Enough is enough

Brexit has become such a dominant element of my professional life over the last six years that I thought I had become inured to the craziness as politicians bend over backwards to fulfil “the will of the people” following a non-legally binding referendum that threatens to crash the economy. But the events of the past few days have tried my patience like never before. We are increasingly in a 1984-style Orwellian world in which politicians operate in a world of doublespeak. Take today’s parliamentary votes in which MPs passed two motions, one of which called for redefining the nature of the Northern Irish backstop designed to avoid a hard Irish border whilst the other made it clear that parliament is not in favour of leaving the EU without a deal.

MPs fell over themselves to suggest that somehow we had moved forward. How? By accepting two contradictory motions, one of which suggests the UK is prepared to go to the wire on the backstop proposal and the other which says the complete opposite?  Such is the predicament facing the Conservatives that Theresa May is prepared to ride roughshod over the national interest in a desperate attempt to keep her party together. And everyone can see it. Obviously the EU has no interest in renegotiating the deal – the need for an Irish border exists to ensure that if the UK does indeed crash out of the EU and falls back on WTO rules, they can be enforced. Moreover the EU has made it clear that the UK can remain within the customs union if it is prepared to accept the terms. But this is not enough for a group of MPs who, in the words of Boris Johnson, want to have their cake and eat it.

If Orwell had not written 1984, someone else would have had to invent Emmanuel Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the first chapter of which is entitled Ignorance is Strength.

Ignorance abounds: Following the warnings by Airbus CEO Tom Enders that the company may be forced to reconsider its position in the UK in the event of a hard Brexit, we were treated to this spectacular rebuttal from Conservative MP Mark Francois who remarked that his father “was a D Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son." Yes, you did read that right: an elected member of the British parliament, born in 1965 and whose military experience came no closer than serving in the Territorial Army, refers to a war that ended twenty years before he was born to attack the business interests of a multinational company. Is this really where we are? Has Brexit at all costs simply become a cause celebre for nationalists to realise their fantasy of a pre-EU Britain that never really existed? In the words of comedian Chris Addison, “it’s a peculiar anomaly that Brexiters can clearly recall World War 2 yet have no apparent memory of The Troubles in  Northern Ireland.” Shame on you, Mark Gino Francois.

The extent to which the Conservative Party has tied itself in knots over the EU question was laid bare by a recent BBC programme Inside Europe, the first episode of which followed the trail which has led us to our current predicament. It illustrated the extent to which the British Conservatives have failed to engage with the EU. But perhaps more damningly, it highlighted the ham-fisted efforts of former PM David Cameron, who was elected on a promise “to stop banging on about Europe”, to deal with the EU and how he failed to stand up to the right-wing of his party at pretty much every turn. We were reminded of how the UK vetoed the EU’s efforts in December 2011 to rewrite treaties which would place limits on fiscal deficits and debt, and impose automatic penalties for countries which breach them, as it attempted to place a firebreak in the way of the raging Greek debt crisis.

As it happens, the EU did not cover itself in glory. The measures were badly designed and focused on imposing fiscal discipline at a time when it was least needed. In the preceding the 17 years Germany had only complied with the debt brake rules twice and France not at all. But the EU was still not willing to grant the UK any concessions which would exempt the UK financial services industry from any treaty changes, thus prompting Cameron’s veto. I wrote at the time that it “could set the UK on a collision course with other EU members. It is to be hoped that such an outcome does not arise.” I had no idea it would lead us down the path towards  the 2016 showdown but it is no surprise that the EU was not overly keen to help Cameron when he attempted to wring concessions which would  allow him to claim some progress ahead of his self-imposed (and foolish) decision to call a referendum on membership.

One of the issues that struck me most forcibly was that many Conservative politicians were fixated on the need for a referendum as early as 2012 in a bid to lance the boil of Euroscepticism. Whilst the Westminster bubble may have focused on the fact that UKIP was drawing support away from the Conservatives, the issue of the EU simply was not as uppermost in the minds of voters as the programme led us to suppose. I thus could not help feeling that there was a certain amount of history being rewritten.

Every time British MPs engage in a bout of navel-gazing such as we have seen tonight, we call enough is enough. Yet still it goes on. But Brexit is simply a problem for the Conservative Party that cannot agree on what form it should take. If I were an EU negotiator, I would tell the UK government that they have a choice – accept the deal as it is or leave without one. They have no interest in giving in to the Conservative hard-liners who have demonstrated unwillingness to compromise. It is now up to British politicians to face them down, and stand up for what they were elected for: The interests of the people who put them there – all of them, and not just the 52%.

