermind Vetinari would have done, but what any halfway competent politican should know to do, delay impossible stuff until it peters out.
Instead, after the instigator of this mess fled, nobody sane in Tory party wanted to touch this hot potatoe, showing that they knew enough to know they couldn't make this work, which left May to push forward, blinded by her greed to get power to believe she was capable enough of delivering instead of realizing it was impossible (which Johnson then simply repeated).
Jonathan, Brexit could only have "worked" if there had been an ongoing dialog.
Had the Swiss been in the EU and decided they wanted to consider SwExit, a whole parliament's time would have been devoted to thrashing out ideas, not 6 weeks rushed propaganda campaigns from both Remain and Leave camps. If a Leave proposing party had been elected, the next parliament would have been devoted to choosing the preliminary deal the government would have negotiated on the basis of, and only then would A. 15 have been fired.
And then cross party consensus (government of national unity type) to then get a deal.
Yes, a process lasting a decade. But in relation to how critical the EU is in our lives, a decade sounds right.
Organised and sober Switzerland ironically could have managed this, and maybe some of the more collegiate social democratic led nations in EU (where opposition parties could act for the national interest).
But the UK could never have contemplated this.
Ironically we were the country with most issues re EU membership, the ones most likely to choose to Leave, yet the worst prepared country to actually get it done in any civilised and practical way.
Yes. I don't think government in the UK is really capable of working that way. Because of "first past the post" any kind of coalition government is unusual in the UK, the recent Lib Dem/Conservative coalition of 2010 when Cameron did not win enough seats to form a government alone, and the Labour/Liberal government of 1976 when Labour lost its majority during the course of that parliament are the only recent examples of any kind of coalition government, whereas for most EU countries with proportional voting systems, some kind of deal within parties is usual after most elections.
The only example I can think of where we had a National government of the type you mention here was during the second world war, where a National Government was formed, and the inclusion of Labour ministers in that government had something to do with the creation of the Welfare state and NHS that happened after Clement Atlee's Labour government came into power in the election just after the Second World War.
I'm obviously alone here in making this specific distinction. The ERG Brexit Ultras are not primarily driven by immigration, for them it's the existential battle against the EU superstate and mission creep, exemplified by Maastricht and Lisbon, and ignited by Thatcher's major euroskeptic speech made in Bruges in late 80s. For them, this marked the EEC moving from what they considered a purely trade organisation which Thatcher benefitted from to the overt "ever greater union" approach, the Social Chapter, and greater French influence from neo liberal British ideas to more of a regulation model.
When Thatcher was effectively deposed, initiated by Geoffrey Howe's stabbing in the Commons directly mentioning her hobbling the UK in Europe, the current schism in the Tory party started, fermenting over 25 years to the referendum.
So unlike other EU members, UK has always had a deep philisophical strand of non membership/independence, from the socialist Left in the Labour Party pretty much all the way from the war to end with Kinnock in the mid 80s moving Labour europhile, and the Bruges Group of Tories from 90s onwards, both takes fusing thru the uber populist Farage who represented Rightist and Leftist takes (RedKIP and Lexiter). Yes, Farage could be described as a racist, and used some racist tropes over time and in the campaign, and some Brits voted on racist lines. But many also voted against EU superstate/ever closer union mission creep, and simply as a populist reaction against distant and diffident EU machinations and governance.
My take is that it was a vote to Take Back Control from Brussels...and also British elites/London/Whitehall. It was an all round vote of anger and frustration with the whole secretive globalised model of governance, yes mainly anti Brussels, but also our top heavy clunky British model of doing things.
That's why Starmer's proposed ideas to devolve from London/Whitehall to local democracy could chime with Brits at the GE, and actually represent the first divergence from the past that might not happen had we not Left the EU.
Yes, plenty of Brits voted to keep Roumanians out. But plenty also voted because for one time only they had a voice to say they disapproved of globalist and distant government.
I can understand why you'd feel that way, but I believe it's too simplistic. Maybe this is a European versus British perspective.
Tell me something. France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Hungary are full of racists if voting patterns for Front Nationale, AfD, Sweden Democrats, PiS, Fidesz, are anything to go by.
Are you saying Britain is a more racist country than these because we voted to Leave, and these countries likely wouldn't? Because my analysis would be different.
Tbh I'd quite like Nick to chip in on this. I contend that it's too lazy to blame Leave on racism.
I would say that the anti-immigrant sections are pretty comparable across countries.
The difference is in my opinion more likely that the anti-EU faction in the UK is much more aggressive and hard line than elsewhere.
In other countries they are opposed to certain aspects of EU membership but which aspect varies between countries.
Additional to these classic Eurosceptics the UK has also a strong group of Europhobes who would rather see the EU destroyed than any shortcomings to be fixed.
Over decades they have "poisoned the well" and painted the EU as the source of the UK's problems.
