Brexit — What on earth is going on?

Well the last three years have seen a succession of bad judgements, seriously misguided strategy (or rather the complete lack of a coherent strategy), and a failure to face up to tough realities. The story has been one of not only misjudgements but also amazing incompetence and general bad decision making. Just when you think the level of messing up can't get any worse, something comes along to prove you wrong.

But enough about Manchester United and Ed Woodward. What about Brexit? That's a question a lot of people are asking, generally in the form of "What on earth is going to happen?" or "What the hell is actually going on?". Precise predictions are almost impossible, particularly right now but we can say something meaningful about how and why we got to where we are now and what the context for all of this is. The big framing context is that there is an emergent (or now emerged) division in British society over the question of identity and the UK's place in the world and relation to the rest of it. (Something similar is happening in most developed societies). This is a social, geographical, and economic division so it is not surprising that it manifests itself in politics. What Brexit has done, is catalyse the emergence of this division and provide the identifier for this - people now increasingly think of themselves politically as Remainer or Leaver, rather than Labour or Conservative (or indeed anything else).

As I have been saying the big problem in Brexit in terms of the mechanics is that the division in parliament and the party system we have does not reflect the division in the country. This means that there is a Condorcet voting paradox in Parliament so there is no majority for any one option - result deadlock. This remains the case - there is still a majority against the deal on offer, against leaving without a deal being possible, against simply giving up and staying in, against a second referendum, and against particular end goals such as a customs union or a Norway deal as part of the political declaration. So we have a kind of stasis in which lots of political manoeuvring will happen. Most of this is actually aimed at the crisis that everyone now expects will happen in October.

I was not surprised by the way things worked out over the three years since the referendum until the final stage of the votes a couple of months ago. However, I had expected that eventually the majority that does exist in Parliament for some kind of soft Brexit would come together across political lines. That would have meant a party realignment happening in Parliament, mainly due to the way the Fixed Term Parliament Act has affected the dynamics in Parliament. That even however didn't happen (although it nearly did at the end) because of a combination of party loyalism and individuals thinking of their own future position in the rapidly changing political landscape. The critical thing here is that over the last three years the electorate has become more polarised as the identities of Leaver and Remainer have firmed up. So for most voters it's now a choice between staying in and leaving no matter what perhaps even preferably without a deal.

What all this means is that the realignment is going to happen outside Parliament and probably with some (more) dramatic party splits. The Conservative Party will almost certainly chose a more committed Brexiteer, one who is prepared to contemplate a no deal (at the very least). This will bring to a head the division in that party which are not just divisions among MP's but also among the Party's voters. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn will find his life getting very difficult indeed: his strategy over the last two and a bit years has been very astute and has kept the Labour voting bloc together but this has now run out of road. The Labour Party is also going to face divisions among its MPs and voters and challenges from both sides of the new division.

Who knows what will happen in the next five months? Pretty much all of the possibilities are now on the table. Whichever one happens though, will likely blow up the existing party system.