Thursday 26 January 2023

Did Remain Cause a Hard Brexit?

Some points on Nick Tyrone's piece exonerating remainers and Remainism for the hard Brexit we ended up with.

First, where I agree. As a movement of parliamentarians and in the wider country, Remain did not cause the Brexit shit show we ended up with. He's right. Theresa May was responsible when she set out the terms of what Brexit meant in the most narrow, sovereigntist terms possible and as argued at the time and since her concern was about keeping the Tory party together. This trumped everything else. Second, May and Boris Johnson, who converted to Brexit because it was but a trifle, chicken feed you might say, for the country to pay if it meant having him for Prime Minister. And third, the campaign for a second referendum was wrong. For Tyrone, it's because if it was successful and remain won there would be endless bad blood, and if leave was reaffirmed politics would be in an even darker, more reactionary place than now. Though, as was obvious at the time, for many of the elite figures involved, particularly from Labour, getting another referendum was a secondary objective.

Disagreements. On the indicative votes, and the brief window of negotiations that took place between May and Jeremy Corbyn after her Brexit deal was smashed by massive government defeats. Taking the votes first, readers might remember that four options were put before the Commons. There was the revocation of Article 50 in the event of a no deal Brexit, pushed by the SNP. Peter Kyle put down a second referendum option, Ken Clarke a Brexit that would have kept Britain inside the Customs Union, and the softest of Brexits pushed by Nick Boles that kept the meat of Clarke's preference and added the gravy of free movement and some form of single market access. Labour whipped for all save the SNP's motion, and for their part the SNP supported Boles's Brexit. Boles fell 261-282, Kyle 280-292, and Clarke 273-276. Tyrone argues if a few more remain-minded MPs had given an inch and supported Clarke, it wouldn't have mattered because an indicative vote is, unsurprisingly, indicative. Not much would have materially changed.

Politics is a matter of probabilities, and there's a deal of reading back the actual outcome into what might have happened. Remember, the indicative process begun because the Commons was log-jammed. At this stage Article 50 was still ticking away after its first extension and following May's third defeat. No deal was not off the table, and it appeared paralysis could lead to the worst possible outcome. Given the fevered state of politics, the consequence of a positive vote in favour of the Clarke option would have transformed the situation. As we later saw in the Autumn, and given John Bercow's thinly concealed support for the opposition, there is good reason to believe parliament could have wrestled away control of the legislative timetable from May's imploding government. A proper motion for Clarke could have gone down and might well have been won and all bets would have been off for what happened next. But whatever possibilities that moment may have had were shut off because the Liberal Democrats, Change UK and the SNP did not support it. Given Scotland voted remain, there were very good reasons for the SNP to do as they did. Not so the ultra remain parties. That doesn't make them chiefly responsible for what did happen, but their choices had consequences.

On the negotiations, Tyrone argues Corbyn has more responsibility for the hard Brexit because he could simply have whipped for May's deal, which was a de facto customs arrangement anyway. He's right that the Tories would have self-destructed if May had to rely on Corbyn's support, but this supposes Labour were happy campers at this stage. When May invited all comers into negotiations with the government, so desperate was she to get her deal done that she offered absolutely no concessions to anybody. Labour wanted to make changes to her political declaration and, as a floor, affirm remaining in the customs union - as per Clarke's position. May wasn't interested. In this situation, Corbyn could have said fine, the party will support her deal despite not offering anything and caused a serious split in its own ranks. Not just with remain-ultra MPs on its backbenches, but very probably on its front bench and among the membership itself. Remember, Labour was forced to adopt the second referendum position eventually because supporting Leave on Tory terms, whether May's or Johnson's, would have destroyed the party. Think the 2019 result was bad? It could have been so much worse.

When it comes down to it, Brexit is a complete dog's dinner. It's a criminal waste of time when other social problems are going begging and most of the major nations are sitting on their hands as climate change disaster bears down on us. But it could have been handled differently, and the kind of exit we got was not inevitable. Remain as a movement are not responsible, though actions by some of its adherents limited the scope for a different ending. Nor for that matter was Jeremy Corbyn who worked to protect the position of our people. It's so much easier to think about the Brexit wars as personality clashes and blame games, but as with all things political it was a struggle between interests. And that's how the politics and fall out of the referendum must be approached.

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11 comments:

Old Trot said...