In regard to the anti-immigrant voters they managed to make them believe that the EU somehow had created "uncontrolled mass immigration".
This made them essentially a part of the anti-EU faction, furthering their agenda instead of merely being a separate source for populists to draw upon.
The populists elsewhere could therefore easily drop their anti-EU support without losing the anti-immigrant voters.
Well that goes back to A.15 being fired within months, way too early. Corbyn effectively wanted to fire it even earlier. I'm afraid from this premature action sprung lack of preparedness. And nothing can justify that, even any mood of discontent in the country.
Normally I look forward to reading this blog with the same eagerness I had for my weekly copy of 'Look & Learn' c. 1963. But this one has me scratching my head. Assuming this is about the meaningful votes of 2019? Theresa May's problem then was not that Labour voted against her, it was that 115 members of her own party did. Just think about that. If Labour had helped her through, how would she have presented that to the country? She whittled the rebels down to 34 on the third attempt. With half of them plus the DUP who were supposedly on a promise, May still could have got the deal. Sure, Labour opposed the deal. So did the SNP. So did the LibDems. So did the Independents. So did the Greens. The Opposition opposed.
Hi David - to be clear, I'm not being critical of Corbyn for opposing May's deal per se. As you mentioned, the Opposition opposed, fair enough. I personally didn't want Corbyn to vote for May's deal myself since I thought it would have landed the country in a terrible place that would have been even hard to get out of that the Johnson Brexit we have now.
However, there is a myth that persists in pro-Corbyn circles to this day that somehow we ended up with a hard Brexit because the Lib Dems or whoever wouldn't unite behind one thing (this is the indicative votes argument) when that simply is not the case for several of the reasons I lay out in the article.
I have seen Conservative comments that the Lancaster House speech was primarily driven/written by Mays Brexiteer advisor, Nick Timothy (now a regular Telegraph contributor). A further ancillary, but usually overlooked, point is May's health - as a severe diabetic who requires several insulin injections per day. It's quite easy to see how she might have been bullied into such a bizarre and damaging speech.
Could May's precarious health have been a crucial factor in determining our medium term economic and geopolitical future ?
Had Corbyn backed May’s deal it would have destroyed the Conservative party - but it would have destroyed Labour too, because they would have become the facilitators of Brexit and been wiped out among voters under 50
I don't think so. Some people are fond of castigating Starmer for voting through Conservative Brexit deals, and say they think he'll get the blame for this. But Starmer is the Leader of the Opposition. People blame governments for the things that happen while they are in charge. They do this even if something economic happens that isn't that government's fault (see a decade and a half now of the successful use by the Conservatives of blaming Gordon Brown for the problems in the UK caused by the global market crash which began with dodgy decision by US banks to loan people money they couldn't really afford to pay back)
I mean, I'm something of a politics junkie, and even right now I'm a little hazy on exactly *which* vote it was that Starmer supported the government on that causes critics to suggest that Starmer is "as guilty" about Brexit as Johnson or May because he voted government policy through that time.
Plus, I also don't buy the idea that "voters under 50" are a solid block of hardline remainers, or that all of them will allow the best to be the enemy of the good, by being so incensed with a Corbyn leadership that voted with May that they'd prefer a true-believing hardline Brexit Tory government over an imperfect Labour government that they are angry with over this one issue, but that otherwise they would prefer.
I love Nick's blog, Chris Grey and Gerhard Schnyder blogs as well, but a big weakness is the overemphasis that immigration was the only driver for the Leave vote, and that Leave Remain consituencies are amorphous blocs.
Eg did you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, but more Scots as a whole voted Leave as voted SNP (as fervent a Remain Rejoin party as you'll find) at the last GE.
Effectively only London, the major university towns and cities, voted Remain clearly, and there are plenty of 50+ in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast etc.
There were big constituencies of 18-24 and Class AB/City types that voted Leave. I know many pensioners who voted Remain. Many immigrants themselves voted Leave.
Bxt imho defies easy demographic analysis, simply boiling it down to old white racist gammons takes one further away from finding ways forward, forging new pro Rejoin/move to Soft Bxt alliances.
As a former "Leave adjacent" type who has rationalised my view to somewhere different, I don't fit the easy box that Chris, Nick and Gerhard would like to put me in, and I'm one of many.
While I haven't done a detailed analysis of the different type of Leave voters (though Chris Grey did attempt early on, using what available data there was, not just form normal polls but in-depth questions), what little I saw not just of Leave campaign itself, but also the facepalm-worthy idiots interviewed on the street: Leavers were people who choose to believe populists lies, and did not care enough to get information from experts, but also didn't want to sit the election out (which is the responsible thing to do if you don't have enough facts).
They also choose to ally themselves with Farage's openly racist lies, like Leave campaign themselves.