The business end of Brexit

The warnings by business leaders over the past three years that Brexit would be bad for the British economy have gone largely unheeded. One of the most frequently cited examples is that of Sunderland, in the north of England, which voted 61.3% in favour of Leave despite the threat this posed to the region's largest employer, Nissan. Even today TV camera crews can found on the streets of Sunderland filming the views of locals who continue to insist that Nissan will not leave the town. Yet two years ago Nissan executive, Colin Lawther, appearing before a parliamentary committee indicated the difficulties for companies like Nissan in dealing with a hard Brexit. The plant receives 5 million parts a day, 85% of which are imported, but the plant holds only enough parts for half a day’s production due to the costs of storing them. Just-in-time inventory management, facilitated by free movement of goods, is crucial to the plant’s success.

As long ago as September, BMW announced that it would bring forward its annual maintenance shutdown to late March in order to deal with any potential problems. Since the turn of the year we have seen a number of other companies announcing Brexit contingency measures. A couple of weeks ago Honda announced that it would shut its factory in Swindon for 6 days in April to ensure it could adjust to "all possible outcomes caused by logistics and border issues." Jaguar Land Rover has also decided to shut down its four main factories for an extra week at the start of April on top of a previously planned maintenance pause because of “potential Brexit disruption.” Not convinced yet?

Earlier this week, Airbus CEO Tom Enders warned that the company might be forced to quit the UK in the event of a hard Brexit. In Enders’ words, “please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness, which asserts that because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong.” Indeed, Enders gets to the nub of a problem which has been a running sore in the Brexit debate with some politicians having demonstrated extraordinary arrogance with regard to business. Last summer, when asked about corporate concerns over a hard Brexit at an event for EU diplomats in London Boris Johnson is reported to have replied: "F*** business." A couple of weeks ago he was at it again: When presented with the not-unreasonable claim that Jaguar Land Rover boss Ralf Speth might know more about the car industry than he does, Johnson replied “I’m not certain he does.”

A few months ago, Owen Paterson MP also dismissed claims by car manufacturers that Brexit would have consequences for their business. In his words: “If we really do leave the Customs Union, Jaguar Land Rover will have access to cheaper parts and components all around the world and the European suppliers will be forced to compete or they will lose Jaguar Land Rover’s business.” This is peak Bluffocracy and is reminiscent of armchair fans who claim that they would make better football managers than the present incumbent. Clearly there is something seriously wrong with our political culture when MPs can make such claims in public and not suffer the ridicule they deserve.

But it is one thing to ignore the warnings of business: It is another thing entirely for politicians not to take any decisions at all which hugely complicates the difficulties in the business decision-making process, particularly when there are very long lead times involved. This lack of certainty acts as a brake on corporate activity, and business investment declined in volume terms in each of the three quarters of 2018 for which we have data. In the nine quarters since the EU referendum, UK business investment volume has increased by just 0.6% compared with 5.7% in the nine quarters leading up to it. CBI survey data indicates that investment intentions in plant and equipment have been lower over the past six months than at any time since 2009. This is not indicative of a business community that has any faith in the government’s Brexit assurances.

Business is no longer taking government on trust. The Guardian reports today that firms are planning a mass exodus in the event of a no-deal Brexit. In the financial services industry, banks have long been preparing for the worst case outcome. Since the passporting legislation, which allows banks to be regulated in one EU country but conduct business throughout the EU, cannot be guaranteed beyond 29 March this has prompted them to put in place contingency plans to transfer staff to other EU locations to maintain business continuity.  Although the numbers involved so far are relatively small, probably of the order of 7000, firms are also transferring assets out of London as balance sheets are run down. And this is only to keep business running in April – the shift will be far larger in future. 

The experience of Nordea bank acts as a cautionary tale. Nordea was involved in a tax dispute with the Swedish government and threatened to shift its headquarters from Stockholm to either Copenhagen or Helsinki. When the Swedish government refused to back down, Nordea management persuaded shareholders to sanction a move to the Finnish capital which was not only one in the eye for Sweden but allowed the bank to base itself inside the euro zone’s banking union. The moral of the story is that businesses do not issue threats they are not prepared to carry out.

