Britain will remain a united kingdom, deal or no deal

If the Brits don’t leave the EU now, their democracy and sovereignty are profoundly undermined.

Britain’s Boris Johnson is prepared for a no-deal exit from the EU.

Coming to the end of nearly three months based in London, I am ­enthralled by the endgame of Brexit under Boris Johnson.

This is a struggle of the first importance to the whole of the West because if the Brits don’t leave the EU now, by October 31, then their democracy and sovereignty are profoundly undermined and one of the strongest buttresses of the Western alliance, and Western civilisation, is gravely compromised.

But there are so many moving parts to this show that it’s extremely difficult to follow, much less predict. So let’s try to answer four key ­questions.

Can the British parliament stop Johnson from leaving without a deal on October 31?

Johnson has told the EU he won’t even hold face-to-face talks with it unless it agrees to scrap the so-called Irish backstop under which Britain could be forced to remain under almost all EU rules forever, or until Brussels agreed it could leave, which is the same thing. The EU says it won’t renegotiate the backstop.

In that case, Johnson says, Britain will leave with no deal on ­October 31. That would mean Britain would trade with the EU under World Trade Organisation rules. The House of Commons has demonstrated that it has a ­majority against a no-deal Brexit but it hasn’t shown it has a major­ity in favour of anything else.

The legislation the Commons passed when it invoked article 50 to leave the EU made no mention of departure being conditional on a deal. Theresa May often said: “No deal is better than a bad deal.” So the legislation provides that if there is no deal Britain leaves without a deal.

How could the Commons stop Johnson? Technically, a majority could seize control of the parliamentary business agenda and pass a law revoking article 50. That would be a very complex process and there is as yet no sign a majority would do that because it would spit in the face of the 2016 referendum result. The idea that the politicians had overruled the people would be deeply toxic. London friends who are quite sober think this scenario could lead to conflict in the streets.

I don’t think British politicians would do it. It might not work anyway. Johnson could call an election before such legislation passed or received royal assent and then set the date for the election just after October 31. So Britain would have left without a deal.

The scenario regarded as more likely is that the Commons, with at least several Tories crossing the floor, could pass a vote of no confidence in Johnson’s government. However, this too could be very messy. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the government then has 14 days to see whether it can restore confidence in the house or someone else can command confidence.

The initial motion of no confidence could well take several days to debate. Parliament resumes on September 3. Say you didn’t get the actual vote until September 6. The interpretation of 14 days also becomes important. Is it 14 parliamentary days? That period may not expire until September 26. If the government cannot restore confidence it would be en­titled then to call an election. And guess what? The Prime Minister determines the timing of the election.

But some clever boots, especi­ally the passionately pro-Remain Tory Dominic Grieve, are keen on the idea of a temporary government of national unity formed for the sole purpose of delaying Brexit, perhaps authorising a second referendum and calling an immediate election.

But where is the constitutional case for throwing out a prime minister who is seeking an election in order to replace him with another prime minister who is also seeking an election? In any event, the leader of such a national unity government could not be Jeremy Corbyn. No Conservative, no matter how much he dislikes Johnson, could vote to make the ageing Marxist from Islington, the protector of anti-Semitism and the friend of terrorists the prime minister.

So could the temporary prime minister be an ageing Tory such as Grieve or the equally pro-Remain Ken Clarke, or some centrist or semi-retired Labour figure? That had theoretical currency for five minutes but Corbyn and his frontbench have said they would not support this under any circumstances. The only Labour candidate they will consider to put forward is Corbyn himself. In any event, Labour’s official position is that it won’t support a national unity government in principle.

It is just barely possible that the Commons could pass legislation to force an election before October 31. Here again, Johnson might not forward such legislation to the Queen and declare it is obsolete because he has called an election for the first week of November.

This obviously has the potential to become a constitutional crisis, perhaps embroiling the Queen. All sides of British politics are inclined to speak of these ­issues just at the moment in a fashion that excites the deepest passions. That’s pretty irresponsible because somebody — a very large group of people, in fact — is going to be very disappointed no matter what happens. The losers need to seek redress at the ballot box, not on the streets or through violence.

The only participant in the debate retaining his customary good ­humour and speaking with no measurable malice towards anyone is Johnson himself.