If you ally yourself with racists; if you follow populists using lies and don't bother to find out facts and reality - then you are at least a latent racist.
Because denying facts, denying reality, and choosing to believe what feels good vs. what is true - that is the basis for racism, along with several other bad ideologies.
If it wasn't about immigration = racism, why has the rift between Leavers and Remainers not healed in the years between? Scientists can with a high amount of accuracy predict either whether a person is Leaver or Remainer based on how they answer other questions, eg Covid response, or predict being Covid-denier because they voted Leave: it's the same mind-set of denying facts when that makes them feel bad.
Thanks Nick, although I'm inclined to agree, I wouldn't be so certain that an indicative vote in favour of Single Market & Customs Union membership wouldn't have generated momentum for a different outcome. It would have come down to the politics, and it's probably not very likely that a May minority government with Labour (perhaps Labour rebel) support would have legislated for it...
That said, I certainly don't agree that opponents of a hard / hardest Brexit are to blame for not voting for the SM option. It certainly isn't clear or obvious that doing so would actually have helped us get there, given the political realities that you talk about, and it may have harmed efforts to get another referendum. Which, whether you think would have been a good idea or not, wasn't an obviously unattainable goal (or no more so than any other outcome).
On that note, I would like to hear more about why you think the Lib Dems were foolish to soft-pedal on their committment to revote Article 50 if they'd won the 2019 General Election. Arguably it may have helped the party to have gone 'all-in', but putting party fortunes to one side, wouldn't the outcome for the country have been similar to a new referendum rejecting Brexit after all? I suppose you could argue that the Lib Dems winning a General Election really would have required - and demonstrated - a sea change in public opinion, but there would still have a been a very large populist opposition.
I have been thinking a lot of until when Remain was still a viable option.
Obviously before triggering Article 50 but maybe also still a certain period afterwards.
Sure, legally it would have been possible until the end, with the surprise decision of the ECJ that the UK could unilaterally revoke its notification to leave.
However, given the increased hostility toward the EU and individual members and the almost industrial grade burning of bridges by UK government officials, I have to question at which point it became a political no-go in the wider European context.
I think the so-called second referendum killed itself by proposing to have "Remain" as one of the options. Instead it should have been a decision between accepting the negotiated deal or asking for an extension to work on something better.
Holding on to Remain as an option allowed Johnson to frame the 2019 election as a "Take it or leave it" decision.
The last missed opportunity to steer towards a more reasonable form of Brexit
Having now read Chris Grey's blog post of 9th December 2020 that he links to above, I think that answers with my question to Nick as to why he is so sure that nothing could have come from an indicative vote for a softer Brexit deal.
I still don't agree him on a second referendum though. I think he's right that it could have intensified the Brexit culture war, but I don't think any course of action could have avoided it. While no means certain that 'Remain' would have won a second referendum, a victory - especially a decisive one - could have rejuvinated the sane wing of the Tory party and created the economic foundations to begin the fightback against populism. Still a lot of 'what ifs', I admit, and it's true that it could have made things worse still.
I think that 'Remain' had to be an option in the referendum, had one been held. If the original referendum had explicitly been on the principle of the Brexit with the promise of a further referendum on whatever was subsequently negotiated then I'd agree that there'd have been no need to offer Remain as a result. But the Leave campaign blew any legitimacy they had by offering all things to all people. Part of the justification for offering 'Actually, let's Remain after all' in a second referendum was to offer the country a way out of the otherwise never-ending process of trying to reconcile the impossible in a deal that wasn't incredibly damaging.
It was up to Leavers to offer an attractive deal. If they couldn't do so, that was their problem. There was no responsibility on Remainers to help them keep the impossible promises they'd made. I think it would have been entirely right to have offered the country the only two possible outcomes: remain (plus some degree of culture war) or the Brexit deal as negotiated by the Leavers (with all the broken promises that would entail and... some degree of culture war).
I fully agree with you and Nick that it was not and still is not the Remainers' responsibility to help the Leave side to achieve their unattainable goals.
And that it would have been much better if the primary referendum already had a clear picture of what leaving would actually entail.
However I can see how Remain could have been a viable option on a follow-up referendum potentially as late as 2020 (assuming a Labour victory in Dec 2019 and the new government almost immediately revoking Article 50).
Legally sure. It is a new parliament and not bound to decisions made by the previous ones and the ECJ had ruled that the UK could revoke unilaterally.
But consider the situation beyond just the internal UK fall out.
After over three years of insulting the EU and its members, the UK would have faced an unprecedented uphill struggle in union matters, both in Brussels and at home.
Any opposition decisions that do not require unanimity would have likely been ignored, after all the UK could always just leave if it felt cooperation wasn't worth staying.
Which leaves the government in a situation were they can't use "victory in Brussels" to appease their Leavers. At a time when they had just seen their holy grail taken from them.
Essentially creating a "hard Remain" environment.
