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Reflecting ahead of tomorrow’s Brexit votes, I see curious contradictions and peculiar paradoxes making debate both harder and less predictable (short thread).
1.The Cooper/Boles bid to demand A50 extension dismissed as efforts to stop Brexit. Yet what they want is to prevent no-deal Brexit on March 29th. Many back the May deal. And Brexiteers admit extension needed for necessary legislation. Why must extension equal no Brexit?
1.All sides talk as if Irish backstop imposed on UK by Dublin/Brussels. Yet UK, not EU, drew up the December 2017 text prefiguring the backstop; UK Tories, including Brexiteers, who hailed this as triumph; and UK, not EU, that insisted backstop must be UK-wide, not NI-only.
1.May claims her deal takes Britain out of customs union, while Corbyn attacks backstop and wants permanent customs union instead. Yet what neither admits is that backstop would keep the UK in customs union, potentially indefinitely. Labour should back it, and May oppose it.
1.Brexiteers say no deal is fine as trading on WTO terms works great for all other countries. Yet they, more than anyone, demand we must be able to do free-trade deals with US, China, India, Commonwealth. Why then no need for comprehensive FTA with our biggest market, the EU?
1. Doctrine of purists. Brexiteers once said let’s keep economic and trade links but dump politics and ever closer union but now insist any links at all are BRINO. Remainers once backed softest Brexit now trash Norway, Switzerland as worse than membership. What price compromise?
1.And last oddity: all now needed is to find Brexit deal, plus or minus backstop or CU, that MPs in Westminster accept. Yet assent of Ireland, EU (incl unanimous approval for extension) plus approval of European Parliament all necessary too. Why assume all this suddenly so easy?
