Not out

I assumed two years ago that I would be waking up on 30 March 2019 with the UK as an ex-member of the EU. After all, parliament voted by 498 to 114 in favour of triggering Article 50 in a vote on 1 February 2017, in the full knowledge that this was what the legislation entailed. But no. A litany of errors and political miscalculations over the last two years means that Brexit has, at the very least, been postponed for two weeks. 

Why is Brexit so difficult to deliver? 

The intellectual dishonesty at the heart of Brexit becomes more apparent by the day. It was always clear that triggering Article 50 meant accepting whatever compromise was agreed at the end of the negotiation period, otherwise the UK would have to leave the EU and rely on relationships governed by general international public law (e.g. trade would be subject to WTO rules). Of course, that would not be a problem because, according to Liam Fox, we would now be in a position to have rolled over the 40 trade deals with third counties that are currently covered by EU trade arrangements. He has managed just 8, the largest of which is with Switzerland. He also said that doing a trade deal with the EU would be "one of the easiest in human history." Nobody seems to have told his parliamentary colleagues.

Two years on and we are now in a position where the UK parliament has rejected the deal negotiated with the EU three times and is scrambling to find an alternative before it crashes out of the EU without any form of backstop on 12 April. The political system is simply not capable of dealing with the complexities of the Brexit problem. Over recent weeks, the executive (government) and legislative (parliament) arms of government have blamed each other for the current impasse but in reality they are both to blame. Starting with the government, there has been an appalling lack of leadership from Downing Street. Article 50 was triggered without giving any thought as to what the UK wanted from the negotiations and what it could realistically achieve. Theresa May then made a serious error of judgement in calling an election AFTER triggering Article 50 which not only wasted valuable negotiating time but resulted in the Conservatives losing their parliamentary majority. May’s inability to instil discipline on her own party has allowed backbench MPs to act with impunity, thus undermining the government at every turn.

However MPs as a whole have failed to cover themselves in glory either, and are held in low regard by most of the country. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s band of Brexit ultras has failed to heed the warnings that a no-deal Brexit threatens major economic disruption and are so obsessed with delivering an ideologically pure Brexit that the concerns of the electorate have been totally ignored. Rees-Mogg, lest we forget, has long derided the withdrawal agreement and claimed that the UK will become a “vassal state” if it signed up to it. This week, he indicated he would then back the deal if the DUP would do so. They didn’t but he supported it anyway. Meanwhile the Labour Party continues to suggest that an election is the only way forward because it will somehow be able to deliver a Brexit that has eluded the Conservatives, and has focused its energies on this issue rather than the task at hand. Then there are self-obsessed mavericks such as Boris Johnson who care not one jot for anything other than their own self-interest.

But perhaps the biggest problem over the past two years is that whilst the Brexit referendum was conducted on cross-party lines, with MPs free to campaign as their conscience dictated, the post-referendum process has been conducted along party lines. Both the Conservatives and Labour have tried to play the Brexit process purely for their own advantage and it has been clear all along that the Tories were attempting to “own” Brexit. They surely must regret that decision now. It is becoming clear that any attempt to find a Brexit resolution requires a cross-party consensus. Indeed, I did suggest in May 2017 that the negotiating team should be representative of parliament as whole rather than a single party. But what is now a crisis of government (or governance, if you prefer) clearly requires a different approach. I thus have some sympathy with those calling for the formation of a cross-party government. After all, the first national government of 1931 was formed in the wake of the economic fallout from the crash of 1929, and lasted for two months – perhaps just enough time to find a Brexit compromise. 

The way(s) forward 

I noted two years ago (here) that it was difficult to see how the UK would, in the prime minister’s words, “emerge from this period of change stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before.” Indeed, I pointed out that the UK was likely to be weaker, less united and more inward looking and I take no pleasure in being right about that. Nor, increasingly, can we be sure that Brexit even represents the will of the people anymore. Indeed, it only ever represented the will of just over half of those who turned out to vote. Although I have never been a supporter of a second referendum, the fact that politicians cannot decide what to do next suggests there is a case for putting the argument back to the people. After all, MPs have had three votes on the critical piece of legislation and have rejected it each time. The intellectual case against a second referendum gets weaker by the day.

However, I have long had a sneaking suspicion that the withdrawal agreement could go through at the fourth attempt. After all, the trend is running in the PM’s favour. Here is how it could be done: Assuming that on Monday parliament asks the government to consider a customs union with the EU, and that it agrees to this suggestion, the EU could simply revise the political declaration (the non-binding element of the legislation which is designed to chart the broad course of the future relationship with the EU). The declaration would then be aligned with official Labour policy and the government could put both the withdrawal agreement and revised political declaration before parliament for a fourth time in the expectation that Labour will support it. This would allow the government to deliver Brexit without a long delay as Theresa May evidently wishes.

If that fails, the UK might then have to face up to a general election. The government is clearly exhausted by its unsuccessful efforts to deliver Brexit and as the prime minister said yesterday in the wake of her third defeat on the withdrawal agreement, “I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this house.” But perhaps the quote which best sums up where we are in the whole sorry mess came from an unnamed cabinet minister who, when asked by a BBC reporter why Theresa May was putting up the withdrawal agreement for a third vote despite the fact she was almost certain to lose, replied “F*** knows. I’m past caring. It’s like the living dead in here.” That at least is something we can all agree on.

Decisions, decisions

Of all the more intractable problems I have encountered, Brexit is top of the list. Every time we think we have found a way forward, reality intervenes to cast us back to square one. It strikes me that one reason for this is that we are thinking about the problem in a binary way, which is inappropriate given the complexity of the issue. As it is conventionally presented in the media – and indeed in parliament – Brexit is a simple case of in or out. The prime minister’s ill-judged attack on MPs last week was a product of this kind of simplistic thinking. But it is wrong. There is a cost associated with each choice and the optimal strategy is to choose the one with the lowest costs. It is thus wrong to think simply of “in” or “out.” The real choice has always ever been between “in” and “what kind of out?”

Rather than trying to solve the problem by looking forward, we can use the method of backward induction which begins by looking at the end point and working back to determine the path necessary to get there. One of the great advantages of this approach is that it allows us to abstract from a lot of the political noise surrounding the current debate. Thus, to answer the question of how to leave the EU with an agreement that minimises economic costs to the UK, we can work out the sequence of events designed to get us to that point. By sequentially going through the outcomes, we end up gradually eliminating all the impossible options until only the possible ones remain. None of them accord with the plans put forward by the most fervent Brexit supporters.

But whilst this is an approach which allows us to look at desired outcomes, methods of voter choice help us to assess how we actually arrive at our choices, however unlikely they may be. Consider a system of single transferable votes in which 650 MPs face four options, A, B, C and D. Suppose they rank their preferences from 1 to 4. If no option commands a majority, the lowest-ranked first choice is eliminated from the ballot and the remainder are subject to a vote in the next round. The attached chart shows the sequence of how this might pan out.

In the first round, options A and D have an equally low number of first preferences but A is eliminated because it has a smaller number of second preferences. In the second round, D again scrapes through on the basis of having more second round votes than C and in the final round it ends up on top because more voters switched their allegiance to D than B, despite the fact that D was never a first choice winner in either of the first two rounds. Imagine now that option D is either a hard Brexit or revocation of Article 50. Although these are not plausible outcomes today, such a voting system demonstrates how they could end up as being the favoured choice depending what other choices are available.

An alternative voting system is the Condorcet method which attempts to force a decision by holding a series of one-on-one votes to determine whether there is one preference that comes out on top. In our example, we thus run six votes (A vs B); (A vs C); (A vs D); (B vs C); (B vs D) and (C vs D). If preferences are transitive (i.e. if A is preferred to B and B is preferred to C, then A must be preferred to C), it is possible to derive a winner. But if they are non-transitive it is not. Imagine, for example, the case where MPs are asked to choose between accepting the Withdrawal Agreement and revoking Article 50 and opt for the former. In a second vote, MPs prefer accepting the Withdrawal Agreement over a hard Brexit but in a third vote they express a preference for a hard Brexit over revoking Article 50. It is thus impossible to derive a series of ordinal preferences. This is known as the Condorcet paradox which we can liken to the game rock-paper-scissors, to which there is no obvious solution.

The work of Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow highlighted the problems involved in arriving at optimal choices. He gave his name to Arrow’s impossibility theorem which suggests that when there are three or more options, no ranked voting system can convert the ranked preferences of each individual into an overall ranking which meets a number of specific criteria. Perhaps the most important of these is that one person or group of people cannot be made better off without making others worse off (the Pareto criterion). This is an accurate description of where we are in the Brexit debate given the sentiments expressed on the streets of London at the weekend.

