BY PETER THAL LARSEN
Theresa May has survived a confidence vote from her party. Now officials in the British prime minister’s office are trying to save her deal to leave the European Union. Breakingviews has obtained a copy of their make-believe memo.
Dear Prime Minister,
Congratulations on winning the no-confidence motion. We always suspected that Conservatives, who had trouble counting the 48 letters required to call the vote, would never find the 158 members of parliament they needed to remove you. Still, it’s reassuring to know that your political enemies are even more inept than the ones in your cabinet.
You asked for new ideas about how to salvage your plan to leave the European Union. After more than two years of Brexit debate, we regret to inform you the cupboard is bare. However, now you have saved your job, we have a proposal that could save the deal. It requires you to call a referendum.
Wait! Before you file this in the rubbish bin, consider your position. Your Brexit plan was heading for a hefty defeat in parliament until you postponed the vote on Dec. 3. A whirlwind tour of European capitals produced little except footage of your car door not opening as you pulled up in Berlin. At least Angela Merkel realises how awkward it is to be stuck in a transition period.
The best you can hope for from the EU is vague reassurances on the Northern Ireland backstop, or some kind of legal appendix. That’s unlikely to win over the Brexit fanatics in your party, including the 117 who voted against your leadership, or the Democratic Unionist Party on whom your government’s slender majority depends. So despite the triumph, parliament will still reject it when it finally comes to a vote.
You could keep delaying the decision, maybe even until the last minute on March 28, and hope your opponents buckle. But the longer you wait, the bigger the risk of a chaotic and damaging “no deal” will loom. The pound will tumble back down, and the economy will suffer even more. Meanwhile, opposition MPs could always intervene by voting to reverse the Brexit process. And even though you’ve seen off the no-confidence vote in your leadership, parliament could still launch one in your government. You cannot count on Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, being hopeless indefinitely.
That’s where the second referendum comes in. If you wait, parliament might take over and launch one. Better to seize the initiative and call it yourself. Doing so would allow you to dictate the timing, and the question on the ballot. We recommend offering the people a simple choice between your deal or staying in the EU. Advocates of a “no deal” Brexit won’t like it, but after their defeat they have little choice but to back you. And you’ll put Labour in a tight spot. Will Corbyn risk alienating his pro-Brexit supporters by campaigning to remain?
True, this strategy has several drawbacks. For one, you have ruled out a second referendum. But you insisted you would not call an election in 2017, and then called one. You spent two years insisting that a “no deal” Brexit was better than a bad deal, but now warn it would cause “significant economic damage”. You said your deal was the best on offer, before heading to Europe to ask for improvements. The public won’t be surprised if you change your mind again. It’s what you do.
Finally, you might lose the referendum. It won’t be so easy to charm voters with false promises of extra money for healthcare, or to scare them by suggesting Turkey is about to join the EU. The pro-Europeans will be more organised. You might finally have to come clean about the costs of Brexit. Amazingly, though, despite the mayhem of the past two-and-a-half years, opinion polls suggest about half the country is still in favour of leaving the EU. And this time the government will be campaigning to leave, not remain.
You keep saying that you want to deliver Brexit. You will either go down inhistory as the prime minister who took Britain out of the EU, or the prime minister who tried and failed to do so. Now that you’ve promised not to contest the next general election, another referendum is your best — and maybe your only — chance of it being the former.
Yours,
The Last Resort Unit, Downing Street
First published Dec. 12, 2018.