Five Scenarios for Brexit… June 13, 2018
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Scenario two: government opts to stay in the customs union, or something like it (30% probability)
Mrs May has said on several occasions that the government will respect the referendum result and stick to its commitment to remain outside of the EU customs union and single market. However, the prime minister and her closest advisers fear that they do not have a majority in parliament to support these “red lines”. Instead, they have mooted the idea of making continued customs union membership beyond 2021 the effective “backstop” until an alternative option is found. The problem is that this solution could become a permanent one, effectively preventing Brexit.
The most dismal one is surely is:
Scenario four: Brexiteers revolt, replace Mrs May, fight an early election on a pro-Brexit platform and win a majority (30% probability)
This assumes that a leadership contest would be followed by an early election fought on a pro-Brexit manifesto. We assume that such an election would return a majority for the Conservative Party, which would have a popular mandate to pursue a tougher line in the Brexit negotiations. The Conservatives have been ahead in most opinion polls since April, and the May local election results, in which the opposition Labour Party should have cleaned up but instead performed well below expectations, were an indication of what could happen to the party in its working-class heartlands. Data on voting patterns by social class showed a huge haemorrhaging of working-class C2 (lower working class) and D/E (temporarily or long-term unemployed) voters from the Labour Party to the Conservatives. Labour is losing its old working-class base and is not gaining middle-class voters fast enough to compensate and enable it to win an election.
But…
A new Conservative government would retain the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). It could adopt a new negotiating strategy and play hardball, threatening that unless the EU deliver a mutually beneficial free-trade deal it will walk away, withholding the £39bn, pursue deregulation, maintain an open border for trade in goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic (although doing so unilaterally would possibly be breaking World Trade Organisation—WTO—rules on equal treatment), and play divide and rule among EU member states, exploiting differences on everything from security to trade.
Optimistic I’d have thought.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
The last optioin is basically that of the [Br/L]exiteer headbangers.
It’s highly unlikely that the EU would react as they hope.
Given how utterly unable the current Tory/DUP government is to agree on anything, I’m in no position to judge whether the latest contradictory sort-of commitments to the UK parliament will make the slightest difference.
The Economist ‘Intelligence Unit’ is as blinkered within in the UK media bubble as the other UK press. Never much impressed with it since the Economist when fully neolib in the 80s.
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Yeah that’s a fair point, one has to factor in their particular brand of right wingery.
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I’ve been reassessing my views on ABC1 and C2DE recently, largely because I’m thinking in a post-industrial economy whether in makes sense to separate C1 (Skilled non-manual) from C2 (Skilled manual), a nurse is a C1 and a plumber is a C2, yet income wise I doubt you could construe a difference, possible even that the C1 would be earning less than the C2.
And this is without even considering that pensioners (a group on the increase and madly pro-brexit) are E, something journos don’t tend to mention, if they even know it.
Here’s an old MORI piece which touches on this
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That’s extremely interesting, and the point re pensioners is spot on I think. Also pensioners have distinctions within that category between some who are actually relatively well off and others who most clearly aren’t.
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The Brexiteer “ultras”‘ bet is that the EU’s desperate need for the €40 billion and the prosecco and BMW manufacturers’ needs to sell to the British market is such that the EU would “blink” and allow all the everyday cross border or cross channel movements to continue on 30 March and thereafter just as they had done on 29, except that Britain would no longer be subject to the Brussels “diktat”. Its a pretty big punt.
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And here’s the funny thing, someone was saying that Brexiteers are always going on about how the economics will see them right ie the EU will lose clr y income and so will cut a deal but they seem oblivious to their own unwillingness to accept SIngle Market membership or customs union membership tho that would be more logical economically
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Whatever about the EU ‘blinking’ to the satisfaction of the Brexiteer ultras, there is always a big danger, isn’t there, that when it comes down to it, the EU’s major economic powers will do a deal which protects their own economies but not Ireland’s.
What a crap sentence. But you know what I mean.
To the Germans and French and Italians, protecting their economies is more important than protecting ours. If it comes down to the wire, we could get shafted.
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True, but I think they’re hemmed in a way by the very structures of the EU. And it’s worth asking precisely what would shaft us but not them, what sort of dispensation would there be where we were in the cold and they weren’t.
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Of course, anything can happen but I think it more likely that the big powers will see protection of the table d’hote menu of structural integrity (acquis communautaire of customs union, single market and so on) as the better for their national interests than a strong dimension of a la carte for the departing Britain. The latter would be calling time on the whole EU project.
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