Of course, the biggest irony over the last week was the announcement that that Brexit supporter James Dyson is to move his company’s HQ to Singapore. There may indeed be good business reasons for the move but it is a PR own goal of mammoth proportions. It does not sound as though Dyson has great faith in the UK’s role at the heart of a new global trading hub. Still, it is consistent with the actions of the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg whose investment fund decided last summer to set up a fund in Dublin, as asset managers worry about being cut off from European investors. A case of “do as I say, not what I do.”

Plan B looks like Plan A revisited

Anyone hoping for anything new from Theresa May’s statement to parliament today would have been sadly disappointed. The law required the prime minister only to give a neutral motion – one which does not require parliament to take a decision one way or the other – and that is what we got. However, the PM effectively admitted that her efforts to reach out across parliamentary lines have failed. Other political leaders are simply not prepared to draw the same kind of red lines as May who remains in a clear minority as one who believes the Withdrawal Agreement is the only game in town.

Worse still, the prime minister continued to rule out an extension of Article 50 and a no-deal Brexit, thereby failing to put in place a safety net that other MPs might be prepared to buy into. She also ruled out the prospect of a second referendum, arguing that there is unlikely to be sufficient support for it in the House of Commons. She may be right. As I noted in my last post, constitutional experts at UCL argue that it will take a minimum of 22 weeks to get a referendum done from start to finish – and that is without dealing with the aftermath. It is more likely to run over a much longer time period and the government recently released material to MPs suggesting it could take a year. This would require a much longer Article 50 extension than the government is currently prepared to accept.

There is a strong possibility that at next week’s vote, May will simply try and present the same deal as last week but with some tweaks that give the impression the Irish backstop deal will be time-limited. This may allow it to pass through parliament but will count for nothing unless the EU agrees, particularly since the Irish government has resisted UK efforts to do a bilateral deal on the border problem. Putting the same deal to a vote next week is akin to Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again in expectation of different results. But we need to look at this debate in the same terms as the main protagonists – trying to apply economic rationality is not the right way to go about it.

Both the Conservative and Labour leaders are clearly using this issue to play for party political ends. May’s problem is that if she crosses red lines on issues such as remaining in the customs union or extending Article 50, she will lose the support of yet more MPs whilst further alienating the Conservative party membership which clearly favours Brexit. She is clearly doing everything she can to avoid going down in history as the leader who split the Conservative Party. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn is playing a similar game. Although his party members oppose Brexit, Corbyn has refused to engage in negotiations which enable the government to deliver Brexit on its terms which in turn will reduce the chances that Labour can win a general election. His tactic is to force the Conservatives to “own” Brexit in the expectation that it will blow up in their face. As a political manoeuvre, the actions of both sides make sense. But since there is a real risk of a no-deal Brexit if one or both sides miscalculate, this strikes most observers as unnecessarily risky.

Another worrying trend is the sense that the electorate is becoming so disenchanted by the process that it would rather the government took a decision one way or the other rather than engage in continued debate. I was particularly struck by the debate on the BBC's Question Time programme last week when the biggest cheer of the night was reserved for an audience member who called for politicians to enact the result of the referendum result and leave the EU. To the extent that politicians tap into the public mood, they may feel emboldened by this sort of sentiment to push for a hard Brexit in the knowledge that their electoral prospects are unlikely to be harmed by acceding to the “will of the people.” Nonetheless, Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King's College London, who was also on the Question Time panel, made it clear that a no-deal Brexit implies trade-offs that too many politicians have not been sufficiently honest about.

Indeed, it is almost six years to the day since David Cameron’s speech at Bloomberg’s European headquarters in London, which he gave on 23 January 2013, in which he stated “It is time to settle this European question in British politics.” Obviously, we have done nothing of the sort and in retrospect, it is clear that we have arrived at our current position because of a series of unintended consequences flowing from that speech. It was obvious at the time that Cameron never thought he would be in a position to take a decision on a referendum, as it was expected that his Conservative Party would only be able to govern in tandem with the LibDems. This assumption turned out to be wrong and Cameron compounded the error by adhering to his election manifesto pledge to hold the referendum.

