For too many Conservatives there is no spoon

The Tory party has lost its battle with reality. But there remains one hope, a man with a joke and a smile that can set the UK free from the EU. Unfortunately to do that he may set the UK free from democracy as we know it.

For those not familiar with the film Matrix, there is a scene where the hero Neo encounters a boy bending a spoon with his mind. The boy hands the spoon to Neo. The dialog goes on:

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Spoon boy: There is no spoon.

Neo: There is no spoon?

Spoon boy: Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

Neo then appears to bend the spoon with his mind. In the film the spoon isn’t real, but a digital simulation fed to unconscious humans to keep them alive. But what would happen in the real world if you really, really wanted to bend that spoon, and there was another world where you could make that happen? You could get to that world by talking a blue pill offered to you by a kind of anti-Neo.

Welcome to the contest for our next Prime Minister, where the electorate is just a small group of party members and Conservative MPs. The current contest is all about Brexit. Brexit is stuck. The goal of Brexiters, taken up by many (but definitely not all) who voted for it, is to gain complete independence from the EU and all its rules and regulations. They hoped to do this by leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, and replacing them with a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU. Unfortunately they brushed aside two obstacles: the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement.

Together they are a spoon that so many Conservatives want to bend by wishing it so. The Irish government and the EU live in the real world, so they know that an FTA with the EU would require a hard border on the island of Ireland. A hard border is incompatible with the Good Friday Agreement. As a result, either Northern Ireland or the UK has to keep their trading rules such that there cannot be a hard border in Ireland. The backstop ensures this will happen. Complete independence for the UK from the EU is therefore impossible, just like bending a spoon by thought alone.

Most Conservative candidates for Prime Minister pretend they can really bend the spoon. Many suggest it can be bent using soon to be invented technology. Technology that would make a hard border anywhere near the actual border unnecessary. But these candidates have a problem. If such technology could be found, the EU have said they would be happy to apply it. And if such technology is just around the corner, why would the Brexiters object to the backstop that will soon be removed? The fact that the same Brexiters who say the technology is almost apon us also refuse to accept the backstop suggests they do not really believe in bending spoons.

One or two candidates say that, if only they are given a chance to stare into the whites of the EU negotiators eyes, they can make the EU bend. This is also impossible. Others suggest that we can leave in October with No Deal and then we can do the FTA we want, because the EU will want the £39 billion that we have already agreed we owe them. In reality if we break our existing agreements with the EU after a No Deal Brexit the EU can do things like fail to let our airplanes fly.

Many of those voting for our next Prime Minister may understand all this deep down. They agree with the spoon boy that you cannot bend a spoon by thought alone. Instead they want to take the blue pill, and go to a world where almost anything is possible if you want it enough. A world where you can wish away the Irish border problem. The same world where we once stood alone and won WWII all by ourselves.

These Conservative party members are not hanging on every detail of alternative arrangements for the Irish border to check that they will actually work. They don’t mind too much how we leave and what is done to parliament to make that happen. They just want their blue pill and their anti-Neo to make all their difficulties disappear. They want someone to get Brexit done and banish Farage and then diminish Corbyn so they might actually win another election. They want there to be no spoon, because life would be too difficult if today’s reality turned out to be all there is. In particular, and to mix imaginary tales horribly, if they recognised reality they would have to give up their precious, Brexit.

Just after the 2017 general election I wrote about the Zugzwang that the Conservative party found itself in. Zugzwang is a term in chess where a player finds themselves in a position where every move that it is possible to make ends up making them worse off. In that situation the chess player would like to skip their move, but the rules say they cannot. What I had in mind then was that most Tory MPs wanted to be rid of May because she was clearly a hopeless leader who had called an unnecessary election with a commanding lead in the polls and lost it all. Yet these same MPs could not get rid of May because they would get a Brexiter instead.

I underestimated the Zugzwang the Conservatives were in. I hadn’t realised the depth of the rabbit hole that Brexiters were prepared to take the Conservative party and its members. Brexit could have happened if the Brexiters had not voted against May’s deal. Instead they have taken a referendum that promised the easiest trade deal with the EU in history and pretended it is mandate for No Deal at all. Their supporters in the press egg them on and most in the broadcast media let this pass.

At the bottom of the rabbit hole of Brexit, where only complete independence for the EU is acceptable, you can only survive by taking the blue pill. The blue pill takes you to another place where most Conservative members and MPs want to live. And Boris Johnson, who can seemingly make any bullets fired at him stop dead in mid air with a joke and a smile, is the person who can make this happen. Boris Johnson will offer you a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill that is reality and the blue pill where thought can bend spoons. Pills like the two articles he wrote before he decided to champion Brexit.

Unfortunately that other place where you go if you take the blue pill is not fictitious. They have seen it across the Atlantic. Johnson is in reality their Trump. Trump can get away with so many things that once were considered outrageous, and he only gets away with it because he has a party machine and media behind him that is prepared to tolerate and justify anything Trump does so they can stay in power, as long as the party serves its backers’ interests. A UK version of Trump is the only way of delivering an outrageous thing like No Deal Brexit.

Johnson, like Trump, is criticised for his lies and personal behaviour but he just laughs it off and nothing seems to matter. There are much more worrying similarities between the two. Johnson, like Trump, cannot concentrate for long, says or does the wrong thing at critical moments, has no vision except his own advancement, and makes serious mistakes that go beyond his words and his personal life. His genius is to turn his own incompetence into a joke, so he appears so refreshing compared to most politicians. Although the jokes may be well rehearsed, the incompetence is real. When you are worse off because of his incompetence it isn’t funny anymore, but you just need enough people who are yet to experience his incompetence first hand and who appreciate a funny politician and the job is done.

Which leads to a critical realisation. If Johnson is the UK’s Trump, then the spoon is not just the Irish border, or the consequences of a No Deal Brexit. The spoon has to be politics as we once knew it, democracy as we once knew it.

The first spoon that will be bent is an independent media that asks critical questions based on facts. As William Davies and others have observed, Johnson’s first leadership press conference was positively Trumpian. Journalists who ask tough questions were booed. Later pressure will be brought through the Tory media or elsewhere such that journalists quickly learn that asking such questions is more trouble than it is worth. Small outposts of critical thought may remain, because you only need to control what most people see and read to bend the spoon to your will. Whereas Trump plays the media through his tweets, Johnson can shrug off using racist imagery about Muslim women by offering the MSM cups of tea.

The spoon may become the judiciary, that has already raised the wrath of parts of the governing party, its press and its members by daring to allow parliament the final say in enacting Article 50. The already unprecedented number of attacks by politicians on the civil service will morph into a politicisation of the civil service that Thatcher would never have dreamed of. And very soon the spoon may be parliament itself. Johnson is committed to imposing the most devastating kind of Brexit on the UK if he cannot get a deal by October, and parliament may well try to stop him. Johnson has not ruled out ignoring or suspending parliament and going ahead anyway. If his poll numbers are not as favourable as some hope, or the deal he offers Farage is rejected, he may be tempted to bypass parliament rather than call an election.

The spoon that Johnson and his party want to bend or to pretend doesn’t exist is pluralist democracy itself. It will happen slowly, each stage seemingly not so bad because each happens with a joke and a smile. We can only hope that just because most Conservative members want to live in a world where there is no spoon, enough voters prefer changing the real world in ways that enhance rather than diminish our democracy.

Delusions of National Power

As soon as the EU decided, quite rightly, to support Ireland in rejecting any deal that resulted in placing infrastructure at the Irish border, the idea of a Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the UK was dead. It became inevitable that the UK would stay in the Customs Union (CU) and the Single Market (SM). The two possible alternatives, which is that the UK would go ahead and impose a hard border and forsake any deal with the EU, or that a border would be created in the Irish Sea, would not be approved by a majority in parliament. If the UK had a strong bargaining position, it could perhaps persuade the EU to compromise over how much of the Single Market it needed to be part of (the Jersey option), but according to Sam Lowe who gave that option its name the “EU will not contemplate the backstop applying to the whole UK”. The UK gave up any bargaining strength it had when it triggered Article 50.

