Deal, or No Deal?

Comparisons have been made recently between the Millennium (Y2K) bug and Brexit.  Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin recently told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We will look back and wonder what all the fuss (about Brexit) was about - a bit like the millennium bug, remember all the experts on the millennium bug?" Ah yes, experts, let us not rely on experts if their view does not match with ours; as Michael Gove said, “people in this country have had enough of experts”.

Sir Bernard Jenkins, whose comparison of Brexit and the millennium bug is somewhat wide of the mark.

There undoubtedly are similarities between Y2K and Brexit: In 1999 there were dire warnings of food shortages, the health service in meltdown and planes falling out of the sky. Now, with the United Kingdom set to leave the European Union in March 2019 there are similar predictions, except this time the planes won't be falling out of the sky because they won't be allowed off the ground. There is one major difference between the approach to the dawn of the new millennium and the prospect of the UK outside the EU, and that is as the year 2000 approached, thousands of people in companies large and small, and in government, were working tirelessly to make sure that all of the computer systems, all of the code, and all of the infrastructure was Y2K compliant. I was one of them, and I put in hundreds of hours making sure that the systems within HSBC that I worked on would not collapse in a heap as the date rolled over.

Doom-laden prophesies ahead of 1st January 2000 did not come to pass thanks to
diligent and thorough testing, not through some stroke of luck or because there was no threat.

In contrast, preparations for Brexit can best be described as chaotic. No one knows for sure exactly what this country will be like once it has disentangled itself from the EU; one thing is for sure, things will be different, but how different and how that is dealt with requires clarity of purpose, clear planning and policies, practices and processes being in place to mitigate the risks inherent in what is essentially a step into the unknown. And at present, I feel we should all be more than a little concerned that precious few of these seem to have been talked about, far less made ready for March 2019.

Danny Dyer proved an unlikely sage of Brexit when he said, “Who knows about Brexit? No one has got a f*****g clue what Brexit is.”

Article 50 - the invoking of which starts the process by which a member state may leave the EU -  states that the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. This is done in accordance with Article 218, however the issue with these articles is their utter vagueness, and it is vagueness that has marked the UK Government's negotiations with the EU, while there is similar vagueness within Theresa May's government. Frankly, the process by which one disentangles oneself from a mobile phone contract or gym membership is better written and more water-tight than the one for leaving the EU, although I believe there's a reason for that. It has been said that Article 50 was drafted merely to address the absence in the EU's articles of any procedure that catered for a member state leaving, but that in their arrogance the EU never seriously considered this as a possibility, believing that once a state became a member, they would always be fully committed to an ever closer union and that there be no need for a provision for withdrawal. Thus the vagueness of the article; withdrawal was never considered a possibility and hence the complete lack of specifics about the future state of a nation and its relationship with the EU after withdrawal.


So to a large extent, the EU is as much to blame as the UK Government for the chaos that surrounds Brexit; the EU had no idea what a deal for any country leaving it would be, so how could an individual state, how could the electorate?

Many in the Leave camp, when challenged on the basis that they did not know what they were voting for in 2016, claim that they knew exactly what they were voting for, but how could they? Even two years down the line no one knows what deal the UK will get, so how did these sages know back then? Apart from some vague claims about taking back control, or 'getting our country back' - which mostly seem to entail keeping foreigners out and changing the colour of our passports - no one has adequately explained what deal they thought the UK would get; how could they, no one knows even now.

And talking of deals, the mantra remains that 'No deal is better than a bad deal.'  I'm not sure what the proponents of that idea think it means, but to me no deal will always, in any circumstances, be worse than a bad deal; after all, if there is something that you must have, at any price, then no deal (i.e. where you don't get what you need) must be worse than a bad deal (where you do). But perhaps this is just semantics, and like Humpty Dumpty, who said "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean" advocates of 'no deal' mean something completely different from the accepted norm. In the same way,  the awful platitude, "Brexit means Brexit" clearly means something to everyone who utters it, even if they don't have a grasp of the specifics.

The idea of a second referendum - either on the principle of Brexit or on the final deal that is negotiated - is anathema to those who voted Leave, greeted with rebuttals such as, "What part of democracy don't you understand?" Except of course that the right to change one's mind on the basis of new information is an integral part of a democracy - if not women would still not have the vote and the 1732 Act of Parliament that prevented the export of hats  from any of the colonies (including America) -the Hat Act- would still be on the statutes. And the last two years of negotiations count as new information in my book. Another argument against a second referendum that is frequently trotted out is that any such vote would see an even greater majority in favour of leaving the EU, which in itself is the best possible reason for having a second vote; imagine Leave maintaining or increasing their majority, as their supporters believe would be the case, and opposition to Brexit would be all the weaker.

Back in 2016, in the run-up to the referendum, I was conflicted. The arguments from both sides were persuasive, even if the 'facts' being used to support them were unproven, unsubstantiated, and wildly optimistic (or pessimistic); sometimes they were quite obviously wrong, but eventually I sided with Remain, not through any great affection for the EU, but rather on the basis of 'better the devil you know,' and a gut feeling that while Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin might have been able to achieve a 'conscious uncoupling,' the UK's separation from the EU would be much more acrimonious. After the result, I was prepared to accept it in the same way that I've accepted General and Local Election results that were contrary to the way I had voted, give it the benefit of the doubt and hope that a good Brexit deal could be achieved. 

Of course, there could suddenly be a breakthrough in the negotiations; the EU and the UK could agree on an amicable separation, on mutually beneficial terms, but that seems about as likely as Boris Johnson opening his mouth without inserting his foot in it, or Jeremy Corbyn being invited round for tea by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Sadly, I think that pursuing the 'no deal is better than a bad deal' approach will leave the United Kingdom like the contestant on the game show who declines the Banker's offer and opens a box containing just one penny.