Given that Leavers are much more vocal and aggressive, not shying away from labeling anything not going their way as betrayal, treason or worse, I don't quite see how such a theoretical pro-EU Labour government could have prevailed.
This is a very good and welcome antidote to what is in danger of becoming an accepted, but false, re-writing of the history of what happened 2017-2019. I cover some of the same ground, and made some similar points, in a blog post in December 2020 when that revisionism first began to gain ground: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-problems-with-if-only-debate.html
One point which is in that post, and strongly implied in yours, that needs to be emphasised is that even if the Indicative Votes had yielded a decisive outcome there was no government to enact it - and there would have needed to be, not just for one vote, but for what would then have been the months or years to turn that vote into an agreement. For all that around that time there was talk of a 'National Government', and arguably that would have been a good way forward, there wasn't the tiniest prospect of May and Corbyn (or their parties) creating one, and without their participation none could could have been formed.
Another point, which I don't make in my blog and you don't make in yours, though I do mention it in my book Brexit Unfolded, is that, despite the Lancaster House speech (and I entirely agree with your analysis of that) there was another pivotal moment in which the possibility of soft Brexit was killed off, and that was in May 2018 when the EU Withdrawal Bill was amended in the Lords to require the government to seek EFTA membership. When it came back to the Commons, Corbyn whipped his MPs to reject it. Had he not done so, there's at least the possibility that there would have been enough Tory rebels to pass it (as shown by the 'Amendment 7' rebellion the previous December, which was the reason why May had to hold the 'meaningful votes on the WA, votes which ironically were used by the ERG, who had called Amendment 7 treachery, to scupper May's deal). Of course, even if that had happened it can't be said with certainty that soft Brexit would have happened, but it was certainly possibility.
Hi Chris - thank you for reminding me about the May 2018 Lords amendment, which I had actually, I have to admit, totally forgot about (there was so much chaos going around in that era, it's sometimes easy to forget about even some rather large events). Yes, you are correct - that would have been another chance for Corbyn to have helped get us a soft Brexit. As you say, not for sure, as there would have been ways around it, but there was an opportunity there.
I think when this whole sorry period is fully analysed in full glare of reality, and this laser is coming into full focus, we'll find that it was systemic failure in both main parties that's led to where we are today.
Corbyn the Lexiter, but too cowardly to split the Red Wall trad Labour vote for the metropolitan newer vote, Corbyn the wrecker who was happy to let the Tory government and thus by extension, the country, immolate so he could inherit a Brexit he would quite like but did nothing to deserve, if it meant Tory humiliation at the polls, Corbyn the revolutionary who was as unprincipled and frankly batshit crazy as the Brexit Ultras on the ERG benches. And by extension, McDonnell, Milne etc.
The UKs ultimate curse was not just in having an opportunistic and unprincipled govt, but an opposition that failed at the very first definition of being an opposition, plagued by a leadership equally as sociopathic as the Tories.
Starmer, Milliband (Ed or David), Brown, Blair, Kinnock...do you think any of these would have run the opposition to a Tory Bxt the way Corbyn did. Even Lexiters like Foot and Benn would have run policy differently.
"Starmer, Milliband (Ed or David), Brown, Blair, Kinnock...do you think any of these would have run the opposition to a Tory Bxt the way Corbyn did." - How can we possibly know? They weren't there! Keir Starmer of today would certainly do the same, knowing what he does about the Labour vote in the 2019 GE. Tony Blair probably would have done differently, but he was leader way ahead of all this and would not have known the consequences.
There was also a strong democratic argument for seeking EFTA membership - since we were founding members in 1960, and only left for the superior opportunities in the then EEC. Therefore, if we had to leave the EU, the proper democratic course was to return from whence we came, EFTA.
Indeed.
I am pretty sure that any other ex-EFTA/now-EU member would have secured return to EFTA membership before triggering A50 if they had ever come into the situation to leave.
In other words a return to the situation before EU membership.
Which for many would even imply EEA membership.
None of their governments would be able to get electoral support for returning to the 1950s.
Absolutely preposterous EFTA return never happened.
Very good analysis!
I am always surprised how many seem to cling to the idea that all was still possible in 2019.
The indicative votes were more like a "last stand" effort and woefully uncoordinated for that purpose.
I think the only realistic change to move off the path to hard Brexit has been right after the 2017 election.
With May's majority gone, it would have allowed for a change in government and thus a change in Brexit strategy.
Given the massive consequences of leaving the EU after 40+ years, the most suitable way forward in any other country would have been a "grand coalition" between Tory and Labour parties.
Not only would this have allowed to sideline hardcore positions in either party, it would have resulted in negotiation goals that an actual majority of people would have been OK with. Not ideal but acceptable.