Yet neither leader of our two main political parties allow themselves to see this inevitable implication of the Irish border. Delusion is at its most extreme in the case of Theresa May, who still thinks it is possible to conclude a deal with the EU that would keep the Brexiters in her party on board by appeasing them at every step. So we have the ludicrous situation where the UK cabinet is at loggerheads over which of two impossible plans they will put forward so they can be rejected by the EU. This isn't rearranging deck chairs on the titantic. It is having a full blown row over how the deck chairs should be arranged as the ship sinks. 

This charade could be put out of its misery by parliament telling May that the UK has to stay in the CU and the EEA. The former might happen, but the Labour leadership, along perhaps with some of its MPs (and not just the few Brexiters), still think that they can negotiate a bespoke version of the Single Market that either avoids rules on state aid or avoids free movement. There is no reason why the EU need contemplate this, given that they know MPs will not approve No Deal. The left or Lexiters can talk all they want about uniting to guarantee that the EU cannot obstruct a future socialist government, but the lesson of Greece is that if the EU has power it will use it.

It is easy to imagine where these delusions of power come from. After all, despite what Brexiters say, the UK did have considerable influence in the EU when it was a member. Ironically both the Single Market and EU expansion owed a lot to UK pressure. The more interesting question I think is why these delusions continue when the reality of the UK’s powerlessness becomes obvious. Political leaders have had a painful year to learn that in these negotiations the EU calls the shots.

I can think of two answers. The first is ideological blindness. This is obvious in the case of the Brexiters, but I think you can also see it elsewhere in various ways. But I also think there are specific dynamics created by the referendum. Leave votes were in part predicated on an illusion of power: the UK would not be worse off because the EU would be desperate to accede to our demands. Once a politician agrees to go with the 'will of the people', they find it very hard to go back to the 52% and say your beliefs were delusions. And no politician wants to say in public that the UK has to do what the EU says. It is very hard for an elected politician to confront English nationalism, a nationalism largely exploited and distorted in my view by a deeply corrupt press.

The UK is therefore in a trap of its own making. It is obvious what has to happen in the end: the UK stays in the CU and SM either inside or outside the EU. But the leadership and perhaps a majority of MPs in the two main parties either cannot see that yet, or can see it but dare not take the steps to get us there. If Brexit is to survive despite always being a fantasy project it has to end with a whimper, but it could take many wasted years and much economic harm to get to that point. There is one way out that will spare politicians’ blushes and revitalise the economy, and that is to hold a referendum on the final deal where the economic costs of the deal are clearly spelt out.

Theresa May’s perpetual Brexit and Labour's forsaken base.

Two pieces of recent Brexit news are that a majority of the ‘war cabinet’ outvoted May on the choice between two unworkable, and therefore unacceptable to the EU, proposals to keep the Irish border infrastructure free, and Labour plans not to support a Lords amendment to keep the UK in the Single Market (SM). I want to consider each in turn.

The Brexiters, and their followers who just want to be PM and are signaling to party members, have put their collective foot down over the Irish border. This could imply that May will have to finally break with the Brexiters. But first she will try to do what she has done since negotiations began, which is to find a fudge that is good enough for the EU and which just keeps the Brexiters on board. I have no idea if such a fudge is possible, but suppose she manages to achieve one and prevents a revolt from the rebels in her party, so we leave in 2019 as planned.

If that happens, we are in danger of having perpetual Brexit. A final deal cannot be fudged, and the reality is that no deal is possible that will keep the Brexiters happy and be acceptable to the EU. The stumbling block is the Irish border: the EU will not negotiate an FTA that requires a hard border, and the Brexiters will not accept either the UK staying in the Customs Union (CU) and SM for goods, or a border in the Irish Sea. A crunch point could come at the end of 2020, but to avoid that May will plead for an extension which the EU may grant. And so it will go on: perpetual Brexit.

In a strange way, it is in May’s interest for this to happen. No one thought she would last for more than a few years after the 2017 fiasco, but Brexit keeps her in place. The majority of the parliamentary party dare not allow her to go because they will get a Brexiter in her place, given that it is members who ultimately decide. Furthermore, the closer we get to 2022 the less the party will want a bust up over how transition ends, so she fights another election.

