Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Brexit Is Dying. Time For A People’s Vote

Michael Cottakis 24th July 2018

Michael Cottakis

Michael Cottakis

Brexit will achieve what several dark and diminutive characters from history have tried, and failed, to do: draw Great Britain into the throes of grim continental vassalage. With Brexit, the EU will (inadvertently) effect by negotiation what Spain, France, and Germany have all been unable to realise through conquest. Sovereignty will be stripped away, and the country will be entrapped within a wider sphere of EU influence. It will be unable to determine the laws that will forever govern it and will fall into the abyss of an arrangement not experienced since the days of the Normans. The Brexit dream is dying. And it’s time for a People’s Vote.

The Chequers plan exposed the fallacy of Brexit. The UK Government has said for months that Brexit may only be hard: only by exiting the European Single Market and customs union, by shedding the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, by stopping payments into the EU’s budget, and by ending free movement of people into the UK would Brexit be worth the trouble. Anything else, we were told, and the country would be left in a limbo arrangement far worse than membership – it would be a ‘vassal state’, a European ‘colony’, condemned to a peripheral role in European affairs. It would be forced to adhere by the EU’s economic rules, without any capacity to influence them. The most ardent Brexiteers understood well this danger: Hard Brexit was thus the only viable Brexit.

Except that Hard Brexit was never possible. The depth of the UK’s ties with, indeed dependence on, EU trade for its economic vitality was and is too great. Imports and exports are a crucial component of the UK economy – and over 50% of these involve the EU. By imposing barriers on trade with the UK’s largest market, Parliament would be inflicting a negative supply shock upon the economy, with ruinous effects for incomes, living costs, and the competitiveness of business. Many Brexiteers insist this would propel the UK to invest in markets further afield – but it is an economic fantasy, detached from the realities of geography, supply and demand.

Irish border

Then comes the question of Northern Ireland. The imposition of a Northern Irish backstop and maintenance of an open border will require significant regulatory alignment with the EU, tariff-free trade and the continuance of (some degree of) free movement. All are incompatible with a Hard Brexit. The territorial integrity of the UK and the fragile Irish peace process would be thrown into irreverent uncertainty. Hard Brexiteers argue for a technological fix: automatic checks as the border is crossed. But this technology does not exist, nor is it likely to be developed anytime soon. The alternative – to impose border checks and tariffs – is a red line the EU will not cross for fear of angering the Republic of Ireland that is a key member state. The memory of the Troubles – the most recent incidence of violent cross-border conflict in western Europe – is as fresh as it is painful. The majority of parliamentarians, serious, thoughtful, and unencumbered by the fanaticism of the Brexiteer back benches, would not dare to disturb the peace.

This leaves various degrees of soft Brexit, each worse than the last. These range from a facilitated customs arrangement to full participation in the customs union; from full European Economic Area membership to Single Market access in narrow areas, each subject to its own bilateral treaty, akin to the EU-Switzerland agreement.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The various options for Soft Brexit are more palatable to Parliament than is Hard Brexit. However, the Prime Minister will struggle to unify the Commons around any. The European Research Group will revolt. Labour will likely oppose for electoral reasons. Jeremy Corbyn, aware of the Conservative government’s weakness, is angling for early elections. Moreover, a Soft Brexit is a poor outcome for the UK. Whichever version of Soft Brexit it pursues, payments will still be made, the ECJ will continue to arbitrate, and concessions on freedom of movement will be required. In other words, vassalage – at least as the Brexiteers understand it – will beckon.

Options

Then what alternative? In the interest of addressing their own internal expediencies, the major parties have been flagrantly irresponsible, explaining neither the unattainability of a Hard Brexit nor the destructiveness to the UK’s international influence of its various softer alternatives. Though rarely mentioned publicly, the truth is common knowledge among the majority of MPs: no success may be made of Brexit.

Therefore, the possibility of No Brexit, via a second referendum, must be put back on the table. The deal that Theresa May, or another leader, negotiates with the EU must be explained to the public, its benefits and costs set against those of remaining an EU member. Let the choice be clearly laid out: the negotiated deal vs no Brexit at all. A People’s Vote may produce the same result as in 2016. But let it, this time at least, be a vote grounded in clarity of meaning and direction. Let the people make this last decision, for the political class is too divided and the future too precious. It is not too late to turn Brexit around. Indeed, failure to pursue the possibility, given what is at stake, would be an historic error. Else, the UK – divided, directionless and isolated – will continue on its present dangerous course, worryingly evocative of Edwin J. Milliken’s great poem ‘The Clattering Train’ (1890), which might now be adapted thus:

Who is in charge of the clattering train?

The axles creak and the couplings strain;

The pace is hot and the points are near;

And sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear;

Signals flash through the night in vain…


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

But who can now stop the clattering train?

The clock is ticking.

Michael Cottakis

Michael Cottakis is a political scientist and Director of the 1989 Generation Initiative at the LSE.​

You are here: Home / Politics / Brexit Is Dying. Time For A People’s Vote

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

Pakistan,flooding,floods Flooded Pakistan, symbol of climate injusticeZareen Zahid Qureshi
reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube