Brexit Now A Damp Squib

Well what a difference an election makes.  The last time I wrote a blog post it looked like the Tories were cruising for at least a comfortable victory and probably a big one.  This would have both given the hard Brexit  they were pursuing a mandate and given them the votes in the Commons to deliver it easily.  I was looking at descending into complete despair.


It hasn’t turned out that way.  The electors have been having a laugh at the expense of the pollsters and have delivered a parliament with no overall control for any party.   This leaves the whole thing totally up in the air.  It does mean however that there is no longer a mandate for the full package of leaving the EU, the customs union and the single market.  There wasn’t even total support for it on the Conservative benches - which might have been a factor pushing Mrs May towards the decision she made.

So where does it leave us?  There is still the referendum result, so there is still a route to leaving the EU.  The easiest approach is the simplest.  If Britain stays in the Customs Union and the Single Market then many of the economic downsides are avoided.  The difficulty is freedom of movement, but there is always some fudge around if you need it.    There is a lesser difficulty in the form of the so called ‘divorce settlement’.  But that is relatively easy to fix by spreading the payment over a period of time.

So that is a pretty soft Brexit.  All we are losing is the ability to influence the policies and regulations of the EU directly.  These things are, to be sure, absolutely vital matters to Britain’s influence in the world and should not be given away.  But that is what people voted for.   But rejoining from this position is a fairly easy step.  If we ran it for 5 years by that time the issue will have lost some of its urgency and people will have noticed that being outside the EU doesn’t bring any particular benefits.

So that is my prognosis.  Soft Brexit followed by slow drift back into the EU and probably full members again by around 2030.  Damp squib instead of disaster.