Continuing to put a series of votes to parliament, none of which commands a majority, can ever be guaranteed to find a resolution to the Brexit problem. The very fact that the electoral split in favour of leaving the EU was not much more than 50-50 ought to make us question why MPs can find a resolution when the electorate could not find a solution to the Brexit impossibility conundrum. The government’s approach has been to treat the outcome as a zero-sum game. But as the estimated one million people marching through London at the weekend highlighted, this approach is far from satisfactory. The only resolution to the problem is to buy more time: Kick the can down the road in the hope that society is able to agree on an acceptable compromise. Theresa May gained only an additional three weeks. It’s not enough!

The governance problem

Irrespective of one’s views over Brexit, there can be little doubt that the post-referendum negotiations have done great harm to the UK’s reputation for good governance. The British reputation for pragmatism has been trashed by the ideological positions adopted by all sides in the Brexit debate which threatens to do significant damage to the British economy. Whether a no-deal Brexit will or will not damage the economy is not the point: The mere possibility that it might illustrates that the government is prepared to take risks with the livelihoods of people whose interests they are meant to be serving. This is not good governance. 

The dictionary definition of governance is the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented. Government is one of the key actors in this area because it sets the institutional framework against which decisions are taken. The United Nations defines eight key characteristics of good governance: It is (i) participatory; (ii) consensus oriented; (iii) accountable; (iv) transparent; (v) responsive; (vi) effective; (vii) efficient and (viii) equitable. In addition, it should be ”inclusive and follow the rule of law [thus ensuring] that corruption is minimized and that the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.”

Measured in terms of these criteria, the post-Brexit decision-making process fails on a number of counts. Arguably the post-referendum process fails on the consensus criterion (i), although Brexit supporters will argue that the referendum was the greatest act of participation in British democratic history outside of an election. But there can be no doubt that the pre- and post-referendum process was not consensus oriented (ii). Unless the government puts the terms of its deal to the electorate, there is a case for suggesting that the accountability principle (iii) is also not satisfied – recall that the electorate did not express a view on the nature of Brexit. I would argue that the process also fails on point (vi) – such has been the inability of the government to make a case that will satisfy all parties, that it is clearly not effective. And it clearly was not efficient (vii) because the process has absorbed so much legislative time that the government has not had time to devote to other pressing policy areas.

On the plus side, the process does satisfy the transparency criterion (iv) though only because the courts forced the government to cede parliament a role in determining the course of Brexit. Whether the other points will ultimately be satisfied, only time will tell. But given the fact that younger voters voted heavily in favour of remaining in the EU, it is clear that “the future needs of society” have not been taken into account.

All these things matter because the UK’s view of itself is bound up with its reputation for stability. Italy has had 65 governments since 1946; the French political system was reconstituted as recently as 1958 whilst the Federal Republic of Germany is only 70 years old. Britain prides itself on its parliamentary democracy which has remained substantially unchanged over 300 years and whose direct roots can be traced back to the 13th century. It was supposed to be unthinkable that a Greek-style crisis of governance could ever happen in the UK. But it has. This does not mean that the UK is immediately about to fall apart at the seams (though it sometimes feels like it). But there are likely to be longer term consequences which will act to its disadvantage.

For one thing, the UK’s reputation as a business-friendly environment has been badly damaged. One thousand days after the referendum and with just nine days to go until EU membership is due to lapse, businesses have no idea about the nature of future trading arrangements with the EU. As a result of this mounting uncertainty, businesses have cut back on investment. We do not need to rake over the coals of what is happening in the car industry but Japanese manufacturers did warn in 2016 that they set up shop in the UK in the 1980s to ensure access to the EU, and that an abrupt departure would have ramifications for their future business decisions. 

Financial institutions which are already suffering from low interest rates, an inflated cost base and ever more stringent regulation, could not afford to wait around for governments to decide on the nature of the financial passporting regime and have been planning for more than two years how to secure business continuity. Around 7,000 jobs and £800 bn in assets (10% of total UK bank assets) have moved out of London to other European financial centres. It is highly unlikely that they will come back. And I have long expressed concerns that business that might otherwise have come to London will bypass it altogether. There are indeed indications that firms are opening their first European offices in the EU rather than the UK (Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Norinchukin Bank to name but two). 

