Fail

If Brexit goes ahead, in any form, it will enact a profound misreading of the nature of the contemporary political and economic world and represent an unprecedented failure of British statecraft.

This is from Chris Grey's latest assessment of British policy from his blog. It is a fine summary of the bizarre way Britain is abandoning all it's strategic and economic interests in favour of the unknown. Calculation has been replaced by wishful thinking.

This is the clearest brief description of the economics of Brexit that I have read:

It is not necessary to make or accept economic forecasts, only to understand basic institutional realities, to see that detaching a country from its regional bloc and then seeking to re-attach it on unknown, but by definition worse, terms to that same bloc, in an unknown time frame, is going to have adverse consequences for businesses and trade, and hence for employment and tax revenues. 

This is something no sane government would suggest, let alone attempt, especially one under no compulsion to do so. This is entirely voluntary and completely unnecessary. There are no benefits. The best that can be hoped for is damage limitation from the ruinous expense of leaving. This thread has gathered together more than one hundred and forty verified examples of disinvestment, costs to businesses, job losses, and extra government spending all because of Brexit. These are not predictions, they have happened. Billions have been spent - not on the health service or to fix the housing crisis, but on preparations for a no deal that may (I hope) be a bluff - such as ferry services without ferries, running from ports that can't handle them (on both sides of the Channel), with fake traffic jams as an added extra. This will continue. Unless and until Brexit is resolved everything stands in abeyance. It is no use wittering on about how we should be talking about bread-and-butter issues, because the remedies for our many complaints are wholly dependent on Brexit and the damage it will do.

It is indeed an "unprecedented failure." And it is an institutional failure on many levels.

First, it's a failure of representative democracy.

Rather than being 'the biggest democratic exercise ever,' the referendum was the biggest betrayal of representative democracy ever, and one carried out by its elected representatives.

What on earth were MPs doing when they voted for a referendum on a complex, specialist issue that was so manifestly unsuitable for decision by referendum? What were they thinking when they elevated the obsession of a small minority of fringe politicians and wealthy ideologues into a major existential question? How could hobbyists, who revelled in their intense anger over things that were not a problem and about which few others cared, be allowed to wreck the country? I suppose MPs justified themselves by legislating for it to be an advisory referendum only, but then they treated it as binding.

If that madness wasn't enough, MPs voted (on three-line-whips from both opposition and government) to give the absolute right to the government to submit article 50 notification to leave with no safeguards and without even a hint of a plan as to what we would want as a post-EU settlement. And guess what, there is still no agreement.

MPs have abandoned their responsibility and are only now, at the very last minute, wondering whether they should take some back to rescue the nation from this unholy mess.

(This is on top of the Party leadership questions showing us the folly of allowing policy to be controlled by self-selected and unaccountable party members, rather than those who have been elected by the voters at large.)

Second, it shows the failure of our attempts at the devolution of power to constituent nations in a centralised polity. What was the point of Scotland and Northern Ireland voting decisively to remain if they could be overruled by English votes and be removed from the EU regardless? And that's without mentioning Gibraltar. Brexit shows just how centralised our political system is, and how devolution has not remedied it. The devolved administrations are powerless to shape the most significant policy since the War.

Third, it was a failure of electoral systems and electoral law. The franchise was denied to some of the most deeply affected people and the law was broken with impunity, possibly with decisive effect, and with no redress for the laughable reason that the referendum was constitutionally advisory. To authorise this fundamental constitutional change on a majority of 50%+1 of the vote, regardless of turnout, was another piece of astonishing negligence.

Finally, it was a colossal failure of political communication. It didn't help that most of the electorate and many politicians, including the senior cabinet ministers, had little or no understanding of what the EU is, what it does, and how integrated we are within the single market. The result has been a debate dominated by fictions, fantasies, wishful thinking, and delusional generalities. People who actually knew something about the complications, costs, and problems were countered with fairy stories from the ideologically committed. The press had long prepared the ground with blatantly dishonest reporting. Social media became a cesspit of misinformation targeted at people through dubiously acquired data. Political parties have been more concerned with electoral strategy (Labour has also been disingenuous and delusional in offering its alternatives) rather than principle.

It's a mess. Though there is one way out.

Edwin Hayward added this tweet to his comprehensive list that I linked to earlier:

Plan B: "Revoke Article 50"
- Cost: £0
- Saving vs no deal mitigation: £billions
- Planning time: none
- Additional preparations: none
- Soldiers on streets: 0
- Fake ferry companies involved: 0
- Irish border situation: 100% resolved
- Passport colour: any

You're welcome.

A functioning democracy would do just that. It would explain precisely why it is necessary. It wouldn't privilege the decision making method over the quality of that decision. Having done that, MPs and their parties would be answerable to the electorate at the ballot box. That is why we elect representatives. At last there are signs of life. The success of Yvette Cooper's amendment designed to obstruct a no-deal exit shows that MPs are beginning to realise what their job is.

I would love to be wrong, but I still don't think it will happen the way Hayward suggests. At best we could be plunged into another referendum. But, when this whole episode is over, it will be time to brush off our self-congratulatory complacency about our democracy, address the failings, and actually decide what sort of democracy we want to be. God forbid that we turn to plebiscitary populism, instead I hope that we reaffirm our nation as a representative democracy, preferably one augmented through enhanced participation and a commitment to local and national devolution of power.