Two problems with the grand coalition idea, beyond the fact that the Tories could govern with the help of the DUP and thus didn't need to resort to such measures: even if the Tories had been say, 10 PMs light and didn't have a majority even with DUP votes, I don't think they would have considered the grand coalition as a possibility. And that's academic anyhow given Corbyn never, ever, ever would have considered it (he wouldn't even vote for May's deal when it was very close to what he wanted himself, would have got him out of the second referendum hole he was in and further, would have destroyed the Conservative party. Given that, it's impossible to see him having ever formed a government with the Tories).
I absolutely agree.
As I said, other countries might have gone down that path but it was never a realistic option for the UK.
Neither party nor their respective leader would have been capable of even thinking about it, let alone doing it.
I was mostly theorizing on what would have potentially resulted in the best outcome for the country. A broad consensus based approach to existing the EU instead of following an increasingly extremist course
I'm afraid it was the worst of times, and I freely admit, as a normally cautious, risk averse citizen, I was somewhat caught up in the whole fervour.
The combination of a leader who bailed the moment the Leave vote was confirmed, one of the biggest acts of political cowardice you'll ever see, followed by the usual Tory random bad luck outcome (see Liz Truss, but in 2016, foisting Theresa May on us), our new PM not believing in Brexit (she was resolutely in Remain camp) but who all the same had an almost xenophobic hate of migration here especially via Free Movement, Article 15 fired before we had any national conversation about what type of Bxt we wanted, the double jeopardy of Lexiter/don't ask me to help Jeremy Corbyn (who would have fired A. 15 on day one if he could), and the almost feral kinetic energy of Farage, aided by the tabloids, ongoing losses in local elections, debacles for Conservatives at European elections, and a House Of Commons literally resembling an asylum full of patients with Tourettes, and greater and greater froth amongst British citizens as we saw the literal disorganisation of the UK bargaining proceedure, most aptly illustrated by the photo of Barnier plus assistant on one side of desk loaded with documents and briefing papers, and on our side, Brexiteer "par excellence" David Davis plus dogsbody, armed with, well, nothing at all, not even a notepad and pen, just his list of pithy quotes "We'll have a better deal outside the Single Market and Customs Union/German carmakers will come to the rescue of Bxt" yada yada.
Put that all in a pot, bring the temperature up, stir a lot, take your eye off the cooker, and come back to your stew all over the cooker and floor.
That's the toxic frankly cosmically black comic set of circumstances that set our course.
And of course Alexander Boris De Pffefel Johnson as the magic last minute ingredient...
Despite my feeling of agency during this period, and not one British citizen, Leave or Remain, not talking about anything else during this period, I don't think I'll ever be party as a citizen to a more humiliating act of national self harm, not so much Bxt itself, but the inability of the British political structure to cope in any meaningful way.
I agree with Nick that in retrospect Remainers have zero to apologise over. This was Conservative bloodletting and psychodrama writ large, just exacerbated by the most useless oposition, the blame for which doesn't rest with Starmer, but 100% with Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne etc.
Well said.
You can always debate what might have been, if 'what if' scenarios had been pursued... But the political circumstances meant it was always incredibly unlikely that Remainers could have got a different outcome.
I suppose for me the argument comes down to this: if we had a functional political system, then yes, a compromise softer Brexit might have been possible. But we didn't (and still don't). And if we had a functional political system we would probably never have had the circumstances that lead to the holding of the 2016 referendum in the first place - or the losing of it.
For a few weeks after the Referendum result shocked not only Remainers and sensible people (because Leave was a populist campaign based on lies, and that spreading wide is bad for a democratic country), but even Leavers, in the position of dog-caught-the-car-now-what; I hoped that British politicans with decades/centuries of political saviness to draw from, would institute a cross-party council/group that would spend the next 3-5 years developing the 3-5 possible routes of Brexit: soft Brexit like Norway, special model like Swiss, hard Brexit like Canada - not campaign promises, but experts modelling real life.
The prime minister could point to this group working very hard and say "but the will of the people is being done, this stuff is complex, wouldn't want to mess it up and cause harm" - then, when detailled analysis came back, put those to Parliament, and when no option got clear majority "Well, very sorry, but apparently nobody knows which type of Brexit exactly they want, so let's rest this for 5 years and come back after next elections".
That's not just what political mastermind Vetinari would have done, but what any halfway competent politican should know to do, delay impossible stuff until it peters out.
Instead, after the instigator of this mess fled, nobody sane in Tory party wanted to touch this hot potatoe, showing that they knew enough to know they couldn't make this work, which left May to push forward, blinded by her greed to get power to believe she was capable enough of delivering instead of realizing it was impossible (which Johnson then simply repeated).
Jonathan, Brexit could only have "worked" if there had been an ongoing dialog.