The nature of the UK could itself be subject to change in future. Scottish voters predominantly rejected Brexit, as indeed did Northern Irish voters. The SNP’s raison d’etre is to push for Scottish independence from the rest of the UK and I have long believed that 10-15 years after the first independence referendum, which took place in 2014, there would be a push for a rerun. I stand by that view, particularly if Scotland is dragged out of the EU against its will. The question of whether Northern Ireland will remain part of the union in the longer term is also relevant. The DUP, which has played such a big role in the Brexit drama, gained only 36% of the vote at the general election two years ago and the vote share of pro-Union parties was only narrowly ahead of nationalist parties which would support a united Ireland. Many Irish commentators believe that a united Ireland is inevitable in the long-run – they may well be right. 

Many of these issues could have been avoided if the Brexit process had not descended into factionalism which prevented pragmatic decisions from being taken quickly. With the executive and legislative arms of government at loggerheads, the question has naturally arisen as to whether the system of government is broken. But it is not the institution of government which is the problem. It is those who are managing the process. Only today we have had the Leader of the Opposition walk out of a meeting of party leaders because of differences of opinion with other participants whilst the Prime Minister blames parliament for the UK's current predicament. This is not the behaviour of political leaders.

For a medium-sized country such as the UK to have held a prominent position on the world stage long after its military and financial clout have been diminished speaks volumes for its judicious application of soft power. But as one Italian journalist said to me recently, “I used to look up to the Anglo Saxon system of government compared to my own. Now I no longer do.” The damage caused to the UK’s international may not easily be repaired – if indeed it is repairable at all.

MMT: Modern Monetary Theory or Mad Macro Tosh?

John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money came about as a direct response to the economic conditions of the Great Depression which he attributed to deficient demand. His work, and that of his followers, demonstrated that cyclical variations could be dampened by greater government intervention to smooth out movements in the economic cycle. But by the late-1970s, the world was growing weary of recessions, high inflation and rising unemployment and was looking for alternative policy options to the statist economic model that had produced them. Thus was the free market economic revolution born. Fast forward thirty years to the fallout from the crash of 2008 and questions have increasingly been raised about the role of free market economics in producing the biggest economic slump in 80 years and the perception that economic and social inequality has widened.

One of the candidates for a new economic theory for the 21^st century is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which has been around for a while but is now attracting a huge amount of attention in the US. As might be expected, the pendulum has swung completely, with the latest policy theory attempting to move from the fringes to the mainstream espousing a much bigger role for government. It has increasingly been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum as a policy which could justify a big increase in government spending. The likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the high-profile US politician who is making a name for herself in the Democratic Party, has argued that her proposed expansionary fiscal agenda can be justified by MMT in which a rising deficit does not impose major constraints on the US economy.

MMT’s big thing: The lack of a government budget constraint

So what exactly is MMT? It starts from the premise that the government is the sovereign supplier of money. Consequently, there is no such thing as a government budget constraint because governments can finance their deficits by creating additional liquidity at zero cost when the economy is running below full employment. Even when the economy is operating above full employment, although there are some inflationary consequences, the budget constraint is still not regarded as an issue.

In conventional economics, the intertemporal budget constraint implies that if a government has some existing debt, it must run surpluses in the future so that it can ultimately pay off that debt. In formal terms, current debt outstanding is equal to the discounted present value of future primary surpluses. MMT gets around this problem by arguing that since the government is the sovereign supplier of money, it will always be able to generate the liquidity to cover any debt obligations. This implies that a sovereign government that issues debt in its own currency can never go bust. There is nothing controversial in that proposition per se – indeed, it is one of the arguments I have long used to refute rating agencies’ concerns about UK fiscal solvency. However, there are some major reservations.

MMT makes a big thing about the government’s monopoly in monetary creation. But governments need not be the sole supplier of money, as the recent Bitcoin debate has illustrated. It just happens to be the most convenient form. Second, all students of economic history are aware of past experience when unlimited monetary creation resulted in hyperinflation. This in turn gives economic agents an incentive to find alternative forms of money that will maintain their value. Third, whilst it is true that governments will always be able to repay their local currency debt, it does not justify continually expanding the deficit without limit. In what can be thought of as the “when you’re in a hole, stop digging” theory, governments have to be aware of the extent to which there will always be willing buyers of debt. If one government expands its deficit without limit but another is more prudent, bond investors will always favour the more prudent debt issuer. 