It has also become obvious in retrospect that the idea of allowing an outbreak of direct democracy in a system based on representative democracy was a mistake. Direct democracy requires a far greater degree of engagement than representative democracy, which effectively outsources decision-making to the government. Since it is not a system which people in Britain are used to, it became an emotional battleground rather than a subject of rational debate. Theresa May’s government further compounded the problem by taking a non-legally binding vote and transcribing it into law.

This trail of unintended consequences makes it clear that the hoped-for outbreak of rationality, which many expect will save us from the cliff-edge Brexit, may fail to materialise. Sound advice would thus be to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

The logistics of a second referendum

Support for a second Brexit referendum appears to have risen of late. According to an opinion poll released yesterday supporters of a second referendum outnumber those who oppose it by a margin of 47% to 36%. Many politicians also support this option. As I have pointed out previously, I am by no means persuaded of the merits of a second referendum because it will do nothing to heal the divisions caused by the 2016 plebiscite. In addition it will be used by Brexit supporters as yet another example of how the political establishment conspires to foil the will of the people. Nonetheless, if parliament cannot resolve the current impasse and there is sufficient public support for this option, there is no reason in principle why it should categorically be ruled out.

But the logistics of the second referendum are such that it will be far more difficult to implement than the headlines would have us believe. The Constitution Unit at University College London set out in great detail many of the issues involved, and it is worth looking at this paper for those interested in the detail. With regard to the mechanics of the referendum, the first issue is how quickly it could be done and there are there four stages which will determine the front to back timeline.

In the first stage, parliament must pass primary legislation to provide the legal basis for a referendum covering issues such as the question on the ballot paper, conduct rules for the poll and the date on which the referendum will be held. There is no minimum time for this process but it took around 7 months for the first EU referendum to conclude. The analysts at the Constitution Unit reckon that on the basis of past experience, it may be possible to reduce this period to as little as 11 weeks but this would only be possible if there is cross-party consensus. In the current environment, this is far from the case.

The second stage of the process is question testing, which normally takes 12 weeks but the UCL team suggest that it could be done in 8 if needed. Stage three is preparation for the poll, allowing sufficient time to prepare for the administration of the poll and regulation of referendum campaigners. The Electoral Commission recommends a six month period but on the assumption that the same rules apply as in 2016, the UCL team reckon this could be kept to 1 week. The final stage covers the campaign period itself which must last for a minimum of 10 weeks (no exceptions). The UCL academics reckon that a minimum of 22 weeks are required if everything goes according to plan and if some of the processes are run concurrently.

On that basis, if parliament can agree on the need for a second referendum between now and next Thursday, they just might be able to get it done by 27 June – the last Thursday of the month. If we follow a sequential process, adding up the minimum time periods gives us a total of 30 weeks which takes us into the height of the holiday season in mid-August. The front-to-back timeline for the 2016 referendum was close to a year. In my view, the odds against getting a referendum done in 2019 are quite high.

Obviously, there is no chance of getting any of this done before 29 March. Thus if the UK does want to hold a second referendum it will have to ask for an extension of Article 50. It is generally supposed that the EU will grant the UK an additional three months but this would only take us to end-June, which is not enough time to hold a referendum and deal with the aftermath. An extension beyond this date becomes constitutionally complicated. The European parliamentary elections are held in May and the new parliament will convene on 2 July. However, the UK has not planned to send any MEPs to Brussels on the basis that it will have left the EU by the time the new parliament sits. If Article 50 is extended beyond June the UK will be in breach of its EU obligations if it does not send MEPs to Strasbourg to sit in parliament. A three month extension thus runs the risk of merely postponing the cliff edge until the summer.

However, it transpires that the Electoral Commission has set aside £829,000 for "activities relating to a European Parliamentary election in 2019" which was described as a “precautionary measure.” In other words, in case the UK needs to hold an election of MEPs on 23 May. Just imagine how that will play with the eurosceptics who will probably not bother to turn out to vote. Against that, it may enthuse Remain supporters to turn out in higher numbers than usual.  Whatever the merits of holding European elections, it is the only way that the UK can press for a longer Article 50 period that would allow the possibility of holding a second referendum.

Whilst it is theoretically possible to do this, nothing that we have heard from the political establishment – even prominent supporters of the second referendum – suggests they are even contemplating this option. But if they are serious about the so-called “People’s Vote” they will have to do so. Parliamentary opposition to holding European Parliament elections in the UK will be enormous and I can’t imagine for a moment that the government will support the idea. But this could be one of the next battlegrounds in the Brexit saga, the duration of which will surpass that of the Second World War in 12 days’ time.

