Brexit – A Winter’s Tale

London is fixated with Brussels, Brussels with London, but the threads stitching Brexit together could unravel within the UK. There is still no Plan B, and the Remain campaign is fighting back.

Long ago, Britain’s greatest playwright and poet, Willian Shakespeare, wrote ‘A Winter’s Tale’, which begins as an intense psychological, romantic drama; progresses as a comedy; and ends happily. It’s the British way, of course.

The United Kingdom’s love-hate relationship with Europe is approaching the second act, the drama of triggering Article 50, that letter, which will spurn the lover.

In A Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare remarks: “What a fool honesty is.” It’s a valid commentary on the Brexit Referendum. Lies carried the day. The negative honesty of the Remain campaign was derided as ‘Project Fear’; and yet, even before Britain leaves the EU, the British Pound has collapsed to a 35-year low, multinationals are preparing to exit the UK; and global banks are making plans to relocate away from London.

‘It will be fine.’ say the Brexiteers. They have a plan, they say. But they don’t have a plan, they never did. They had a slogan, and false promises plastered on the side of a big red bus. They had racist posters modelled on Nazi propaganda – but no plan.

Constitutional vandalism

Months after the shock of the referendum, the United Kingdom is breaking apart from the inside out. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, said she still thinks the British government lacks a coherent plan for Brexit.

Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuiness, said the same. Northern Ireland and Scotland both voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU; now their devolved administrations, have been side-lined by Theresa May in an act of constitutional vandalism.

Will the UK Stay?

Despite the screaming and shouting, and cries from both sides of ‘GO Now!’ there remains the strong possibility, that in the end, after all the psychodrama, Britain will remain part of the European Union. That said, a second Referendum on EU Membership is not possible in the near future.

Though the Brexit referendum was not legally binding, its outcome is widely accepted as politically binding. However, the UK’s Parliament has begun asserting its authority, demanding scrutiny on the entire Brexit process and a series of votes along the way, culminating in a parliamentary vote, or a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

There are also a series of legal challenges to Brexit currently working their way through the British courts. The most high-profile of which saw the government argue that Theresa May alone, as prime minister, has the right to trigger Article 50 using the Royal Prerogative.

This position was opposed in court, and ridiculed by the Lord Chief Justice who said he was “baffled” by the governments argument. The case looks likely to go to the Supreme Court. If they fail to agree, the case could, ironically, be decided at the European Court of Justice.

On the face of it, a Brexit, of some sort, will happen. But Brexit could, as we are beginning to see, suffer death by a thousand cuts. Not one dramatic moment, but legal challenges, parliamentary votes, Brussels intransigence, a failing economy. Britons, would then, as former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said, be entitled to change their minds.

Pursued by uncertainty

In A Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare remarks that a protagonist will “Exit, pursued by a bear.” That bear, that uncertainty, is stalking Britain; and as the UK’s economy falters – it is already doing so – fear will rise.

To win, convincingly, the argument to stay in the EU, it is likely there must also be the prospect of a new kind of EU membership, a form of two-speed Europe. That would be a new season for Europe, and the end of Winter for the United Kingdom.

• Author: Maguire Brian, Euranet Plus News Agency