Prime Minister Theresa May returned to Parliament on Monday, January 21, to give a statement on her Brexit Plan B. Her statement gave a promising start and she said it was "clear the government approach had to change. And it has''. But by the time her statement finished, it was not totally clear how. What she presented to Parliament as Plan B, is effectively a restatement of her Plan A with an assurance that the Northern Ireland issue will be resolved at some point in the future. She also scrapped the controversial fee for European Union (EU) citizens to apply to stay in the United Kingdom (UK). She effectively just tweaked around her original plan that she had presented to Parliament on the January 15. Her hope is that the Brexit deadline (March 29) will force MPs to relent and vote for it at the end. She seems to be going through a denial mode by pretending that she narrowly lost on the Brexit vote. In effect, her Brexit plan is back to square one which prompted the Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn to observe, referring to her defeat, "It really does feel a bit like 'Groundhog Day.'''
Mrs May clearly refuses to change her course. Next Tuesday, January 29, MPs will vote on a series of amendments to the deal such as an extension to the withdrawal process and more parliamentary control over no-deal Brexit. Whether these amendments will be binding is still unclear. But whatever changes that are made will have to go back to Brussels for approval. But it is not quite clear what that will achieve. The EU has always insisted that there could be no renegotiations but only further clarifications to the deal already agreed upon in November last year including the issue of backstop. More importantly, any bargaining on the deal with the EU will depend on the balance of power between the two, and this balance is very much tilted in favour of the EU. Now both Mrs May and her deal look politically dead. She appears to be flogging a dead horse. Environment Secretary Michel Gove and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson are positioning themselves for the future leadership of the Conservative Party.
As the withdrawal date from the EU on March 29 draws closer, the media is focusing more and more on what is happening in Parliament and how politicians are reacting to the Brexit plan. Brexit has become the principal preoccupation of the government and Parliament as if nothing else is happening in the country. Their preoccupation with Brexit almost verges on hysteria. But the people in Britain are quite perplexed with the goings-on with Brexit except that they know it has turned into a dog's breakfast.
The government is in crisis and that creates uncertainty. In the midst of this uncertainty and no breakthrough in the political stalemate in sight, government officials are getting ready for a no-deal Brexit. Many senior public servants are totally dismayed and expressed in private their fear of a weaker, even a poorer UK if no-deal Brexit happens. Michael Barnier, the EU Brexit negotiator already warned "opposing no-deal will not stop no-deal from happening at the end of March. To stop no-deal, a positive majority for another solution will need to emerge''. But a staunch pro-Brexiteer like Boris Johnson sees enormous economic opportunities will flow out exiting the EU, even hinting at the strong possibility of London turning into a Singapore on the Thames. Now various options are canvassed such as hard or soft Brexit, people's vote and a new election. Each option has its followers who are busy advancing their interests in a period when the country is engulfed in a serious political crisis.
The anti-EU campaign and the success of the 2016 referendum was the manifestation of a multitude of long accumulated grievances and discontents. The rising gulf between what Mr Corbyn described as "the many'' and "the few'' is contributing to anger and frustration among large sections of the population. This combined with profound regional inequalities and slow but continuing dismantling of the welfare net through austerity measures created a vast pool of people who feel they are not merely left behind but are left out. People now want change in the way the country is run. The pro-Brexit vote was a vote for changing the status quo while the Remainers were in favour of maintaining the status quo. The Brexiteers have turned the focus on the system itself. No wonder some now fear that the current political stalemate will lead to further loss of faith in the system.
The government and pro-EU campaigners singularly weighed their position in terms of national economic interests. Britain depends on the EU for 40 per cent of its trade (the EU’s trade depends 15 per cent on the UK) and attracts substantial capital inflows from there also. But the benefits of trade and investment flows have not flowed on to those who feel being left out. Economic arguments have no meaning to them. For many having a job does not keep them out of poverty. They do not see much of a future for their children either. In fact they do not care about Europe or the EU like the Yellow Vests demonstrators in France.
The core issues surrounding the Brexit drive are largely within UK not in Europe. The country itself is under severe stress on many fronts. The Belfast agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in the following year and the rise of Scottish nationalism and the consequent rise of English nationalism have created deep uncertainties about the future of the country. In many ways Britain is a very disunited country now. Brexit has become more about Britain where the British are increasingly negotiating the Brexit terms or the process mostly among themselves than with the EU. The government has been working on it for more than two years but could not produce any workable solution yet - a clear symptom of either a dysfunctional or an incompetent state machine.
Brexit was driven by decades of accumulated grievances of economic deprivation of the people in the industrial rust belts and poorer rural hinterlands in Britain. It was an attempt by populist political leaders to put "great'' back onto Great Britain like Donald Trump's making America Great Again. But the EU also did not help to moderate the situation and went instead on a territorial expansion on the ruins of former Soviet Union to draw in a huge pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour from the Central and East European countries and who then started to trek onward to West European countries creating labour supply glut. There has not been any real wage rise even in the most prosperous EU country, Germany, over the last two decades and a half. The situation in Britain is not any different - and in France it is even worse. The policy of wage depression and growing unemployment are now taking their toll not only in Britain and France, but also discontents are simmering underneath in Germany, Netherlands and most of the South European countries. The EU itself is in a serious crisis and the whole leadership is bogged down in just keeping the Union together. The Euro has turned into a noose around the EU's neck.
It is speculated that Mrs May and her advisers are aware of the internal crisis within the EU and might have tried to exploit that to their advantage to cause a EU climb down in its negotiation position with Britain. But on the surface, there is no visible indication of that.
All said and done, Brexit or exit from the EU has only two clear options and it has been so all along - anybody thinking otherwise must be fooling himself or herself. The clear options are either leave (no-deal Brexit) or keep tagging along with the EU in some form or other without the benefits of full membership; there is nothing in between. Probabilistically, leave (no-deal Brexit) now looks as the most likely outcome.
Muhammad Mahmood is an independent economic and political analyst.