If she wins the 2022 election would that finally give her the confidence to do a deal with the EU and ignore the protests from the Brexiters? Two factors suggest not. First, the new intake of Conservative MPs could mean that she would lose a vote of no confidence over Brexit. Second the right wing press, with the election out of the way, might not hesitate to call betrayal if she agrees any kind of deal with the EU. Both the press and Brexiters, knowing that BINO was not at all what they had in mind, would be looking to break off negotiations with the EU and go for No Deal. If she gets an outright majority a deal that puts a border in the Irish Sea becomes possible, but I doubt she will take it or the party will allow it.

The underlying logic is simple. For Brexiters, transition is only bearable because they see it as a stepping stone to a hard Brexit. The EU will not negotiate an FTA without a border in the Irish Sea and no hard border in Ireland. These are irreconcilable positions, a point which the media have just not taken on board. So if May does fudge her way to agreement on the withdrawal bill, it means perpetual Brexit negotiations. Transition, or Brexit in Name Only (BINO), may not sound too bad, but it means never ending uncertainty because business cannot rely on this arrangement lasting decades.

One way to stop fudge is to force the government to break with the Brexiters. One of the difficulties Tory rebels will always have is that it is difficult to vote against a final deal that is fudge, because just as with the original Leave vote fudge can mean almost anything the fudgers want it to mean to get votes. As the polls I discussed here show, it is only by talking about something concrete that voters say wait a minute that was not my Brexit. Which is why votes on Lords amendments to the UK’s withdrawal bill to stay in a CU and (tomorrow) the SM via the EEA can be so useful. Conservative rebels think that with Labour’s support they could win both votes in the Commons. But while Corbyn has been persuaded to back the rebels on a CU, he appears unwilling to do the same on the SM.

I have talked a lot about Labour’s triangulation strategy. That strategy works best when all those who want something that is softer than Theresa May’s Brexit think Labour in reality wants what they want, whatever Labour might actually say. In a purely two party system with rational voters Labour can get away with disclosing that they really only want a slightly softer Brexit than May, because Remainers have nowhere else to go. But reality isn’t like that in two important respects: Remainers can vote for the LibDems or Greens (many thought the Greens would be hammered in the local elections - they gained seats), or they can not vote at all.

Until now, I think we have evidence that Labour has largely succeeded in being all things to all those wanting something softer than May, including those who want to Remain. But as crunch time comes closer this is going to be difficult to sustain. So what does whipping your Lords against voting for the EEA option disclose: that, as long as May is in charge, you are content to see the UK leave the Single market. [1] That might firm your support among some Labour leavers, but it pisses off all Remain supporters and those Leavers who want to stay in the SM.

I think this is a mistake, although I am happy to have experts tell me otherwise. I think it is a mistake because you will lose more votes from disillusioned Remainers than you will gain from reassured Leavers, even when you allow for where each are in parliamentary seats. I keep being told that this is the Tories Brexit, but the moment Labour enable it they become complicit. If car factories in the North East go because we leave the SM, they cannot claim this is not our fault because we abstained on a vote that could have prevented this. Voting to stay in the SM indicates economic competence, which always matters in elections and particularly matters for Labour. 

It also seems like a political mistake beyond votes and reputation. The theory seems to be that a vote to stay in the CU, which the Lords did pass with Labour’s help, will do all the required damage to May. But there are those who argue that such a vote can help her, by giving her an excuse to ignore the Brexiters and do a deal. The Brexiters will be furious, but what can they do at the end of the day, as May can defeat any vote of confidence because Conservative Remainers do not want a leadership election. Wth UKIP dead, they have nowhere to go. May, free of the Brexiters, might even achieve a final deal by 2020 (although crossing her own red lines to do so), and fight the subsequent election as the Prime Minister who got Brexit done.

Which is a long winded way of saying that a vote on the CU may not be enough. If Labour does kill a vote on the SM, they lose another chance to cause problems for May, and this time over an issue she really does not want to lose. Put simply by doing this Labour may be passing up a chance to do great, and possibly terminal, damage to May’s leadership. So the Lords decision looks bad in terms of votes, and bad in terms of politics.

