Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Collision with reality
The Brexit deal failed in the British Parliament. The EU should now concentrate on cushioning the consequences of a withdrawal without an agreement. Because an agreement with the British is hardly imaginable at the moment.

A comment by Markus Becker

There is one thing that Theresa May has to let go of: she masters it to perfection: keeping her posture. No matter how much she fails, no matter how brutally she is attacked by her opponents in parliament, the British Prime Minister never seems to lose her temper. Not even at the moment of her probably worst defeat, the crushing rejection of the EU withdrawal treaty in the House of Commons (LINK).

One could almost feel sorry for her. But only almost. May made a conscious and fatal decision right at the beginning of the Brexit process: To deceive the British instead of pouring them pure wine.

But May could have done this much easier than other politicians. While a Nigel Farage or a Boris Johnson agitated for the EU withdrawal with half-truths and bare lies, May was actually against Brexit. After the referendum, she could have clearly told voters what her election meant - hard choices.

May played the Brexiteers game

She could have explained that a continued close relationship with the EU would mean accepting many rules and decisions from Brussels in the future, without being able to have a say in their negotiation. Or, if Britain opts for a greater degree of freedom, this would result in economic disadvantages. And she could have sent a polithasarist like Johnson to where he belongs: to the desert.

Instead, she has made Johnson the foreign minister and adopted his strategy of convincing the people to somehow have everything: full control over immigration, total freedom for new trade agreements with the whole world, plus the benefits of former EU membership. And of course there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, even if to this day nobody knows how this will happen if Britain leaves the EU customs union at the same time.

The opposition is not much better. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn early on said that only a Brexit deal that gives Britain exactly the same benefits as when it joined the EU was acceptable. This was so obviously impossible from the outset that it amounts to sheer sabotage of democracy. A clear vision for Britain's future outside the EU has been owed to Corbyn to this day.

Brussels concessions would not help either

Eventually, that was clear, there would be a collision with reality. This has now happened with May's defeat in Parliament - and it is above all her fault that this happened so late. Now there is hardly any time left to prevent a chaos brexit without an agreement. It would be possible to postpone the withdrawal date a little, but by a few weeks at the most. Otherwise there is the threat of a date collision with the European elections with partly bizarre, partly dangerous consequences for the rest of the EU.

But why should the EU do this to itself? At the moment there is nothing or nothing to suggest that Great Britain could suddenly come to its senses. Because the core problem remains: British politicians are still not prepared to accept the consequences of the Brexit decision, and therefore they cannot know what they actually want from the EU.

That is why it makes little sense to ask the rest of the EU to approach the government in London. On the one hand, it is unclear with which concession Brussels could increase the chances of reaching an agreement in London. On the other hand, it is questionable whether this would be possible at all.

EU should prepare for the worst

You shouldn't kid yourself: Some of the British MEPs are fundamentalists who follow the Brexit with quasi-religious fervour. No realistic form of leaving the EU will ever be enough for them; appeals to reason will hardly impress them. One might just as well try to convince followers of the biblical doctrine of creation of the theory of evolution by means of scientific essays.

Of course, politicians of this kind represent only a minority in the British House of Commons - but this minority is large enough to torpedo any decision. The majority of Brexit-sceptical MPs, on the other hand, cannot unite without risking the division of their own parties and the anger of voters incited by the Brexit press.

Britain may indeed first have to go through the catastrophe of a no deal exit in order to find its way back to itself. The tragedy would be that the colliery would not pay those elitist Brexiteers who pretend to be against the political elites - but the voters who were betrayed by them.

A no deal brexit would also be expensive for the rest of the EU. It would therefore be advisable for the 27 other EU states now to concentrate all their energy on dealing with the worst consequences of a no-deal-brexit with a series of individual agreements.

Advocates of entirely open borders tend to advance two types of arguments. The first is economic. Opening all borders would make the world instantly richer. Some believe that it could double the world’s GDP. That is because workers become more productive as they move from a poor country to a rich one. They join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. If they are service workers, they will find richer and better-paying clients. By some estimates, more than two-thirds of a person’s overall wealth is determined by where they live and work.

A complex situation which I don't well understand.

You need special skills to bring so many people with different political views and from your own against you. May has succeeded.

I suspect Jeremy Corbin may be one of her best assets now: the prospect of a Labor government didn't appear to have wide appeal.

It wasn't a motion about a new government - governments are in the UK are formed after general elections.