Had the Swiss been in the EU and decided they wanted to consider SwExit, a whole parliament's time would have been devoted to thrashing out ideas, not 6 weeks rushed propaganda campaigns from both Remain and Leave camps. If a Leave proposing party had been elected, the next parliament would have been devoted to choosing the preliminary deal the government would have negotiated on the basis of, and only then would A. 15 have been fired.
And then cross party consensus (government of national unity type) to then get a deal.
Yes, a process lasting a decade. But in relation to how critical the EU is in our lives, a decade sounds right.
Organised and sober Switzerland ironically could have managed this, and maybe some of the more collegiate social democratic led nations in EU (where opposition parties could act for the national interest).
But the UK could never have contemplated this.
Ironically we were the country with most issues re EU membership, the ones most likely to choose to Leave, yet the worst prepared country to actually get it done in any civilised and practical way.
Yes. I don't think government in the UK is really capable of working that way. Because of "first past the post" any kind of coalition government is unusual in the UK, the recent Lib Dem/Conservative coalition of 2010 when Cameron did not win enough seats to form a government alone, and the Labour/Liberal government of 1976 when Labour lost its majority during the course of that parliament are the only recent examples of any kind of coalition government, whereas for most EU countries with proportional voting systems, some kind of deal within parties is usual after most elections.
The only example I can think of where we had a National government of the type you mention here was during the second world war, where a National Government was formed, and the inclusion of Labour ministers in that government had something to do with the creation of the Welfare state and NHS that happened after Clement Atlee's Labour government came into power in the election just after the Second World War.
I'm obviously alone here in making this specific distinction. The ERG Brexit Ultras are not primarily driven by immigration, for them it's the existential battle against the EU superstate and mission creep, exemplified by Maastricht and Lisbon, and ignited by Thatcher's major euroskeptic speech made in Bruges in late 80s. For them, this marked the EEC moving from what they considered a purely trade organisation which Thatcher benefitted from to the overt "ever greater union" approach, the Social Chapter, and greater French influence from neo liberal British ideas to more of a regulation model.
When Thatcher was effectively deposed, initiated by Geoffrey Howe's stabbing in the Commons directly mentioning her hobbling the UK in Europe, the current schism in the Tory party started, fermenting over 25 years to the referendum.
So unlike other EU members, UK has always had a deep philisophical strand of non membership/independence, from the socialist Left in the Labour Party pretty much all the way from the war to end with Kinnock in the mid 80s moving Labour europhile, and the Bruges Group of Tories from 90s onwards, both takes fusing thru the uber populist Farage who represented Rightist and Leftist takes (RedKIP and Lexiter). Yes, Farage could be described as a racist, and used some racist tropes over time and in the campaign, and some Brits voted on racist lines. But many also voted against EU superstate/ever closer union mission creep, and simply as a populist reaction against distant and diffident EU machinations and governance.
My take is that it was a vote to Take Back Control from Brussels...and also British elites/London/Whitehall. It was an all round vote of anger and frustration with the whole secretive globalised model of governance, yes mainly anti Brussels, but also our top heavy clunky British model of doing things.
That's why Starmer's proposed ideas to devolve from London/Whitehall to local democracy could chime with Brits at the GE, and actually represent the first divergence from the past that might not happen had we not Left the EU.
Yes, plenty of Brits voted to keep Roumanians out. But plenty also voted because for one time only they had a voice to say they disapproved of globalist and distant government.
I can understand why you'd feel that way, but I believe it's too simplistic. Maybe this is a European versus British perspective.
Tell me something. France, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Hungary are full of racists if voting patterns for Front Nationale, AfD, Sweden Democrats, PiS, Fidesz, are anything to go by.
Are you saying Britain is a more racist country than these because we voted to Leave, and these countries likely wouldn't? Because my analysis would be different.
Tbh I'd quite like Nick to chip in on this. I contend that it's too lazy to blame Leave on racism.
I would say that the anti-immigrant sections are pretty comparable across countries.
The difference is in my opinion more likely that the anti-EU faction in the UK is much more aggressive and hard line than elsewhere.
In other countries they are opposed to certain aspects of EU membership but which aspect varies between countries.
Additional to these classic Eurosceptics the UK has also a strong group of Europhobes who would rather see the EU destroyed than any shortcomings to be fixed.
Over decades they have "poisoned the well" and painted the EU as the source of the UK's problems.
In regard to the anti-immigrant voters they managed to make them believe that the EU somehow had created "uncontrolled mass immigration".
This made them essentially a part of the anti-EU faction, furthering their agenda instead of merely being a separate source for populists to draw upon.
The populists elsewhere could therefore easily drop their anti-EU support without losing the anti-immigrant voters.
Well that goes back to A.15 being fired within months, way too early. Corbyn effectively wanted to fire it even earlier. I'm afraid from this premature action sprung lack of preparedness. And nothing can justify that, even any mood of discontent in the country.