It claims to offser insights that standard Keynesian analysis has missed 

Indeed, the more closely we look at MMT the more we realise that some of its key underpinnings do not stand up to scrutiny. One of the claims made by its proponents is that it offers new insights that standard Keynesian analysis has missed. This is an overstatement. MMT appears to claim that Keynesian analysis failed to recognise that governments could finance themselves by issuing money and that budget surpluses reduce private sector holdings of high-powered money (that which is issued by the monetary authority). Both of these claims are false as both can be inferred from standard Keynesian ISLM models. There is also nothing new in the claim that if the private sector wants to save more (less) than it invests, government must run a deficit (surplus). Again, this is standard national income identity stuff.

MMT claims to differ from standard Keynesian analysis in that it “does not rely on increasing aggregate demand in order to reach full employment; it disconnects full employment from economic growth[1].” It does so by engaging in “targeted spending that is designed to improve the structure of the labor market by developing a pool of employable labor while at the same time ensuring continuous employment of those ready and willing to work.” Critics such as Thomas Palley[2] point out that there are no theoretical underpinnings as how this might work which makes it hard to validate the intellectual argument. My reading of this approach is that it merely represents a choice by government as to how to use the resources at its disposal (which MMT proponents argue are unlimited).

But its treatment of inflation is hazy

What is new is the claim that it is possible to create higher employment without generating inflation. But MMT lacks a well-defined inflation process which makes it difficult to validate this claim. Labour markets operate on the basis of the supply-demand principle and if there are labour shortages in key areas there will be higher wage inflation, particularly where there are structural impediments such a high concentration of trade union membership. Some MMT proponents do not accept that this Phillips curve-type world exists but offer no alternative inflation-generation model. There are some who do allow for such a process but they then cannot therefore escape the fact that they have introduced a trade-off between wage inflation and unemployment, even in today’s flatter Phillips curve world. 

It seems to me that much of the analysis relies on the assumption that a wise government planner will be able to determine in advance where bottlenecks in the economy will arise and that offsetting action can be taken. But since I am not convinced that macroeconomists fully understand the inflation creation process (here) I rather suspect this may be a forlorn hope. 

Desperate times call for desperate measures by desperate governments 

I have long been an advocate of using fiscal policy as a tool of demand management, so an attempt to identify a coherent policy that ascribes a role for government should not be dismissed. I am just not convinced that MMT lives up to (m)any of the claims which are made for it. Palley argues that “it is a policy polemic for depressed times. A policy polemic that promises full employment and price stability at little cost will always garner some attention … such a policy polemic will be especially attractive in depressed times.” It is widely dismissed as being neither modern nor a theory. There again George H. W. Bush initially dismissed Ronald Reagan’s supply-side policies as “Voodoo Economics” before he signed up to them as Reagan’s running mate. Just because it is flawed may not prevent governments desperate for alternative policy measures from trying it out.

---

[1] Tymoigne, L. and L. R. Wray (2014) ‘Modern Money Theory 101: A Reply to Critics’ Levy Economics Institute Working Paper 778

[2] Palley, T. (2014) ‘The critics of modern money theory (MMT) are right’ IMK Working Paper 132

Not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning

It is fair to say that after another tumultuous week in Brexit-land, we have only succeeded in ending up where we originally expected. The Withdrawal Agreement was heavily rejected on Tuesday for a second time; MPs indicated on Wednesday that they did not wish to leave the EU without a deal in place and parliament yesterday instructed the prime minister to request a three month delay to the Article 50 deadline. It is no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the world were on Westminster and not necessarily for positive reasons.

But we are by no means out of the woods. It has been clear for a while that the UK’s best option was to seek an extension of the Article 50 deadline but having got to that point I am less sure about what happens next. The UK now has to formally request an extension and it is by no means certain that it will get what it wants. Until recently, my assumption was that the EU would grant three months as a matter of course merely to prevent the worst case outcomes from impacting on the EU economy. But the mood music across the continent appears to have changed.

What will happen if the Withdrawal Agreement is resurrected for a third time?

The Commission’s view is that the UK must be able to show “a credible justification for a possible extension and its duration.” The UK thus plans to seek an extension for the purpose of implementing the necessary domestic legislation, which it cannot now do before 29 March because it has wasted so much time in trying to pass the Withdrawal Agreement. But as it currently stands the UK has not decided the terms on which it wishes to leave the EU, so it is hard to argue that it is in a position to implement any legislation. Therefore, it now seems likely that the UK will drag the corpse of the twice-rejected Withdrawal Agreement before parliament once again in a bid to give Theresa May a little bit of cover when she makes her case to EU leaders next week.

