Transition to what? Get ready for the next bitter battle over what Brexit means

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The word of the week is transition. Suddenly, everyone is at it in Westminster, in business, and in the commentariat, talking about the need for a transition deal when the UK leaves the EU in March 2019. A year after Britain voted to leave, although there is no consensus on how it will happen, there is broad agreement across the parties that a period of two to three years, in which some of the current arrangements are maintained, is the way forward.

Transition has long been a major part of the government’s thinking behind the scenes. Really, it has. The hard Brexit talk from ministers was part of a strategy on their part I described almost a year ago in the FT as being to talk hard and go softer. That is, prepare for a hard Brexit in case it happened, and to show determination if the talks stalled, but to work towards an agreement or a series of agreements.

We can debate how all this got out of hand. Government intransigence? A remainer Prime Minister convert trying to prove her credentials? Us Brexiteers getting over-excited? Ultra-Remainers refusing to accept the result, calling those of us who voted for self-government stupid, or saying we didn’t understand what we were doing, which is just a different way of saying stupid? Gina Miller? Nigel Farage? Or both extremes defining this as a revolutionary moment, when it is just the unpicking of a set of not very good governing arrangements only four decades old, a process which happens all the time throughout history?

We are where we are, with both major parties committed to leaving the European Union but no definitive decision on how to do it. Stop shouting, my most Brexity friends say. It is simple, they say, can’t you see? What you mean is you want your version of what happens next. Please consider for a second that your version might not appeal to others and the arithmetic is not on the side of those who want no concessions. Politics should be about leadership and ideas; in a crisis in the Commons it is usually about the numbers.

Now, after the Tories lost their majority and the Prime Minister lost her authority, a degree of compromise is belatedly in the air and transition is the cry. This is positive in certain senses. It makes practical sense from an economic point of view to manage the process and it suggests the atmosphere in this country need not go on getting ever more horrible and bitter by the day.

As I said, I have fine Brexity friends who disagree. There is nothing to negotiate about, they say. Just do it and get on with it. Without a parliamentary majority, and with the Lords revving up for years of revolt, and the Prime Minister without the authority to fix the Lords, the politics of that approach simply don’t work. Not when a Corbyn government is dangerously close.

So what the hell happens? Here is in five steps what I think may be about to happen, but it’s just a first take at the end of an exceedingly long stretch when everyone, everyone, needs a holiday. Still, this is what the government is going to have to negotiate around. It will not be easy.

1) Transition becomes widely accepted this summer. Everyone nods and prepares to head to the beach. We will avoid a so-called “cliff-edge moment,” we tell each other. Sighs of relief all round, and anger from some Brexiteers who like the sound of WTO rules. Is it because it sounds like WTF? The anger on the Tory benches is muted, however, because if they bring down the minority government over Brexit they will get Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. A few desperate ultras might conclude this is the best way to get what they want, considering that Corbyn is the most pro-Brexit of the party leaders (honestly, he and Milne can’t stand the EU) but constituency associations and the wider Tory tribe will kill anyone who tries this.

2) The Remainer House of Lords – with a ridiculous number of Lib Dems in it – starts to stir. The minority government has no majority, obviously. The Salisbury Convention appears not to apply to a minority government. They will be as awkward as possible. Already they are at it. Ultra-remainers who have demanded for months that David Davis make concessions, to foster good relations with the EU 27, immediately screamed “disaster!” when he moved this week. Incidentally, some ultra-remainers seem to have gone completely bonkers in the heat.

3) Transition to what? Here is the key, the question on which this will pivot. This, once the ultra-remainers have pocketed transition, is where they will go next. Putting on their best “in the national interest faces” they will ask what happens as the end of the transition period of two, three or even five years. “A transition is welcome and of course the result of the referendum must be respected,” they will say, “but what are we in transition to? Where is the train going exactly? How can we vote even for a nice transition if we do not know the precise end point once the transition is over? This is most unfortunate but we must vote the whole thing down.” The answer that transition leads to leaving the EU will not be a sufficient answer, I suspect. And even if the answer is “out of the customs union and the single market” (otherwise known as leaving the EU) sufficient fault will be found with that to construct a reason to keep voting down the entire business in the Lords, and perhaps assorted elements in the Commons. As Labour did over Maastricht in the early 1990s, where it agreed with John Major’s position, it will nonetheless shout shambles and run the government ragged perhaps with the help of Tory rebels.

4) The EU probably would in the right circumstances offer transition because it suits the eurozone (London is Europe’s capital market and Germany needs access to it) and to smooth continued trade on both sides. But what if it finds that even that cannot get agreed by the British, because of political turmoil in the Lords, but also in the Commons? They must make other arrangements. The best hope of the Tories is then to get a few moderate Labour votes in the Commons to support a transition to EEA and Efta and hope that the Lords does not block it. By then the campaign for a humiliating “please let us back in, if we say we’re sorry “referendum funded by Branson and Blair will be well-established, along with a well-funded and furious “Brexit is the will of the people” campaign. The EU loves seeing votes re-run, so can be depended on to make encouraging noises. How disappointed all those young pro-EU Corbynites will be when they discover St Jeremy is not for going along with overturning the referendum, and that he really meant all along that he was for hard Brexit and the end of free movement (page 28 of the Labour manifesto.) Then we hit late 2018, and March 2019 looms.

5) And then…

Dunno.