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1/ The Tory party is caught between the fixed demands of the EU27 and the political red lines of its head banger eurosceptic faction
2/ The Brexit dream morphed from a promise of an EEA/single market Norwegian future to a supposed mandate for disaster capitalism with...
3/ ...plenty of Schumpeterian "Creative Destruction". I.e. job losses as whole industries die on the vine.
4/ Having shifted the Overton window from remain to leave, the leavers now push for the hardest of no deal brexits
5/ in the absence of any of their promises being actually fulfillable.
6/ Labour have sought to diffuse this by saying they would vote against no deal - theguardian.com/politics/2017/…
7/ I made the observation the UK gov can't prevent no deal by themselves
8/ Legal experts(e.g. David Allen Green, Mark Elliot have written threads which are far clearer and better explained than my comment
9/ Here's Mark Elliot's
10/ And here's David Allen Green's )
11/ To summarise them: the UK can't by itself halt article 50 by rescinding it, and the default end state of article 50 is no deal.
12/ So the notion of whether a no deal brexit would pass in parliament is entirely moot:-
13/ if the gov won the vote there'd be a no deal brexit. If they lost, there'd be a no deal brexit.
14/ But let's hypothesise that the economic case for brexit was strong enough that...
15/ public opinion switched sufficiently to make brexit politically impossible.
16/ Even with the yougov poll last week (42% for brexit, 47% against) this sounds like wishful thinking
17/ ...but there's still time for a swing in public opinion. The momentum is with remain right now.
18/ News such as this morning's-that the current account deficit UK is £490m poorer (25% GDP) than realised
19/ (partly due to massive capital flight) - continues to pressure the pro-brexit case.
20/ Contingency plans by industry will increasingly be triggered at pace as no deal is reified.
21/ And as even Hammond observes: a transition deal is a wasting asset:-
22/ losing value the more firms trigger contingency relocation plans in advance of it,not expecting any transition to be enacted in time.
23/ It is possible therefore that at the eleventh hour, the UK gov gets cold feet.
24/ Two options: request for Article 50 to be extended (this would require the unanimous approval of the EU27).
25/ I think this is more likely than a complete revocation, but if extension failed,
26/ would the UK gov have no choice but request Article 50 to be revoked?
27/ If the UK did rescind Article 50, the acceptance of the revocation would come down to a decision made by the ECJ.
28/ Would the ECJ refuse or allow the revocation? Is the ECJ wholly independent of the EU27
29/ Would the judges be under political pressure from constituent countries "behind the scenes"?
30/ My guess is that because the EU27 would prefer Bremain over no deal brexit (reasons in a thread to follow..,
31/ but I don't know how the ECJ would rule.
32/ My limited knowledge suggests there is nothing in A50 to prevent revocation on the European side
33/ but I defer to actual legal experts on this matter.
34 Steve Bullock has come up with the brilliant suggestion that the EU should offer the UK the chance to unilaterally revoke Article 50.
35/ His reasoning is here.
36/ It leaves the UK with no excuses and undermines any potential blame strategies whereby the UK might walk out from talks blaming the EU.
32/ My limited knowledge suggests there is nothing in A50 to prevent revocation on the European side
33/ but I defer to actual legal experts on this matter.
34 Steve Bullock has come up with the brilliant suggestion that the EU should offer the UK the chance to unilaterally revoke Article 50.
35/ His reasoning is here.
36/It leaves the UK with no excuses and undermines any potential blame strategies whereby the UK might walk out from talks blaming the EU.
