Britain Prime Minister Theresa May is defending her plans for Brexit in the face of resignations from her Conservative party. Junior Ministers, as well as two vice-chairs, have stepped down, following the resignations of Minister for Brexit, David Davis, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who says "The dream of Brexit is dying." But May insists her current position will enable Britain to leave the EU in a smooth and orderly way.
There’s no denying that the government’ plan they are going to take to the European Union is already in tatters before Britain even getting there. So, it remains to be seen how the EU is going to respond. There’s certainly a part of the Chequers plan that they have already said what they would not agree with. The view of the European Union at the moment is she is the only person who can possibly come up with a deal that both sides can pass.
Equally important to note is that even if Theresa May is deposed, the new prime minister would still be in the same weak position that any Prime Minister would be in at the moment because Britain has no cards to play against European Union.
When the EU says “We’re not going to accept this Chequers deal, you’ll either have full single market and customs union or none of it except for Northern Ireland”, then no prime minister, no matter how strong or charismatic, will be able to change that position.
The EU, at the moment, has no incentive to give Britain what it wants. The EU’s credibility and cohesion are at stake. And, the EU has all the power at the moment, as it knows that Britain can’t settle for the deal partly because the British parliament would never accept that and also because it’s equivalent to national self-immolation.
It’s simply not a viable option for the government and that means Britain will concede to pretty much everything that EU wants and it has done that last year already.
The Brexit that May has come up with is a sort of lowest common denominator. It keeps British people half out of the mechanisms of the European Union, in particular, the customs union, the single market. But, it doesn’t give British people any sort of a vote or a voice in how those regulations are made in future. So, it really isn’t going to satisfy anyone and won’t satisfy people who want to be completely free of the EU. It won’t satisfy the people want to stay to part of the single market to maintain freedom of movement and other mechanisms that apply at the moment.
But, equally, there’s no coherent alternative on the table. It appears that no alternative is coming from Boris Johnson and David Davis; they walked out saying they weren’t happy. But, they didn’t give any sort of alternative plan and equally the British government doesn’t really have a coherent plan that involves remaining in the EU either given that there’s an appetite at the moment among the public as a whole to reverse the result of the freedom. So, the people of Britain are stuck in this limbo and it can last at some point they’ll have to make some decisions but it seems they don’t seem to ready for that yet.
Moving forward, with the governing Conservative Party is in such a disarray, where is the political opposition and would the opposition Labour Party be any better at delivering Brexit than the governing Conservatives?
Certainly, we’ve seen that Labour Party have not been able to fully capitalize in the polls in terms of taking over FROM the Conservatives. They have a problem also with Brexit. Their Brexit position is quite ambiguous. For them at the moment the opposition works well. They’re able to allow the Conservative party to tear itself apart and they only really have to face up to coming up with a plan for Brexit if the government falls. Obviously, they want to do that and if that happens the Labour party are also going to find themselves in trouble when it comes to coming up with a coherent position on Brexit.
After meeting May in Berlin ahead of the NATO summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that it’s a good thing that they have proposals on the table. Now, that remark was jumped upon by Brexiteers as an encouraging sign of even a modest endorsement.
To what extent Germany is the key to allowing May to secure this smooth and orderly Brexit that she promised?
It’s very interesting that May had supposedly discussed her proposals with Merkel before she even presented them to the Cabinet. Of course, Germany will be the key as will all the other European countries in order to keep the conversation going. It’s really important to distinguish that Germany can’t unilaterally make the decisions in the EU, there are 27 member states the UK is negotiating with and the people who are going be doing the negotiating is, of course, Michele Bernier and the Commission team. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that her comments were an endorsement.
Obviously, Germany’s position is going to stay the same. It has been adamant throughout the Brexit negotiations that there can be no cherry-picking so that means the UK can’t carve off bits of the single market that it wants while not having to pay for any of its obligations. It has been one of the hardest countries in the negotiations. Merkel even supposedly asked why the UK should have a transition period after Brexit because that is indeed what the UK needs in order to keep the continuity for the businesses. So, one would have thought- Angela Merkel is endorsing the UK’s position as the UK will have to make further concessions but Merkel is very much aware of the difficult domestic politics for Theresa May and she’s keen to keep the negotiations going.
Finally, No Deal scenario is the nuclear option and nobody wants to have that, neither the UK nor the EU. Nonetheless, very strange things have been happening in the global politics in the past two years and anyone with knowledge about European Politics wouldn’t put it beyond this government to make sure that there could be a No Deal option simply because negotiations may get completely log-jammed because the domestic politics at the UK, EU politics on the European stage and global events with what Donald Trump is doing for example at the NATO Summit last week. It’s not impossible but the most disastrous outcome is still very much an option on the table.

Md. Sharif Hasan is a field researcher for the Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka