Now that Britain’s Parliament has rejected a half-in, half-out compromise on membership in the European Union, what’s best for the lovers of liberty in the UK? The answer is to do nothing.
It is best to stop trying to strike with Brussels a “deal” or withdrawal agreement. Rather, the government should permit the two months to the Brexit deadline to pass, and — presto! — Britain will be independent without a deal.
That’s what’s called a “no-deal Brexit.” It’s what Prime Minister Theresa May has been scrambling to avoid with her feckless negotiations and an agreement that would have left Britain half-in and half-out of the EU.
No sooner was May’s deal this week hooted out of Parliament — the vote was 432 to 202 against her compromise, the most resounding defeat for a government proposal in living memory — than the Europeans themselves started agitating to cancel Brexit altogether.
“If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal,” the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, tweeted, “then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” What Tusk wants is to somehow undo the outcome of the 2016 plebiscite.
Yet it isn’t true that “no one wants no deal.” London foghorns may be warning that a no-deal Brexit would mean a period of economic turmoil. A strong faction, though, sees no deal as ideal. And such an outcome has already been authorized by an act of Parliament.
“Most of the MPs saying we can’t leave without a deal actually voted for a law that provides for us to leave without a deal,” says a Jacob Rees-Mogg, Conservative member of Parliament and a leading Brexiteer.
He was talking about legislation passed in Parliament to authorize May to ink the notice that, under Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union, set Britain’s exit date of March 29. The stage had been set with the Brexit referendum. That’s when the question of whether Britain should quit Europe was put to the voters.
Here is how the question was phrased on the referendum ballot: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” That’s all.
The ballot offered two answers, phrased to avoid suggestive words like “yes” or “no.” Rather, the options were either to “remain a member of the European Union” or to “leave the European Union.”
Britons flocked to the polls. Turnout was 33 million, or 72 percent of registered voters. (American presidential elections haven’t seen that kind of turnout in a century or more.) And while the result wasn’t a landslide, it was unambiguous. Nearly 52 percent voted to leave the EU. They didn’t pick any halfway measures or ask for any “deals” with the Brussels mandarins.
So devastating was the vote that the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, quit. His ignominy was that he had campaigned against the independence of his own country.
Too bad the Tories turned around and replaced him with another of their members who had opposed independence. That incredible blunder made May prime minister. Ever since, she has heeded the chorus of Europhiles scared of independence. And they are constantly warning of economic and political trouble that is going to follow absent a European deal.
It would be foolish to suggest that a no-deal Brexit is entirely without risk. Delays in importing medicine, disruptions to the labor market, travel problems are all mentioned. This, though, has created a kind of hysteria in Britain. One group that favors a no-deal Brexit likens it to the panic that erupted over the “Y2K bug” at the turn of the millennium.
No guts, no glory, I say. America, after all, quit Great Britain on terms much more dramatic than a no-deal Brexit. Global Britain, a group of both Labour and Conservative veterans, sketches the advantages of a no-deal Brexit. It favors Britain dealing with Europe under terms of the World Trade Organization.
Global Britain calls the WTO a “safe haven” and points out that WTO rules cover trade with six of the EU’s 10 top partners, including China, Russia, India, Brazil and Japan.
That’s why a no-deal Brexit is sometimes called a WTO Brexit. It would leave Britain unencumbered and able to strike its own bilateral deals with America and others. Britons knew all this when they voted in the referendum. Now their government should honor their democratic choice.