Perhaps most importantly it is also bad in principle. Staying in the SM as well as the CU is the right thing to do if someone else is doing the negotiation. We need to stay in the SM for goods to avoid a hard border in Ireland, and therefore to get a deal with the EU. But the UK is really strong in exporting services, so leaving the Single Market for services is just another act of self harm. I have always been worried, since my time on Labour’s EAC, that the leadership underestimated the damage leaving the SM could do. And if truth be told the Leave vote was won on false pretenses, which means few voted Leave thinking they would be poorer. Which is why there is no mandate to leave the Single Market.

To those who say that Labour have to appease those who voted Leave in our traditional heartlands I would say this. Past Labour leaderships have for many years neglected their traditional heartlands, partly in efforts to appeal to the middle class and partly by embracing neoliberal ideas. They have subsequently tried to win back their traditional base through appeasement over immigration. It did not work then, and it will not work now with Brexit. You win Leavers back to Labour by focusing on the economic issues that matter to them, and not by votes in the House of Lords. 

Appeasement over Brexit is a mistake because Labour alienates its base, just as happened with austerity and immigration. It is time Labour stood up for its principles, which include better public services. Leaving the Single market will mean less money for public services [2], which is why 87% of Labour party members want to stay in the Single Market. Leaving the Single Market is a policy that should be opposed, not enabled.  

Postscript: The Lords amendment was passed by 247 votes to 218. 83 Labour and 17 Conservative peers defied their party and voted for the amendment. Only 3 Labour peers voted against the amendment. Jeremy Corbyn now has to decide whether he regards leaving the Single Market as more important than inflicting what could be a mortal blow to Theresa May. 

[1] We need to dispense with one red herring here. Abstaining does not mean neutrality. If the Lords amendment succeeds it puts the issue on the table, and Conservative rebels think they have the vote to support it with Labour’s support in the Commons. If it fails, it is less likely to be resurrected in the Commons. To say that the EEA option is not Labour's preferred option is irrelevant because they are not in charge and they have limited influence on the outcome. This vote is one point of influence, and they have gone for the worse option. 

[2] Whether they intended it or not, the writings of MMT seem to have convinced many people responding to me on twitter that lower UK GDP has no implications for the level of UK public services. Lower GDP, caused by lower labour productivity because Brexit diminishes UK trade, reduces the resources available to go to private and public consumption. The only way you can avoid less resources going to public consumption is to cut those going to the private sector. Nothing in that statement contradicts or can be changed by anything in MMT theory. If resources are underutilised they should be fully utilised, whether we are in or out of the EU. This is not about utilisation of resources. 

Does Brexit end not with a bang but a whimper?

Most media commentary on Brexit makes a huge mistake. It focuses on what the UK government may wish to do or should do. The first stage agreement told us one thing that we should have known the moment Article 50 was triggered: the EU is calling the shots in these negotiations. [1] But the fact that the UK agreed to the text, and particularly the parts on the Irish border, has told the EU something important: the current UK government is not going to walk away with no deal, and even if it did the current parliament would almost certainly stop it.

That in turn tells the EU that it can get, to the first approximation, the agreement it wants. So what we should be asking is not what the UK’s next move will be, but what the preferred outcome for the EU is. My guess would be that their preferred outcome is a formalisation of the transition arrangements. This satisfies their three criteria: it avoids a hard Irish border, it imposes no additional trade restrictions, and the UK is clearly worse off as a result of leaving (because it has no control over the rules it must obey).

As Martin Sandbu points out, the first criteria could be satisfied by a deal that kept the UK in the Customs Union and Single Market for goods, but not for services. As the UK exports more services than it imports to/from the EU, the EU’s second criteria might still be roughly satisfied by such a deal. If the UK avoids accepting free movement as part of the deal, whether the third criteria is satisfied becomes debatable. Still it would be a possibility. Anything beyond this would mean a hard border in Ireland. It is difficult to imagine why the rest of the EU would want to seriously harm relations with Ireland by agreeing to such a thing.

Suppose something between these two alternatives, of staying in the Single Market and staying in it just for goods, does become the final deal. I think the Labour leadership could live with it if they are in government when the deal is done. Perhaps a majority of Conservative MPs could. But it means that dreams of doing trade deals with other countries would no longer be possible, and for that and other reasons a large part of the Conservative party would not be happy. The Conservative’s Europe problem would not be solved.