Another step closer to the edge

After all the frantic attempts to cut a deal the British parliament finally got down to business by voting on the Withdrawal Agreement drawn up between the UK and EU back in November. And in line with expectations parliament rejected it, but the defeat by 432 votes to 202 – a margin of 230 – was rather more emphatic than many had supposed. This is the biggest defeat that any government has ever suffered on a parliamentary vote; the previous record was the 166 vote margin registered in 1924 (chart). This calls Theresa May’s survival into question and with a vote of no-confidence in the government tabled by the opposition, which will be discussed tomorrow, we are truly in constitutionally deep waters.

In terms of what it means, the margin of defeat for the Withdrawal Agreement was so wide that there is little point in the British government going back to Brussels to try and achieve any concessions. The EU’s view is that parliament rejected the deal so decisively that there is little it can do to improve things for the UK government. Second, the risk of a no-deal Brexit may have actually risen. One of the proposed amendments this evening was one which called for a rejection of the deal but which committed parliament to ensuring that the UK did not leave the EU without some form of safety net in place. This was not called to a vote, presumably because its backer (Jeremy Corbyn) saw a tactical advantage in not doing so. Consequently, the UK finds itself looking over the edge of the cliff with just 75 days until it legally leaves the EU. This position could yet be remedied but it does not feel like a comfortable place to be.

The motion of no-confidence in the government allows all MPs a chance to vote on whether they wish to see the current government remain in office. The outcome is decided on a simple majority: If the government loses the vote, Theresa May will be forced to resign and parliament has 14 days to form a new government which is acceptable to all MPs. If that does not happen, parliament is dissolved and new election must take place. The no-confidence motion will debated in parliament tomorrow with the vote taking place at 1900 GMT. The Democratic Unionist Party, which supports the minority Conservative government, has confirmed that it will vote for the government. Providing that all Conservatives also provide their support, Theresa May is likely to live to fight another day. But a Machiavellian interpretation would be that Tory MPs vote against the current government in order to oust Theresa May and install a candidate who is acceptable to the Tories and DUP, and win on a second vote.

You can see why that might be an attractive option. Theresa May is becoming a serial loser. In times past she would have resigned and many rightly ask whether she can deliver on Brexit. She cannot get her current deal across the line, despite it being the least-worst option in terms of leaving the EU whilst supporting the economy. But she is unable to propose an alternative. Nor has she been willing to countenance postponing or reversing Brexit.

The government now has no choice but to press for an extension of the Article 50 period. If the alternative is a no-deal Brexit, which will certainly worry the EU, this is almost certain to be granted. However, it is only likely to get an additional three months because the new European parliament, which will be elected in May and in which the UK will not be represented, must convene on 2 July. It is difficult to see how the Article 50 period can be extended beyond that for all sorts of constitutional reasons. But what will the UK do with the extra time granted to it?

There appear to be four realistic options: (i) negotiate a more acceptable agreement with the EU27; (ii) a hard Brexit; (iii) call a second EU referendum and (iv) unilaterally withdraw the Article 50 notification, following the ECJ’s ruling last month. The option of a general election is not one which would resolve the Brexit conundrum and would only be a by-product of the current uncertainty, so I do not consider this as a solution.

Option (i) appears increasingly unlikely whilst (ii) is still unpalatable to most MPs (despite what happened tonight). Option (iv) would probably be seen as a betrayal of the democratic process: Even if the referendum in June 2016 was not legally binding, laws subsequently introduced give it much more force. This leaves option (iii) – a second EU referendum. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea: For one thing it will further deepen the many divisions which were laid bare by the June 2016 vote. But if parliament is unable to reach an agreement on how to deliver a Brexit without sending the economy over the cliff, it may have little choice. Parliament has had 30 months to come up with a decision on a question that the electorate was given four months to consider - and it has failed. It is clear that politicians cannot resolve the problem. Maybe it is time to throw it back to test the will of the people.

