Brexit in a Thousand Words

By Owen Arands.

Apparently, a picture paints a thousand words. Well I couldn’t find a picture that would accurately represent the absurdity of Brexit, so a thousand words will have to do.

23 January 2013 David Cameron’s Conservative party are beginning to lose part of their core support to UKIP. This so called new kid on the block doesn’t seem quite as racist as some of its right wing predecessors, hence a large minority of voters aren’t scared by the thought of voting for them. This is bad for the tory party as it splits their vote and makes a labour government much more likely at the next election. UKIP know this perfectly well but don’t care, they have no realistic ambition to get into government.

To counteract this problem David Cameron announces that if his party wins the 2015 general election, there will be a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU (UKIP’s core policy). Realistically, Mr. Cameron has no intention of holding this referendum because he knows he isn’t going to ‘win’ the next election. At the very best he will be back in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and can simply claim that they blocked the idea of a referendum altogether whilst having hoovered backup all of UKIP’s voters. Genius!

7 May 2015 The Conservative party win the general election outright. Now with nothing to hide behind, Mr. Cameron reiterates his pledge to hold a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. But it's okay, he thinks. There is no way on this Earth we will vote to leave. We will simply hold the referendum, we will vote to remain in the EU and then I can get on with dismantling the countries vital infrastructure and public services undistracted. Genius!

23 June 2016 Britain votes to leave the EU (just). Mr Cameron is an intelligent man and realises the mess he has just created. He also realises that relaxing pub lunches in the Cotswolds and touring the after-dinner circuit is much more appealing. Mr. Cameron resigns.

13 July 2016 After a leadership campaign that saw most of the main contenders withdraw, the Right Honourable Theresa May MP takes the helm. She is now in charge of successfully taking the UK out of the EU despite originally being completely against the idea.

29 March 2017 With no prior discussions and no plan whatsoever, the UK government triggers Article 50 (the legal process of leaving the EU) giving us exactly two years to negotiate and rewrite 40 years of legislation. After that, all EU treaties and deals will cease to apply. Christ.

18 April 2017 Noticing how appallingly awful the labour party are doing in the opinion polls, Mrs May announces that a general election will take place in a few months. She does this safe in the knowledge that she will win a huge majority in the commons and will then be able to steamroll her way through the brexit negotiations without hindrance. Again, genius!

8 June 2017 Theresa May loses her majority in the house of commons and parliament is well hung. Somehow, she clings onto power despite having led the worse general election campaign in most people’s living memory. Oh, by the way by ‘somehow clings onto power’ I mean she literally pays one billion pounds to the DUP to keep her in power, like actually £1,000,000,000. With her newfound weak and unstable government, Mrs May sets about her negotiations.

11 December 2018 After nearly two years of painstakingly incompetent negotiations with redlines based on flying pigs and unicorns, Mrs May puts her deal to parliament. Oh wait no. She cancelled that vote at the very last minute after being told for months no one was going to vote for it. Ahem.

15 January 2019 After nearly two years of painstakingly incompetent negotiations with redlines based on flying pigs and unicorns, Mrs May puts her deal to parliament. (Which by the way she didn’t actually want to do; she was forced to after being taken to court by some random business woman). MP’s vote against the Prime Ministers deal and deliver the biggest government defeat in the history of everything. Gosh.

Now What happens next is anyone’s guess. The most experienced political journalists in the country haven’t got a clue where we are going never mind me. Where we are now however is potentially the absolute summit of national embarrassment, allow me to explain…

Parliament rejected the previous deal because of the so-called Irish Backstop. The UK is part of the Good Friday Agreement, a treaty that brought an end to years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland and the UK. A key part of the Good Friday Agreement is the idea that neither side of the Irish Border can have an economic advantage. This basically means that the economic and regulatory conditions on both sides of the border must be equal. Up until now, this has been quite straightforward but with Britain leaving the EU, these economic and regulatory conditions have the potential to change.

To prevent a breach of the Good Friday Agreement, the EU, in negotiations, proposed that in the event of a “no deal” between them and the UK concerning trading arrangements, Northern Ireland should automatically remain in the same economic and regulatory frameworks as the UK. British negotiators didn’t like this idea, they argued that treating Northern Ireland in this radically different way wouldn’t respect the United Kingdom. So… the EU conceded and said that these regulatory frameworks could extend to the whole of the UK but there would have to be unilateral agreement to leave it. Meaning the sovereignty we’d set out to achieve by leaving was ultimately being stripped away again. Now the EU would have to be involved in the timing of us leaving this framework.

Parliament, particularly certain groups within it, didn’t like this idea and hence voted against the deal. Therefore, the government has gone back to the negotiating table to instruct the EU that we are not willing to be forced into an arrangement that we proposed in the first place. If you can make sense of that get in touch because I fucking can’t.