The fact that the Brexiters will still be agitating for a more pronounced break from Europe will be one reason why the UK will still suffer in economic terms (albeit much less than with No Deal), and this will be increased if we are no longer in the Single Market for services. Firms will always be reluctant to locate in the UK because trade might be disrupted if the Brexiters win again. Less immigration from the EU will also hurt the economy. And of course the Brexiters will remind everyone that the UK is having to accept rules on trade that it plays no part in creating.

All that suggests any deal will not be sustainable in the longer term. Norway and Switzerland may be able to tolerate being out of the club but obeying its rules because they would probably reason their impact within the club would be small, although what Ireland will achieve with the Brexit deal is a counterexample. An economy with the size and more importantly the history of the UK will find that more difficult to accept this. 

Does this mean that any deal will just be the first stage of breaking away from Europe? The Brexiters will agitate for this, but I doubt it will happen. The Brexit is essentially a project of the old. It seems far more likely to me that as time passes a majority for rejoining will emerge, and Brexit will come to an end. This mad period of UK politics, and all the political and economic harm it has done, will be a complete dead end, a colossal and damaging waste of time. 

This is my best guess at how Brexit will end, although I take no pleasure in that. [2] Not with the bang of a second referendum or a parliamentary vote, but slowly over time. The vote that rules them all today will gradually be seen not as the liberation and empowerment that so many now believe, but instead as just the machinations of a small number of hollow men. Hollow men who dream of empire renewed, and as a result are casting their country from the world stage. Hollow men who dream of personal power, and who instead turn out to be powerless. Their day will soon pass, as wind in dry grass.

[1] Here I think informed analysis, from commentators like David Allen Green for example, got it right. As I wrote: "Anyone who actually wants a good deal from the EU when we leave should realise that the UK’s negotiating position becomes instantly weaker once Article 50 is triggered."

[2] The Brexiters will not let the government propose a second referendum. A majority of MPs will not vote for one unless public opinion becomes much more anti-Brexit. Without something like a major recession, which looks unlikely, I fear a shift in public opinion will not happen in time for 2019. The post-Brexit Remain campaign has not ‘broken through’ because the tabloid press, and broadcasters following the wishes of politicians, will see Brexit through to completion because they made Brexit possible.

Would things be different if Labour campaigned for a second referendum? In terms of public opinion, that would make a difference to how broadcasters treated the issue. But Corbyn will only consider that if he could be sure that enough Conservative would back him, and by making the issue party political he cannot be sure of that. It is the fact that too few Conservative MPs are prepared to stand up against their leadership, and the 'will of the people', that makes leaving inevitable.      

Has Ireland scuppered Brexit?

Should I be shocked that no quantitative Brexit impact assessments were commissioned by David Davis? Is it surprising that there has been no cabinet discussion of the final trade deal? Not if you accept the parallel I draw here between Brexit and Trump. Brexit is an expression of ideology or feeling, an act of faith. An impact assessment is therefore beside the point, and just dangerous to the project. I think you only get outraged by this if you haven’t really accepted what the true nature of Brexit is, and how it came to pass. By this I do not mean why people voted for Brexit, but why a large section of the UK press and Conservative party made it their primary political project. The true nature of Brexit means that the normal rules of politics do not apply, and could not apply.

I was surprised about Ireland. I did not realise until September [1] what it would require from Theresa May. Back in March as Article 50 was triggered I thought that would inevitably mean an open ended transition period (despite lots of talk about 2 years), and so the final destination of Brexit would not be decided until after the next election. If the Conservatives lost that, Corbyn would satisfy himself that the EU would not hinder his economic programme, and we would end up staying in the Customs Union and Single Market (CU&SM). [2]

But will the question of the Irish border change that? Those that constructed the Article 50 process understood that any country leaving the EU would be desperate for a deal, which is why there is a two stage process. The two stage structure maximises the chance that the EU will get the deal they want on the first stage issues. In terms of citizen’s rights and the leaving bill that has proved correct.