Normally I look forward to reading this blog with the same eagerness I had for my weekly copy of 'Look & Learn' c. 1963. But this one has me scratching my head. Assuming this is about the meaningful votes of 2019? Theresa May's problem then was not that Labour voted against her, it was that 115 members of her own party did. Just think about that. If Labour had helped her through, how would she have presented that to the country? She whittled the rebels down to 34 on the third attempt. With half of them plus the DUP who were supposedly on a promise, May still could have got the deal. Sure, Labour opposed the deal. So did the SNP. So did the LibDems. So did the Independents. So did the Greens. The Opposition opposed.
Hi David - to be clear, I'm not being critical of Corbyn for opposing May's deal per se. As you mentioned, the Opposition opposed, fair enough. I personally didn't want Corbyn to vote for May's deal myself since I thought it would have landed the country in a terrible place that would have been even hard to get out of that the Johnson Brexit we have now.
However, there is a myth that persists in pro-Corbyn circles to this day that somehow we ended up with a hard Brexit because the Lib Dems or whoever wouldn't unite behind one thing (this is the indicative votes argument) when that simply is not the case for several of the reasons I lay out in the article.
I have seen Conservative comments that the Lancaster House speech was primarily driven/written by Mays Brexiteer advisor, Nick Timothy (now a regular Telegraph contributor). A further ancillary, but usually overlooked, point is May's health - as a severe diabetic who requires several insulin injections per day. It's quite easy to see how she might have been bullied into such a bizarre and damaging speech.
Could May's precarious health have been a crucial factor in determining our medium term economic and geopolitical future ?
Had Corbyn backed May’s deal it would have destroyed the Conservative party - but it would have destroyed Labour too, because they would have become the facilitators of Brexit and been wiped out among voters under 50
I don't think so. Some people are fond of castigating Starmer for voting through Conservative Brexit deals, and say they think he'll get the blame for this. But Starmer is the Leader of the Opposition. People blame governments for the things that happen while they are in charge. They do this even if something economic happens that isn't that government's fault (see a decade and a half now of the successful use by the Conservatives of blaming Gordon Brown for the problems in the UK caused by the global market crash which began with dodgy decision by US banks to loan people money they couldn't really afford to pay back)
I mean, I'm something of a politics junkie, and even right now I'm a little hazy on exactly *which* vote it was that Starmer supported the government on that causes critics to suggest that Starmer is "as guilty" about Brexit as Johnson or May because he voted government policy through that time.
Plus, I also don't buy the idea that "voters under 50" are a solid block of hardline remainers, or that all of them will allow the best to be the enemy of the good, by being so incensed with a Corbyn leadership that voted with May that they'd prefer a true-believing hardline Brexit Tory government over an imperfect Labour government that they are angry with over this one issue, but that otherwise they would prefer.
I love Nick's blog, Chris Grey and Gerhard Schnyder blogs as well, but a big weakness is the overemphasis that immigration was the only driver for the Leave vote, and that Leave Remain consituencies are amorphous blocs.
Eg did you know, and correct me if I'm wrong, but more Scots as a whole voted Leave as voted SNP (as fervent a Remain Rejoin party as you'll find) at the last GE.
Effectively only London, the major university towns and cities, voted Remain clearly, and there are plenty of 50+ in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast etc.
There were big constituencies of 18-24 and Class AB/City types that voted Leave. I know many pensioners who voted Remain. Many immigrants themselves voted Leave.
Bxt imho defies easy demographic analysis, simply boiling it down to old white racist gammons takes one further away from finding ways forward, forging new pro Rejoin/move to Soft Bxt alliances.
As a former "Leave adjacent" type who has rationalised my view to somewhere different, I don't fit the easy box that Chris, Nick and Gerhard would like to put me in, and I'm one of many.
While I haven't done a detailed analysis of the different type of Leave voters (though Chris Grey did attempt early on, using what available data there was, not just form normal polls but in-depth questions), what little I saw not just of Leave campaign itself, but also the facepalm-worthy idiots interviewed on the street: Leavers were people who choose to believe populists lies, and did not care enough to get information from experts, but also didn't want to sit the election out (which is the responsible thing to do if you don't have enough facts).
They also choose to ally themselves with Farage's openly racist lies, like Leave campaign themselves.
If you ally yourself with racists; if you follow populists using lies and don't bother to find out facts and reality - then you are at least a latent racist.
Because denying facts, denying reality, and choosing to believe what feels good vs. what is true - that is the basis for racism, along with several other bad ideologies.
If it wasn't about immigration = racism, why has the rift between Leavers and Remainers not healed in the years between? Scientists can with a high amount of accuracy predict either whether a person is Leaver or Remainer based on how they answer other questions, eg Covid response, or predict being Covid-denier because they voted Leave: it's the same mind-set of denying facts when that makes them feel bad.