This article will no doubt go down well with your uncritically pro EU middle class readership , Phil, but it just demonstrates yet again that the Left Liberal 'Left' in the UK just can't stop trying to exonerate themselves for their absolutely key role in the BREXIT issue-led 2019 electoral disaster . Collective amnesia reigns about the near triumph of the 2017 election - in which Labour's simple , principled, promise to "honour the outcome of the EU Referendum" was sufficient to take that core issue off the table for the eventually to be permanently lost Red Wall working class voters in the 2019 election - in which Labour's then position was contradictory slippery, dishonest, and ludicrous - and an utter betrayal of its 2017 position. Let's recall that in 2019, Labour eventually committed itself to finish negotiating the BREXIT terms, but THEN to hold a special Conference - to see if it could support those terms - before holding a new Referendum, in which it would have undoubtedly campaigned against its own negotiated deal !!!

The Left Liberal, middle class UK 'Left' , having no joined up socialist theory or deep historical understanding to guide their often barmy scattergun identity politics-saturated politics nowadays, just can't grasp that almost NONE of the hugely popular big transformative issue policies in either the 2017 OR 2019 Labour Manifestos were possible to implement under the EU's competition rules. Even renationalising the railways as a single entity , a policy hugely popular with Tory voters nowadays, is totally impossible under the EU's 2013 '4th Railway Directive' (look it up if you don't believe me).

In fact the middle class Left were willing putty in the cynical hands of the Labour Right and centre, and particularly that devious state agent, Starmer, whose role in sabotaging the possibility of a Labour/Conservative deal on May's proposal is well detailed in 'The Starmer Project' by Oliver Eagleton. Eagleton's huge mistake in that book is to ascribe genius level manipulative skills to Starmer. In fact all he had to do was hitch a ride on the Labour 'Left's' naive, superficial belief that the entirely neoliberal EU was somehow a vehicle for 'worker's internationalism' and protection of workers' rights. Tell that to French workers battling the Macron government's relentless attacks on their rights for years now -- with not a cheep of complaint from the EU Commission or European Court.

The UK Left Liberal middle class Left is now so utterly divorced from the life experiences and priorities of the mass of the UK poorer working classes that it has nothing to offer - leaving the political field wide open for the siren voices of the cynical, divisive, populist Alt Right, pseudo radicals to build mass support.

Durruti said...

In the week that Tom Nairn died, there is no better time than to revisit his The Left against Europe.
The real question, rather than who did what in 2019 and when, is what is and should be the position of the left, including its radical variants, on internationalism with our European neighbours? Lexit has shown itself to be a disastrous position and has simply provided fodder to the racist right. Corbynism and Socialism in One Country also had next to nothing to say on the relationship with European workers and trades unionists. Little England has many subcultures and one still resonates within the left in this country.

Jim Denham said...

"Old Trot" once gain shows himself to be an old Stalinist, with no undertsanding of serious class politics, the reactionary nature of the anti-EU stance that had disfigured the British left since the 1960's or the reality of what EU membership actually meant for the left in terms of pros and cons (I accept there were some 'cons'). This posturing "prolier-than-thou" Brexiteer likes to call the internationalist left "liberals" but his petty bourgeois little_Englandism has nothing to do with seruios working class politics and everything to do with the reactionary "socialism in one country" reformist illusions of the Morning Star the Socialist Party and the "Lexit" clowns.

Zoltan Jorovic said...

Revisiting the endless and pointless arguments over who said/did what and who was/is responsible for where we are now regarding our relations with the EU is as useful as debating how many angels can dance upon the end of the pin. The question of how we ended up where we are can be left to historians. What matters is what we do about it now.

I suppose it's a feature of the comment sites that we get people proclaiming that some set of people they label has a uniform set of beliefs (e.g. the "left liberal middle-class left" - catchy!) which the commentor uniquely understands and 'analyses' to demonstrate how omniscient they are and how everything they dislike about the universe can be explained by this group's mistaken views.

A statement like "UK Left Liberal middle class Left is now so utterly divorced from the life experiences and priorities of the mass of the UK poorer working classes..." is illuminating. "See that lot over there? They know nothing. I, on the other hand, understand the suffering of the masses. Why? because I am 'True'left. A Left working-class illiberal left with unique access to the Truth. Oh, and that other lot, they are cynical, divisive and, horror of horrors, populist, but despite them being wrong about almost everything (except those bits the LLMCL believe) those same masses will follow them".

Surely given your unique vision and understanding they will be flocking to your banner? Or no doubt you'd argue they would if they knew what was good for them instead of being misinformed by the 'mainstream media'. It's funny how the Alt-right and 'True'left end up sounding almost exactly the same. All this proves is that labels like left and right have become irrelevant and if we must label people, can we please have some categories that better reflect the world as it is now, rather than in 1917?

In conclusion, I despair of anyone who has such a level of certainty about what others think. I can only ascribe it to a sort of twisted solipsism: "my understanding is uniquely right, and everyone else's can be grouped into categories for me to decry, in order of how close to the truth (i.e. my opinions) they get". We all secretly think that, but most of us are grown up enough to realise it isn't healthy and it isn't true and it definitely isn't something we should say out loud.