What the EU realised long before the UK was that Brexit involved a unique problem. The UK’s only land border with the remaining EU could not be allowed to become a hard border without putting the Good Friday agreement at serious risk. Yet the EU requires a hard border, and the WTO would insist that the UK recognised that (again Brexiter talk of not building one is just nonsense). Ireland’s most important priority was that there should be no hard border, and as a result the rest of the EU agreed to make that part of the first stage.

Once again, this shows you the nature of the Brexit project. Any Brexiter interested in reality would have realised that Brexit put the Good Friday agreement at serious risk, any would have at least thought about the problem. But Brexit is not a reality based project, and so they did not. We should be thankful that the Irish government made this a priority.

In simple terms there are therefore only two possibilities for Brexit that avoid a hard border. Either the UK stays in the Customs Union and Single Market (CU&SM), or just Northern Ireland does and there is a sea border between two parts of the UK. (What 'alignment' means is what the EU chooses it to mean.) The UK government still wants to pretend that other possibilities exist: something technological or that the stage 2 agreement they come to will not require a hard border. But the Irish government quite rightly insists that if neither of those two happen, the UK government recognise that at least part of the UK will stay in the CU&SM. That in the agreement the UK almost signed a few days ago.

It was scuppered because the DUP quite rightly wanted to know which of these two arrangements the UK government had in mind. Above all else, the DUP do not want a sea border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, because they see that as making unification much more likely. I suspect the fact that whatever May said in her last minute phone call was not enough to satisfy the DUP means they will be prepared to bring down the government unless they get some sort of public guarantee that there will be no sea border.

In which case, May will finally have to call the Brexiters' bluff. Maybe she can convince them to keep faith in their rhetoric that there is a technological fix (there isn’t) or there will be a final trade agreement that deals with the problem (there won’t be) and let her commit to no sea border in the eventuality that neither happen. If she cannot, their only other option is the nuclear one of trying to force May out. As the latest poll I have seen suggests the Conservative party membership’s favoured candidate is Someone Else, that looks like a risky move. But if they take that risk, Ireland will indeed have made a difference.

But if they do not, and May does sign up to stage 2 on the basis of UK membership of CU&SM as the fallback position, does that change anything? You would think it should, but because it is the fallback position the UK government will start negotiations over a transition arrangement and a final trade agreement. After we officially leave May will then resign and the Conservatives will set about the task of trying to win the next election. Trade negotiations with the EU will be put on the back burner. We end up at in exactly the same place as I expected we would be back in March.

The only difference is that it will be blindingly obvious that this is all for show. Having signed up to staying in CU&SM as a default, the EU has zero interest in concluding any other kind of agreement, particularly as it will not safeguard the border. It will just be a matter of time before the arrangement whereby we stay in the CU&SM is formalised. But will any British politician that matters have the courage to tell the British people the truth?

The truth is that all their vote has achieved is that they will now have no say in the rules the UK has to follow. Instead whoever wins the next election will come back with some ‘deal’ over freedom of movement which few still care about because no one is coming to the failing UK economy. And of course the Brexiters will cry betrayal because we are, as far as they are concerned, still in the EU, and we will be back to where we were before the referendum, except with no say in the rules we have to obey.

I would really like to think that this can be avoided. Perhaps before we formally leave the EU, enough Conservative MPs (and despite all the noise from some Remainers about Corbyn, it is Conservative MPs who matter) will put country before party and call for a second referendum. Ireland increases that possibility, but from the evidence so far I do not see it happening.

[1] As someone told me, being ahead of the UK MSM on this is a very low bar.

[2] For all those who insist that the Labour leadership wants to leave, you have to realise two things. First, by the time Corbyn takes over we will have left, and he has no interest in pursuing the sunny uplands of trade deals with countries like the US. Second, there is nothing in the CU&SM that really hinders his immediate economic programme. So why leave the CU&SM just after he gets elected? It would profoundly alienate those who voted for him and damage the economy on his watch.  

What ignoring Ireland tells you about our governing elite

The hapless progress of the Brexit negotiations continues. I do not mean the almost childish nonsense of May’s new wheeze. Instead I’m talking about the Irish border. It seems, if you read most of the UK press, that out of the blue this new obstacle has been sprung on the UK at the last minute. Some of the press talk about surprise, while the Guardian talks about it ‘emerging’. Some have even decided to cover up their ignorance by inventing conspiracy theories. With political commentary in the UK largely reflecting the beliefs of the UK side, then this also means that this surprise extends to our negotiating team.

