I voted remain. I didn’t do that because I think the current European project – the European Union – is a good project for Europe. I don’t think it is. I think that the EU project took a wrong turn at Maastricht, that the single currency as it was implemented has been a disaster for European social democracy and that the Lisbon treaty capped a decade of wrong turns. But nevertheless it is in the UK’s national interest to stay inside the EU (and outside the single currency) and that all possible versions of the UK outside the EU are sub optimal.
I also think that, once the UK voted for Brexit, it was going to be extraordinarily difficult to get the EU apparatus to accept the need to rethink the EU’s architecture so as to accommodate a new sort of off-shore affiliate even though keeping the wheels of commerce turning with the world’s six largest economy, a very significant trading partner which is home to Europe’s richest region, and the home of Europe’s main financial centre, would seem like a common sense sort of thing to do. Unfortunately the mistakes in building the EU has left the European system being run by a rigid rule based apparatus that is very inflexible in any negotiation with countries that fall inside its arena of hegemony.
However even given the fact that all possible variants of leaving the EU are sub-optimal for the UK, and even given the fact that having a real process of negotiation about a leave deal was going to be very, very difficult given the way the EU operates, the UK could have done better. The mistakes happened right after the referendum and were partly the fault of the political chaos the referendum result unleashed, partly the result of Brexiteer’s magical thinking and largely the result of the failures in the the leadership of all the political parties.
When the UK voted to leave the EU, and once the dust has settled, it was clear that the UK had only two real cards to play. One was when and under what circumstances Article 50 would be triggered, and the other was the UK’s role in the EU budget system. The immediate position of the EU apparatus was – predictably – no negotiations until Article 50 is triggered and then a negotiation sequence that would resolve the key issue of the budget contributions right at the beginning (ie the EU gets what it wants and then it would talk about what the UK wanted). Unfortunately the UK accepted this position and the result was that we gave away all our cards at the beginning and have none left to play except for driving over the cliff of a no deal exit.
The referendum vote actually gave the UK levers of sorts. It was obviously going to have to accept the democratic will of the people but how and when it did so was up to the UK. The referendum result said nothing about the timetable for triggering Article 50 and this uncertainty was something that could have been used to pressure the EU. I think the UK should have said that it accepted that no substantial negotiations on the substance of the separation agreement could occur before Article 50 was triggered BUT there would be no triggering of Article 50 until an agreed framework and timetable for the post article 50 negotiations had been agreed. The UK should have insisted that there had to be a negotiation about the negotiation process and that it had to be completed and signed off before Article 50 was triggered. Additionally the UK should have insisted that the only negotiation structure it could accept would be a single package, that is that everything is negotiated simultaneously and everything is linked to everything else.
The EU would have almost certainly rejected the idea of a pre Article 50 negotiation about the structure of the post Article 50 negotiations, and would have strongly resisted the notion of negotiating everything as single package. In which case the UK could have used a delayed Article 50 trigger to cause deep mischief inside the EU system, and in particular in relation to the EU budget. It is hard for outsiders to grasp quite how important the budget question is for the EU apparatchiks but it is literally their bread and butter and the pivot for a huge amount of internal EU politicking. If after the referendum the UK had failed to secure an agreement on the post Article 50 negotiation process then it should have simply announced that as it was going to be triggering Article 50 at some unknown point in the future but with the EU refusing to discuss and agree the negotiation process in advance the situation had reached an impasse and that as a result the UK would suspend all the UK’s contributions to the EU’s budget effective in the next budget cycle. Remember passing the EU budget requires all member states to approve it and without triggering Article 50 the UK would have remained a full member and therefore in a position to seriously disrupt the EU budget making process.
Whether taking such a course of action would have led to a better outcome for the UK is impossible to say but surely when entering a difficult negotiation process it is best not concede all the other sides demands first before discussing one’s own demands. Negotiating while holding no cards is never a good option.
