It is a piece of cognitive dissonance that No Deal is the most popular option among the general public at the moment. The short term is sure to be a difficult, particularly on the British side. It is one thing to say Leave. It is quite another to suggest No Deal. Why, then, can No Deal be both the most popular option, and the worst one?
The most obvious answer is that No Deal is being pushed for by politicians who look for their own political, influential or business success there, rather than the wellbeing of the country as a whole. The ERG and UKIP are commonly seen as the key culprits here. It certainly seems that they are trying to capitalise on the processes and opportunities of populism: those voters who have enough frustration with government to support No Deal as an extreme solution, and thus Leave politicians as political figureheads. They do this having protected other business arrangements elsewhere through measures such as moving them to Northern Ireland. That, however, is far from the complete answer. This opinion is held by more than those who are the targets of the ERG or UKIP.
One other opinion I have heard first-hand is that we should have ‘just said No Deal at the beginning and then got on with sorting it out’. The perception here is twofold: first, that No Deal is of no meaningful impact on one’s life. That either one’s life is sufficiently financially secure to have no real sense of negative impact from almost any policy, or that one’s life is so profoundly bad that the prospect of no deal causing havoc is more of an infliction of hardship on those more well-off than a sense of challenge or change for those already struggling to make ends meet. After all, how much worse can it get if things are already awful? It is surely a sorry state of affairs that either perspective is the case in modern society.
The second implication here is that No Deal can be understood in the business sense of beginning from a neutral situation. The implication is that the country runs as an independent system and foreign relations are of only minor, external importance to the internal whole. What’s missing in this instance is an understanding of the mechanics of the process. We are not starting from a blank slate. A deal, in this instance, has in a sense already been reached which reaches to the very heart of British society in terms of both regulation and global supply chains. Britain is a full member of the EU as negotiated in the 1970s and 1980s. We are attempting to disentangle from that deal and replace it with another for the most complicated system on the planet: national administration. It is perhaps best thought of as managing a potentially volatile chemical reaction such as nuclear power. The key to balancing and ensuring the smooth running of any such system is making only minor adjustments, rather than abrupt, erratic changes. Any slight miscalculation and disaster can follow quickly, as we saw at Chernobyl. In Brexit’s case, it’s lorry carparks at the border and no food or medicine, among other challenges.
The necessities of such an alteration come down to the most minute level. Even in the situation that all aspects of public life remain the same, the gaps left by the EU must be replaced. This includes services currently undertaken by the EU for which the UK Civil Service must set up entirely new directorates. It also includes entire industries and trade arrangements which will no longer apply or be part of the economy in the event of no deal, not least of which is London’s position as the financial capital of Europe. Even if the rules of society stay the same, the economy and elements dependent on the EU will have to change. This will have unavoidably far-reaching impacts on British society.
Beyond these practical implications of a No Deal perspective, the overriding impression is one of frustration. This can be linked to a number of factors. Most obvious among these is the inertia of the processes of government. A large portion of the country are being made to feel the impact of a uniquely drawn-out profession. In politics, as in law, deals cannot simply be discussed over a business conference or a lunch break. More controversial bills can take up to two years to get through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, bouncing back and forth, being amended until they have enough support to be able to pass. The Lords cannot reject deals indefinitely, only twice, and the bill must pass on third reading. Still, mixed in with all the other business of government, the time taken to research and put forward new policy can take a long time. In this sense, Brexit is nothing new. It’s just not normally so visible to the general public.
Driving this, however, is the frustration is that the referendum feels like it has not been decided yet; that politicians have spent two years lamely playing catch-up to understanding a decision which was already made. To say we should have said No Deal and then got on with solving it implies that the decision to Leave in 2016 was treated as a question, rather than an answer. One we are still trying to solve in attempting to reach a deal on how Brexit would even begin to work.
In a very real sense, this is true. In this unique situation whereby a government did not argue for change in its own referendum, planning for Leave was left entirely to Leave campaigners. As such, there was no real planning for, or executive expectation of, a Leave situation when the decision came in 2016. There was no preparation for breaking the political norm of EU membership. The referendum did ask a question of government, of parliament and of the country, as to what Leave would mean if it was reality. This was not aided by the delayed process of actually leaving: a two-year period has left two years over which to decide whether Leave can actually be pulled off. The issue here is that we’ve done all the planning for Brexit after we decided to do it, leading to this odd sense of inertia.
It’s hard to say what the answer is for this situation, particularly as we approach a resolution. After two years, the government has done some of the work it should have done before the referendum in envisioning and planning Brexit. Yet the damage has already been done through that delay. Opinions have had time to ferment and calcify. Attempts at explanation now will be seen as not enough, as we saw in the YouGov poll tracking opinions on the government’s handling of Brexit.
That said, there are indications that, even now, there is room for resolution. The government must prove itself once again to the British people: that it takes into account their needs; that it provides the services necessary to deal with Brexit; that it can make a success of this referendum; that it can correctly navigate to, and sensibly execute, public consensus. To assuage the support for No Deal, the government must clearly demonstrate that it represents, and respects, the entirety of the UK.
Global Retrospective 