In reality there is nothing to be surprised about. The Irish border was one of the three issues to be dealt with in the first stage. As the UK government has consistently said they are leaving the Customs Union and Single Market (CU/SM), and have failed to convince even themselves that they can invent a new magically invisible border that can police countries that have different customs and regulatory regimes, it was only natural that an EU paper would suggest that Northern Ireland stay in the CU/SM to avoid a hard land border.

So why did the UK, and its media, seem to forget about this third issue, when even I had flagged it up as the critical issue a couple of months ago. What I think happened is that the Brexit side convinced itself that, because a hard border would only arise as a result of different trade regimes, then the border was really a trade issue and so should be in stage 2. In other words the EU had simply made a mistake in putting it in Stage 1, and would therefore quietly forget about it.

That reasoning was part wishful thinking and part delusion. Wishful thinking because, as I wrote back in September, it is a problem with no obvious solution that Brexiteers would accept. And delusion because the UK side continues to imagine that the EU is governed by Franco/German interests, and why would these countries be concerned about what happens in Ireland. What it completely failed to understand, and what the EU had understood, was the importance of the border issue to the people on both sides of it. It was an important reason why Northern Ireland voted to Remain.

But I wonder if there is something deeper behind the UK attitude. For too many people in England, the ‘troubles’ in Ireland were a quarrel in a strange country between people of whom we know little, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain. As a result, there is little comprehension of why a hard border should be such a big deal. You would think memories of bombs going off in England’s cities would change that, but I’m not sure it did, anymore than more recent terrorism has led to a better understanding among English people of tensions within Islam. In contrast, most people in Northern Ireland would move heaven and earth not to go back to those times.

Even while all this might be true, it is no excuse for the same attitudes to be held by our political leaders. John Major knew better than this, as did Tony Blair. Only the arrogant disdain for different realities displayed by Brexiteers can explain a mistake of the magnitude of ignoring the border issue. I suspect any politician that lied the way the Brexiteers lie, or lived in the alternative reality they appear to live in, would not have survived long in UK politics two decades ago, whereas now it has become a criteria for holding high office.

At the end of the day there is little difference between Brexiteers who tell people that new trade deals with countries outside the EU can make up for trade lost with the EU, and Republicans who say scrapping Obamacare will extend coverage and their tax bill reduces taxes for most people. In both countries when the ability to gain office is determined by how well you can fire up or charm a base, because a large part of the media will then assure you have a good chance of winning elections, is it any wonder the political system fails to select for competence, understanding or respect for wisdom and knowledge.

There is a simple solution to the problem of the border. It is for the UK side to commit to only negotiate new trade arrangements that would be consistent with a soft border. [1] That would mean staying in the Customs Union and parts of the Single Market, but it could leave open the possibility of negotiating over the remaining parts of the Single market and perhaps free movement. Anyone who tells you that this concession by the UK side does not respect the referendum result is once again lying: Leave won precisely because they ruled no arrangement out. Any red lines erected after the referendum carry as much weight as the Prime Minister currently has authority.

Already we have many people in the UK saying why should we adapt our policies to keep the people of Ireland happy. This is the Chamberlain type attitude that I talked about earlier. The Irish border is at least as much our creation and our concern as it is of anyone else. Maintaining peace within the UK should be any government’s top priority. The fact that it has failed to make it onto Brexiteers to do list tells you as much about their outlook and competence as you need to know.

[1] Whether the UK will be forced to take this position I do not know. I stand by what I wrote recently that there will almost certainly be a deal, one element of which will be a transition where we stay in the EU/SM. Indeed I understated my case there. First, there can be no such thing as no deal. As Davis has explained, there are things that have to be sorted to keep planes flying and the like. He has described this as “some sort of basic deal without the bits we really want”. What that remark shows is that the ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ line is simply a bluff and he knows it. The bad deal is no deal. And finally there is parliament. I know it has been pathetic until now, but that does not mean it would sign off on the worst possible kind of Brexit. But what the border issue will most likely show is that it is unlikely we will get to a deal involving transition without cabinet resignations.