How much democratic legitimacy does a no-deal Brexit ­really have?

This question provokes passionate hostilities. The move for a referendum on Britain’s EU mem­ber­ship got going with a petition and then a vote of 80 Tory dissidents in the Commons in its favour. The brilliant Nigel Farage founded the UK Independence Party and started slowly but built up consistent performances, winning millions of votes across Britain, though he got scarcely any seats because of the first-past-the-post voting system.

Elections for members of the EU parliament are counted on a proportional representation basis and UKIP won the 2014 EU elections, a stunning upset. Conservative leader David Cameron, after 13 years of Labour government under Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown, barely scraped into office in 2010 in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. He was terrified of what UKIP was doing to the Conservative vote.

So as a central part of his 2015 election campaign, Cameron promised a straight-out binary choice, in-out referendum on Britain’s EU membership. Unexpectedly, Cameron won a clear majority in his own right in 2015 and, just as he had designed the referendum pledge to achieve, UKIP’s vote fell significantly.

When he put EU membership to a referendum, Cameron and most of his ministers, Labour and virtually all of its shadow ministers, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists all campaigned for Remain. The BBC, The Economist, The Times, all the establishment media campaigned for Remain; so did every international leader Cameron could influence, from Barack Obama to our own Tony Abbott (who sensibly became pro-Brexit immediately the referendum was over). The Cameron government ostentatiously made no preparations for a leave vote and politicised all manner of government institutions by getting them to warn of imminent economic catastrophe if Britain voted to leave.

But here’s the thing about ­voters. There’s a limit to how much you can boss them around. In the biggest vote in British history, the people voted 52-48 to leave. Cameron stepped down and May became prime minister. Shortly after famously declaring that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, May got the Commons to overwhelmingly pass legislation triggering article 50 and departure from the EU. As I say, the legislation has no proviso for departure to occur only if there’s a deal.

Then at the 2017 elections, the Conservatives and ­Labour, having supported article 50, pledged themselves to honour the referendum and leave the EU. The pro-Brexit parties won more than 80 per cent of the vote. The pro-Remain Lib Dems were crushed.

So the British people have ­explicitly voted for Brexit at least three times. Does Johnson’s ­rise to the prime ministership subvert this democratic mandate? The answer is no. In a parliamentary system, governing parties can change leaders without going to an election, as Kevin Rudd changed to Julia Gillard back to Rudd, as Abbott changed to Malcolm Turnbull, who changed to Scott Morrison. And, indeed, as May herself replaced Cameron.

The Conservative leadership election was in two parts. First the MPs voted, then the rank-and-file Conservative Party membership. Johnson overwhelmingly won both votes. And the men who came second, third and fourth among the MPs’ votes all ­declared, like Johnson, they would do a no-deal Brexit if they could not get a good deal from the EU. Among the rank and file, nearly 90 per cent of eligible party members voted and Johnson won by better than two to one. But even the runner-up, Jeremy Hunt, was also committed to a no-deal Brexit if necessary. So the vast major­ity of Conservative MPs and 90 per cent of the party’s membership backed the no-deal option. As changes of leadership between elections in a parliamentary system go, this was extremely democratic and ­calmly deliberative.

Former Conservative foreign secretary Malcolm Rif­kind argued this week that it would be highly undemocratic for Johnson to persist with no deal if the Commons opposed it. But the Conservative government plainly has a mandate for no deal, given May’s no deal is better than a bad deal pledge before the past election. And Johnson would be heading to an election almost straight after October 31.

So there would be nothing ­undemo­cratic about it. What is undemocratic is that the Remainers in the British establishment are doing everything they possibly can to frustrate this mandate and hopefully scare the British people, having voted for Brexit again and again, into at least one semi-rejection or at least ambiguous vote.

So if Johnson does as he says he will and secures a Brexit with no deal (always assuming the EU doesn’t blink at the last minute and offer a reasonable deal) then there is no serious case that democracy has been debauched.

Will Brexit break up the British nation?

My guess is the answer is no, though this is inherently unpredictable. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four “nations”: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. England and Wales both voted to leave the EU in 2016. Northern Ireland voted narrowly to remain. Scotland voted more clearly to remain.

Wales is certainly not going to secede from the UK as a result of Brexit. It is very unlikely Northern Ireland will, either. The two ­branches of Unionists together have a narrow majority in Northern Ireland.