Thanks Nick, although I'm inclined to agree, I wouldn't be so certain that an indicative vote in favour of Single Market & Customs Union membership wouldn't have generated momentum for a different outcome. It would have come down to the politics, and it's probably not very likely that a May minority government with Labour (perhaps Labour rebel) support would have legislated for it...
That said, I certainly don't agree that opponents of a hard / hardest Brexit are to blame for not voting for the SM option. It certainly isn't clear or obvious that doing so would actually have helped us get there, given the political realities that you talk about, and it may have harmed efforts to get another referendum. Which, whether you think would have been a good idea or not, wasn't an obviously unattainable goal (or no more so than any other outcome).
On that note, I would like to hear more about why you think the Lib Dems were foolish to soft-pedal on their committment to revote Article 50 if they'd won the 2019 General Election. Arguably it may have helped the party to have gone 'all-in', but putting party fortunes to one side, wouldn't the outcome for the country have been similar to a new referendum rejecting Brexit after all? I suppose you could argue that the Lib Dems winning a General Election really would have required - and demonstrated - a sea change in public opinion, but there would still have a been a very large populist opposition.
I have been thinking a lot of until when Remain was still a viable option.
Obviously before triggering Article 50 but maybe also still a certain period afterwards.
Sure, legally it would have been possible until the end, with the surprise decision of the ECJ that the UK could unilaterally revoke its notification to leave.
However, given the increased hostility toward the EU and individual members and the almost industrial grade burning of bridges by UK government officials, I have to question at which point it became a political no-go in the wider European context.
I think the so-called second referendum killed itself by proposing to have "Remain" as one of the options. Instead it should have been a decision between accepting the negotiated deal or asking for an extension to work on something better.
Holding on to Remain as an option allowed Johnson to frame the 2019 election as a "Take it or leave it" decision.
The last missed opportunity to steer towards a more reasonable form of Brexit
Having now read Chris Grey's blog post of 9th December 2020 that he links to above, I think that answers with my question to Nick as to why he is so sure that nothing could have come from an indicative vote for a softer Brexit deal.
I still don't agree him on a second referendum though. I think he's right that it could have intensified the Brexit culture war, but I don't think any course of action could have avoided it. While no means certain that 'Remain' would have won a second referendum, a victory - especially a decisive one - could have rejuvinated the sane wing of the Tory party and created the economic foundations to begin the fightback against populism. Still a lot of 'what ifs', I admit, and it's true that it could have made things worse still.
I think that 'Remain' had to be an option in the referendum, had one been held. If the original referendum had explicitly been on the principle of the Brexit with the promise of a further referendum on whatever was subsequently negotiated then I'd agree that there'd have been no need to offer Remain as a result. But the Leave campaign blew any legitimacy they had by offering all things to all people. Part of the justification for offering 'Actually, let's Remain after all' in a second referendum was to offer the country a way out of the otherwise never-ending process of trying to reconcile the impossible in a deal that wasn't incredibly damaging.
It was up to Leavers to offer an attractive deal. If they couldn't do so, that was their problem. There was no responsibility on Remainers to help them keep the impossible promises they'd made. I think it would have been entirely right to have offered the country the only two possible outcomes: remain (plus some degree of culture war) or the Brexit deal as negotiated by the Leavers (with all the broken promises that would entail and... some degree of culture war).
I fully agree with you and Nick that it was not and still is not the Remainers' responsibility to help the Leave side to achieve their unattainable goals.
And that it would have been much better if the primary referendum already had a clear picture of what leaving would actually entail.
However I can see how Remain could have been a viable option on a follow-up referendum potentially as late as 2020 (assuming a Labour victory in Dec 2019 and the new government almost immediately revoking Article 50).
Legally sure. It is a new parliament and not bound to decisions made by the previous ones and the ECJ had ruled that the UK could revoke unilaterally.
But consider the situation beyond just the internal UK fall out.
After over three years of insulting the EU and its members, the UK would have faced an unprecedented uphill struggle in union matters, both in Brussels and at home.
Any opposition decisions that do not require unanimity would have likely been ignored, after all the UK could always just leave if it felt cooperation wasn't worth staying.
Which leaves the government in a situation were they can't use "victory in Brussels" to appease their Leavers. At a time when they had just seen their holy grail taken from them.
Essentially creating a "hard Remain" environment.
Given that Leavers are much more vocal and aggressive, not shying away from labeling anything not going their way as betrayal, treason or worse, I don't quite see how such a theoretical pro-EU Labour government could have prevailed.
Agreed, Leaving is wholly on the heads of May, Johnson and the Tory party.
I wonder how things would be panning out now if May's Bxt had been passed.
Rory Stewart (a possible future Tory leader if the party reverts to pro European/One Nation version), was the biggest champion of her idea.
Had it not been rejected so humiliatingly, she'd have stayed in power, Boris would have vaporised, and either her or Stewart would be PM right now.