This is a very risky strategy. If parliament does ratify the deal, there is a very high likelihood that the EU27 will agree to Theresa May’s request. But if it does not it is a whole different ball game. So what are the chances that dissenting MPs will swallow their pride and vote it through? There appears to be a dawning realisation amongst the Brexit-ultras that the EU is in no mood for reopening negotiations and that if they reject the Withdrawal Agreement yet again, they may well reduce their chances of getting any Brexit at all. The DUP also appear to be biddable. Much appears to depend on whether the rebels buy the latest arguments from the Attorney General that the UK could unilaterally break away from the Irish backstop under the terms of the Vienna convention.

In simple terms, Article 62 of the Vienna convention says that if there has been "a fundamental change of circumstances" following the conclusion of a treaty "which was not foreseen by the parties", then the countries involved would be allowed to withdraw from the treaty. But since the current arrangement says that the backstop will come into place if no solution to the Irish border can be found, it is hard to argue that it would be unforeseen. Moreover, since the Attorney General argued only on Tuesday that there continue to be no grounds for the UK to unilaterally exit the backstop, and since nothing has changed in the interim, this does rather sound like a desperate ploy. But since rationality has very little to do with the Brexit debate, it might just be enough to convince those who want to be convinced, and thus enable the Withdrawal Agreement to be ratified.

And what if it is rejected?

But if it is rejected once again, MPs will have sent the prime minister “naked into the conference chamber” (to quote Nye Bevan). She will not have any cards left to play and the EU will be in a position to call the shots. Do not be surprised under those circumstances if the EU offers a much longer extension (e.g. until the end of 2020) with conditions attached that the prime minister is unable to accept (e.g. participation in the European elections). You can imagine what the Conservative Party reaction would be to such a proposal. Remember that almost one-third of MPs yesterday voted against an extension of Article 50 (i.e. for a hard Brexit), and of those who did support the extension many will have held their nose in voting for a short postponement. They are far less likely to accept one which runs (say) to end-2021.

This will put MPs in the position of having to choose between a no-deal Brexit and a long delay. But there is always a chance that Theresa May could put the Withdrawal Agreement up for a fourth attempt. Incidentally, if the margin of defeat follows an arithmetic progression, the sequence runs 230 (January), 149 (Tuesday), 68 (next week), -13 (fourth attempt). So it could pass on the fourth attempt after all. I thus do not buy the view that if the EU turns down May’s proposal next week that a hard Brexit will emerge by default.

A whole new dimension of Brexit issues

But we should not overlook the fact that the Brexit debate is about to enter a new dimension. In the short-term, the UK is about to throw itself on the mercy of the EU. But EU politicians, as opposed to the Council and Commission, are likely to take a much harder line on an extension. Attitudes are hardening amongst EU governments which fear that Brexit could be a distraction in their fight against populist politics in their own countries during the election campaign. There are also concerns that if the UK were to extend its EU membership beyond mid-year, but refuse to take part in parliamentary elections in May, the legitimacy of the parliament would be called into question which would give ammunition to the many populists across the continent. Make no mistake, the EU is rapidly running out of patience.

Even if the UK does ratify the Withdrawal Agreement and leaves the EU by mid-year, thus entering the transition period that runs to end-2020, a whole new set of problems will emerge. The UK will have to negotiate what sort of future relationship it wants with the EU. The shenanigans over the course of recent months, with those responsible for negotiating with the EU voting against the agreements they reached when they returned home[1], is not exactly going to fill the EU with confidence that the UK is a trustworthy partner.

It is also a fair bet that Theresa May will resign if she can negotiate the UK’s exit by mid-year. After all, why put herself through the stress of dealing with her divided and unthankful party? It will be left to another prime minister to deal with the longer-term arrangements, which could change the complexion of negotiations, but it is unlikely they will be any more successful than Theresa May in squaring the circle of domestic and international requirements. The initial stage of leaving the EU will not, in the words of Winston Churchill, be the beginning of the end but merely the end of the beginning.

---

[1] The classic example is former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab who was responsible for negotiating the Withdrawal Agreement between the UK and EU but who has twice voted against it in parliament. His successor Stephen Barclay this week made the case for  extending the Article 50 deadline beyond March and then voted against it.