The word Unionist in their party name refers to the union ­between Britain and Northern Ireland. That union is infinitely more important to them than is membership of the EU. It is frankly inconceivable the Ulster Protestants would vote to leave Britain and join the Republic of Ireland because of their love of the EU.

If Brexit does produce economic dislocation, all the citizens of Northern Ireland, Protestant and Catholic alike, would be more ­dependent than ever on the British state to fund their schools, hospitals, pensions, etc.

The same basic considerations apply in Scotland, only more so because it doesn’t have the option of joining another nation that is already part of the EU. In the wake of all this emotion, the polls now show a very slight majority in Scotland for independence.

The polls have done this at times before. But in 2014 there was a referendum on independence in Scotland, held under very favourable terms for the independence movement, and there was a clear vote, 55-45 vote against.

Nations in Europe that have their own secessionist movements, such as Spain, have made it clear they would not welcome Scotland into the EU. The Scots receive a huge financial subsidy from England every year. They might value sovereignty more than this money, though Scots have been fully and brilliantly part of the British nation for many ­generations.

But the Conservatives and ­Labour, at least officially, have said that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation event and they will not give Scotland a new vote, though Labour could promise anything to get into government. If the Scots wanted one badly enough, it probably would be granted eventually.

But under almost any circumstances this is years and years away. Johnson is certainly unpopular in Scotland and he needs to address that in due course.

But the idea that even a highly controversial no-deal Brexit will bring about the inevitable breakup of the UK is overdrawn, if not downright hysterical, and is really better seen as part of Project Fear — the sky will fall in, etc, if Britain leaves the EU.

Incidentally, it shows that the whole process of constitutional devolution has been a failure in Britain. A devolved administration like that in Scotland has spending power but doesn’t have to raise its own money. Therefore, it is guaranteed to be irresponsible and blame London for all its woes.

How serious is the scare about the Irish border?

Then there is the question of the Irish border. Republic of Ireland Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has behaved in exactly the way he ­accuses Britain of ­behaving, as a narrow nationalist. It would suit the Irish Republic best if Britain stayed in the EU. So Varadkar has assisted the EU in presenting the most melodramatic interpretation of the Irish border question. But he has wildly overplayed his hand. By encouraging the EU to be unreasonable he has increased the chances of a no-deal Brexit.

Before the 2016 referendum, when the Remain forces were maximising every imaginary danger they could dream up arising out of Brexit, the Irish border was barely even mentioned. The ­Republic of Ireland is an independent nation with a historic claim of sovereignty over Northern Ireland. It gave up this claim and agreed that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland would not change unless the Northern Irish voted for it to change, which they have shown no sign of doing.

If Britain leaves the EU and the Republic of Ireland remains, different tariff rates will apply in the two Irish jurisdictions. Johnson has said, and the Conservatives have long pledged, that under no circumstances will they erect any border barriers ­between the Republic and the north. Both sides agree that Ireland should be one jurisdiction for agricultural regulation. The British say they can monitor cross-border trade with cameras, with trusted trade schemes and with a very small number of checks ­behind the borders. The vast ­majority of trade that comes into Britain by sea is not physically checked.

Under Varadkar’s predecessor, Enda Kenny, there were negotiations and working groups between London and Dublin on making these arrangements work. But weakness is provocative. And May’s dismal weakness provoked Varadkar and the EU into overplaying their hands on the Irish border. Varadkar claims that with a no-deal Brexit there would have to be a physical border and that this would lead to renewed violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and a renewed campaign among Northern Irish Catholics to leave Britain and join the Republic of Ireland.

But there will be a physical border between the two Irelands only if Varadkar and the EU set one up. And to talk of renewed intercommunal violence is intensely ­irresponsible as it incentivises that very violence.

Brexit is certainly a mess. No one could have handled it worse or facilitated more conflict than May, who is living proof that political cowardice seldom results in security.

As I leave Britain I have these provisional judgments: Johnson can prevail, though he could be thwarted; it would be democratic if he did prevail; this is not likely to lead to the breakup of the British nation; and it is unlikely to lead to a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I wish the Brits every success in the future. And it would be good for them, and for the West, if by November 1 they are out of the EU, peacefully and calmly.