mobanmarketLONDON — It’s crunch time for the Tory moderates.
Inside the U.K. Cabinet, those most fiercely opposed to a no-deal Brexit return to their constituencies this weekend wrestling with the biggest dilemma of their political lives: How long to give Theresa May before triggering the emergency escape hatch?
Jump too soon, by resigning to join a parliamentary rebellion against no-deal, and risk scuppering the prime minister’s negotiation with Brussels at its most crucial stage. But wait too long and it may be too late. Worse still, they will have abandoned their post at a time of national emergency.
The moderates’ dilemma was set up on January 16 when the Brexit deal was comprehensively defeated in the House of Commons, by 432 votes to 202. With a steep uphill battle to flip enough votes, May has opted to double down on her strategy of winning back the Brexiteers.
Her trip to Brussels Thursday aimed to renegotiate the contentious Northern Ireland backstop — something that officials in Brussels are adamant cannot happen but which May insists is the only route to a negotiated exit.
With the Brussels talks deadlocked, the government and the country drifts ever closer toward no deal.
“There’s a window before it’s too late,” one Cabinet minister explained. “We can’t wait for March 28. We don’t want to go too early, but we need a plan [from the government].”
An official close to a second Cabinet minister agreed. “That’s the dilemma. There’s no obvious answer. If you are committed to stopping no deal, do you fight until a minute to midnight? Or is this too late? What you don’t want to do is go too early, only for Article 50 to be extended and then the timeline shifts completely.”
Last-minute promise
May kept the show on the road at the last major parliamentary confrontation last week. MPs backed away from voting for an amendment that would have given parliament a mechanism to actually prevent a no-deal Brexit on March 29. Many Tories who are concerned about no-deal were won round by a last-minute promise from the prime minister to offer a further chance to vote on such a plan next week.
But anti-no dealers may decide that even that is not the last chance saloon.
In Brussels Thursday, the prime minister obtained the flimsiest of diplomatic covers to delay this moment of truth a little while longer, taking Britain even closer to the cliff edge. After “robust but constructive” talks with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a joint statement released on their behalf promised further negotiations over the next three weeks in an apparently last-ditch effort to find a solution.
The statement bought time — but with it a new deadline beyond which those lined up against no-deal say they will no longer accept drift.
By promising a second bilateral meeting with Juncker by the end of the month, May now has three weeks to engineer a diplomatic breakthrough or face the real prospect of a political implosion at home with Cabinet resignations and parliamentary moves to wrestle control from the government, MPs, ministers and officials said.
One senior Tory aide suggested a first “wave” of ministers below Cabinet level could quit in a “warning shot” before the big beasts of the party resign.
The problem is, no one wants to move first.
The government’s anti-no dealers are prisoners in their own Brexit dilemma. The more rationally they act — by working for compromise with their hard-line colleagues — the more likely they are to accidentally facilitate a no-deal.
“The problem is there’s an asymmetry,” the Cabinet minister explained. “The [European Research Group of backbench Brexiteers] are just crazier. We are moderates by inclination, which puts us at a disadvantage.”
The original prisoner dilemma, developed during the Cold War, illustrates why two rational prisoners will not cooperate to reduce their sentences, even when it is in their best interests to do so. The Brexit version is now playing out across parliament.
To avoid a no-deal, various factions of MPs lined up against it simply have to put aside their immediate political self-interest to cooperate. But to cooperate involves taking a major political risk which could backfire: What if your opponent doesn’t cooperate, leaving you exposed, taking all the flak for blocking Brexit?
For the most hard-line Brexiteers, no such dilemma exists: for them, no-deal is fine. They don’t accept the costs will be as high as the government and most independent experts claim (hence the cries of “Project Fear”) and they see big benefits in the medium to long term.
The dilemma is causing mounting consternation across government.
One leading Conservative MP involved in efforts to find a breakthrough compromise said: “Yes, this is the problem, but it’s worse than that. The prisoner’s dilemma involves just two people. This is a meta prisoner’s dilemma. It involves a whole load of different groups of MPs, all with different interests.”
The Cabinet minister said the question for those opposed to leaving without a deal is how to judge when no-deal had become the de facto policy of the government without ever being formally endorsed.
The end of February may now prove to be that moment.
If February tips into March with no breakthrough, anti-no deal ministers will be forced to demand changes to the government’s strategy or resign, the Cabinet minister said.
At this point those in Cabinet opposed to no-deal — led by Business Secretary Greg Clark, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd — will demand moves to cooperate with Labour or delay Brexit.
Conservative Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg have warned the party could split if it endorsed a permanent EU-U.K. customs union, as demanded by the Labour Party. However, the self-appointed “sensibles” insist that the party would also split if the PM took the country toward a no-deal Brexit, explicitly or not.
“She has to know it would split the party both ways,” the Cabinet minister said.
If MPs find themselves in March without any sign of breakthrough, those at the top of government fear an implosion in both major political parties, with unknown (and unknowable) consequences.
“There’s a failure of imagination, that somehow the worst won’t happen,” the Cabinet minister said. “If the Conservative Party splits, it would precipitate an immediate split in the Labour Party. It could all move very, very quickly.”
One senior Tory aide added: “I’ve not known anything like the current environment in parliament, the winds shift so quickly and so many times in a day. We won’t know until they suddenly start to do it. It’s an extremely febrile and organic environment.”
Theresa May has three weeks, then all bets are off.
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