A rabbit in the headlights

Tomorrow evening the vote is expected to take place which will determine whether the deal which Theresa May’s government negotiated with the EU has been accepted by the British parliament. At this stage the likelihood is that it will be rejected and much ink has been spilled in determining what will happen thereafter. In the event that this is the case, what will matter for the government is the margin of defeat. A narrow margin could mean it comes back in a revised form: A wider one will have bigger ramifications. Whatever happens, the vote will not be the end of the matter – assuming the deal is voted down, it will merely mark the first stage of a process as the government tries to figure out what to do next. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I maintain that an extension of the Article 50 period remains the best option to give the UK some breathing space and will also ease the pressure on the EU in the face of a no-deal Brexit.

In the event that the cliff edge Brexit is avoided in March, this will be no thanks to the efforts of the British government whose strategy and tactics in the wake of the 2016 EU referendum have been abysmal. Two years ago, Theresa May set out her objectives for leaving the EU in her (in)famous  Lancaster House speech. With hindsight, it increasingly looks like the hollow rhetoric of a leader who has proved unable to deal with the Realpolitik of Brexit – not that I can think of any other currently active politician who could have done a better job. As they say of the manager of the English national football team, the prime minister’s job right now is an impossible one.

Nonetheless, there is a lot in the 2017 speech that looks dated and much that was undeliverable even then. One of the things that jumped out at me was the sentence: “Unlike other European countries, we have no written constitution, but the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty is the basis of our unwritten constitutional settlement.” It is this lack of any written rules which has made the current parliamentary debate so problematic. It explains why I am unable to give a concrete answer to many of the questions put to me by international investors, who expect the UK government to be following some kind of script (the most frequently asked question is what is the timetable for tomorrow’s process. The truth is there isn’t a fixed agenda: The vote will happen when the debates are finished). The fact that no codified agenda exists has allowed both government and parliament to make up rules as they go along (pace last week’s concerns that the Speaker of the House of Commons was able to intervene in issues of parliamentary procedure).

Perhaps an even bigger irony is that the government has tried to thwart parliamentary sovereignty at every stage. It initially tried to port all EU law into the Great Repeal Bill but was forced by the courts to allow parliament a say in the legislation. In late 2017, the government was forced to give parliament approval of the final terms of the withdrawal deal (the meaningful vote, which takes place tomorrow). It has since had its wings clipped further by MPs who increasingly demand amendments to government legislation. This is a consequence of the fact that the government is weak and rudderless and having lost its parliamentary majority in 2017, it is struggling to stay afloat.

The rest of the speech does not look good in hindsight either. Remember this gem: “we will take back control of our laws and bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Britain”? That would be the same ECJ which will have such an influence over the future relationship between the UK and EU. Or this: “A stronger Britain demands that we … strengthen the precious union between the 4 nations of the United Kingdom … And I hope that same spirit of unity will apply in Northern Ireland in particular over the coming months in the Assembly elections, and the main parties there will work together to re-establish a partnership government as soon as possible?” The devolved Northern Irish Assembly has not convened since 9 January 2017. At  a time when Northern Irish affairs are at the heart of the Brexit problems, the body  responsible for overseeing issues in the province has been conspicuous by its absence (to be fair, the government is not to blame, but the DUP which has “supported” the government since it lost its majority in June 2017 is culpable).

As I pointed out at the time, the Lancaster House speech was nothing more than a wish list. Let’s start with “Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain from Europe.”  The proposed transition agreement requires the UK to maintain free movement at least until end-2020 and those MPs pushing for a Norway-style agreement with the EU seem blind to the fact that a prerequisite for such an arrangement is acceptance of the four freedoms. The PM went on to demand that “I want us to have reached an agreement about our future partnership by the time the 2-year Article 50 process has concluded.” Not going to happen! The best the UK can hope for is that the status quo is maintained post-29 March. And of course the 2017 speech was famous for the phrase “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.” Never was so much nonsense talked to so many by so few. If no deal is such a great idea why has the government done so much to prevent the UK falling back on WTO rules?

More than anything, May painted so many red lines in the January 2017 speech that it created a number of hostages to fortune. The charitable explanation is that she was unsure of her position at the head of her party and had to throw scraps of red meat in order to keep the Brexit ultras onside. But because she made so many undeliverable promises, from which she was forced to backtrack, May has given the impression that she has been chasing events rather than setting the agenda. If her vote is defeated tomorrow night, it is hard to see where she goes from here. If she fails to deliver Brexit on 29 March, the whole premise of her term in office will be called into question. Even Jose Mourinho’s past record did not prevent him from being sacked as Manchester United manager, and Theresa May’s track record is far less impressive.