If there is one thing that is certain in life it is that things will never go back to what they used to be. History doesn’t repeat itself – either as farce or as tragedy - but it does sometimes show some pretty common patterns. Worryingly one of them is that a society that hankers after past glories rarely prospers. Another is that people can chase an illusion long after all prospect of it being reality has evaporated.
During the referendum campaign Leavers queued up to promise us faithfully that a favourable trade deal with the EU would be easy to strike. We now know that the reality is that we can accept all the key rules of the EU without any participation in making them or we can crash out. So fanatical leavers are busy changing their lines and telling us that crashing out of the EU without any deal might be painful for a while but all will turn out well in the end. Why should we trust them this time when they were so badly wrong last?
The next few weeks of Conservative Party infighting are going to be critical in determining the future of the UK for decades. That is a frightening statement to make. The realities of the Prime Ministers position are even more frightening. Somehow Theresa May has to survive a party conference, get the final details of a compromise deal with the EU hammered out and then get that deal through Parliament. She has to do this with a paper-thin majority in Parliament, with the majority of the members of her own party telling pollsters that they prefer Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and with increasing public disquiet that this is a lousy deal that leaves us taking all the EU rules but have no say in making them. Just as the Remainers said that it would.
Rarely has any PM faced a more difficult challenge. If she fails then it looks inevitable that her government will fall. There is no substitute PM in waiting who could better unite the Conservative Party behind a different approach to Brexit. Even if there was it would be too late to start a fresh round of negotiations. If May goes the infighting will be vicious in the extreme and it is simply impossible to imagine what political position a new leader of the Conservatives could adopt that would hold the factions together and manage the country. Even the hard Brexiteers can’t agree amongst themselves on a policy.
Curiously all of this is both a strength and a weakness for May. Her weakness is that there really could be 50 or so Conservative MPs who are so convinced that a hard Brexit is the solution to all our ills that they will force a defeat on their own party and destroy a Conservative government. Her strength is the obvious damage that would follow for the Conservative Party if that defeat happens. If you are a Conservative MP then it is hard to see what you would gain out of going to the country and explaining that instead of strength and stability you’ve delivered a split party and a complete cock up of Brexit. They would be finished as a political force for at least a generation and probably permanently. Infighting and blame for their loss of power would utterly destroy them.
That means that a lot of Conservative MPs will grit their teeth and back their leader for a few more months. They are unlikely to vote against their own PM when the whips tell them that the government will fall, they might lose their own seat and the replacement PM is likely to be Jeremy Corbyn. May therefore stands a good chance of surviving beyond March and of steering through the least damaging Brexit she can get away with. Quite a lot of the hard line Brexiteers are likely to back down and decide to let May take us a little bit out of the EU so that they can make that exit more severe at a later date.
Over in Europe signs are that the EU negotiators are also very worried about what happens if May’s government falls in the middle of the last few crucial weeks of the Brexit negotiations. Such a crisis wouldn’t just damage Britain it would create serious problems for the EU. Not least in struggling to understand how to set their own budget going forward or how to deal with the wild fluctuations on financial markets and the damage to trade and investment across the continent that would result.
So I also expect the EU negotiators to be strongly motivated to strike an agreement. Much of that agreement is likely to be to kick the can down the road and to decide that they don’t need to decide on a lot of things until later.
The most likely future is therefore one of banality. May struggles through. Some kind of half cock compromise deal gets through the EU processes and through Parliament. The day we leave the EU turns out to be one giant yawn. The country emerges weak and divided taking rules from the EU and facing a US government that is very good at starting trade wars and very keen to sell a lot more products to the UK on their own terms.
In these circumstances a lot of people are going to ask the simplest of questions. Is this really worth all the fuss and trouble? Is this messy compromise better than the deal we started with? Is this the strength and stability we were promised?
Ordinary people who are not obsessed with politics tend to be very good at spotting the differences between politician’s promises and reality. With every passing day those differences are becoming increasingly obvious. That is why each week the demand for a second referendum is growing. The tradition in the UK is that when you win an election you have the right to try and deliver what you promised the voters. When you fail you get kicked out. The same principle must now apply.
Brexiteers sold us a fantasy. They have failed to deliver on it. We now deserve the chance to vote again and let them know what we think of the difference between their lies about a big glorious future and the sad messy reality that is about to be delivered.