TowerBridge said...

Thanks Phil for that post.

I also read what Nick Tyrone said and felt uncomfortable in the way he portrayed labour at the time. You make a very obvious (in hindsight) and salient point, namely, the role of the LibDems and ChangeUK in this. In Nick's piece they go unmentioned.

Now I'm not sure whether I should subscribe to his substack. I was interested in the views of other Europeans outside the UK about the UK and rejoining but I wonder what frame those will be delivered in.

Anonymous said...

< "my understanding is uniquely right, and everyone else's can be grouped into categories for me to decry, in order of how close to the truth (i.e. my opinions) they get". We all secretly think that, but most of us are grown up enough to realise it isn't healthy and it isn't true and it definitely isn't something we should say out loud. >
If only you had followed your own advice and kept quite we would never have guessed that you thought like that .

South London said...

< "my understanding is uniquely right, and everyone else's can be grouped into categories for me to decry, in order of how close to the truth (i.e. my opinions) they get". We all secretly think that, but most of us are grown up enough to realise it isn't healthy and it isn't true and it definitely isn't something we should say out loud. >
If only you had followed your own advice and kept quite we would never have guessed that you thought like that .

Blissex said...

«Corbyn could have said fine, the party will support her deal despite not offering anything and caused a serious split in its own ranks. Not just with remain-ultra MPs on its backbenches, but very probably on its front bench and among the membership itself.»

I guess that the large surge for Labour in membership and votes in 2017 on Corbyn's "we don't like brexit but soft brexit is the least bad way forward" position then never happened.

«Remember, Labour was forced to adopt the second referendum position eventually because supporting Leave on Tory terms»

I guess that Labour only ever had a choice between opposing May's deal by calling for a second referendum to repeal brexit, or voting for May's deal, and the "soft brexit" position of 2017 was therefore impossible and never happened.

«supporting Leave on Tory terms, whether May's or Johnson's,
would have destroyed the party.
»

But IIRC New New Labour's Starmer did support enthusiastically Johnson's Leave terms with a a three-line whip, and yet it is currently leading the polls. But my recollection must be defective, and that never happened.

https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-sets-out-labours-5-point-plan-to-make-brexit-work/
«Setting out Britain’s relationship with Europe under a Labour government, Starmer will say: “With Labour, Britain will not go back into the EU. We will not be joining the single market. We will not be joining a customs union.” He will add: “We will not return to freedom of movement to create short term fixes. Instead we will invest in our people and our places, and deliver on the promise our country has.”»

Blissex said...

«supporting Leave on Tory terms, whether May's or Johnson's,
would have destroyed the party.»
«But IIRC New New Labour's Starmer did support enthusiastically Johnson's Leave terms with a a three-line whip»

I must admit however that there was a party split: Corbyn defied the 3-line whip and abstained from voting for Johnson's and Starmer's “Leave on Tory terms”, but then he has already been thrown out of the PLP :-)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/31/labour-vote-tory-brexit-keir-starmer-deal
Starmer whipped Labour MPs to vote in favour of Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit trade deal yesterday, and 37 of 200 – almost one in five – chose to defy [...] Among the 37 rebels, just three were frontbenchers compelled by their decision to quit [...] No shadow cabinet member broke ranks.

Zoltan Jorovic said...

@SouthLondon (or is it Anonymous?) obviously I can only speak for my own thoughts as I am not able to read minds, but it does seem generally true that people believe in the correctness of their own opinions. I have yet to meet anyone who told me they strongly held an opinion which they knew to be wrong. Are you the exception?

TJR said...

How interesting that the same right-wingers who happily parrotted Margaret Thatcher's slogan "There Is No Alternative" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative as young fogies in the Eighties, are now convinced that real Brexit has never been tried, and that it's failed (so far) only because it was sabotaged by "the Blob", the Deep State, the Unelected Judges,[*] the quangos.
In their view, the solution is what one American writer called "the Green Lantern theory of politics" - believe in yourself, summon the will, overcome your self-doubts and hesitations, and you can re-shape the world according to your vision.
In other words: socialism fails and will always and everywhere fail because of immutable laws of economics... but Britain can blow off its largest and nearest trading partners with impunity, if only its PM can summon the courage to speak plainly, look Uncle Fritz in the monocle, and say: "Nein!"
[* unelected judges, like un [-directly-] elected European Commissioners = very very bad. Unelected monarchs, unelected Foreign Ministers, unelected media owners = what's your problem? Some unresolved daddy issues, or just plain envy?]