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Opponents of ‘Brexit,’ Emboldened by U.K. Court Ruling, Start Shaping Plans ‘Brexit’ Ruling Could Cause Britain to Drag Its Feet, Muddying E.U. Plans
(about 3 hours later)
LONDON — Emboldened by a landmark legal ruling, pro-European lawmakers in Britain’s Parliament began on Friday to lay plans to force the government to conform more closely to their vision of how to negotiate the country’s departure from the European Union. LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain faced a complex new reality on Friday. Not only had a ruling by Britain’s High Court imperiled her “Brexit” strategy, but she also had to contend with leaders from the Continent who had once begged the British to stay in the European Union but who were now saying they wanted them out, and fast.
At the same time, the British prime minister, Theresa May, sought to reassure European leaders that her timetable for withdrawal from the bloc would not be derailed, despite a High Court ruling on Thursday that would force her to consult Parliament first. The court ruling that she must gain Parliament’s approval to begin the process of withdrawal from the European Union — or Brexit — raised the possibility that negotiations could drag on far past Mrs. May’s deadline of the end of March.
On Friday, Mrs. May spoke by telephone with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, telling them that she would start talks on Britain’s withdrawal — a process known as Brexit — by the end of March, as planned. But the timetable may no longer be in her hands. But that poses problems not only for the British prime minister but also for the political establishment on the Continent, where among other things France and Germany are heading toward important elections, with populist parties gaining strength.
Mrs. May had another setback on Friday with the resignation of Stephen Phillips, a lawmaker in her Conservative Party who supported Britain’s departure from the bloc but who has accused her government of trying to sideline Parliament. The High Court ruling also is a reminder of the fragility of the European Union, which seemingly is buffeted by an existential threat every other week. Last week, it was Wallonia’s nearly killing a trade deal with Canada. Next month, it is a constitutional referendum in Italy.
The government has vowed to appeal the court judgment. But the prospect that lawmakers may need to be consulted before leaving the European Union potentially opens the way to a protracted tussle over the terms of the withdrawal. That, combined with the slimness of the Conservative Party’s majority in Parliament, has fueled speculation that Mrs. May could be pushed into seeking an early election. The European Union was already struggling with a witches’ brew of problems: low economic growth; high joblessness; uncertainty in the eurozone, with Greece again in economic difficulties and questions about the soundness of Italian banks; a crackdown in Turkey; and an aggressive Russia. Immigration from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan, seemingly under control earlier this year, is on the rise once again.
After being flattened in the June referendum, the pro-European forces who make up a majority in Parliament are warming to the idea not of stopping a British departure, but of softening it. To date, Mrs. May has hinted that she is leaning toward a “hard Brexit,” emphasizing control over immigration and Britain’s borders, even if that forces the country to leave Europe’s single market and hurts the economy. Looming over all of this are the growing populist, nationalist and far-right movements in core European Union countries like France, Germany and the Netherlands, not to speak of newer members like Hungary and Poland.
If the upshot of the legal case is that the government simply needs to win a parliamentary vote, then Mrs. May could succeed in maintaining her schedule for withdrawal. Though a majority of lawmakers wanted to remain in the 28-nation bloc, they also voted overwhelmingly for the referendum to take place and would be reluctant to override the wishes of Britons who voted in the referendum. Nor has faith in the European Union been helped by recent embarrassments, like the hangup on the trade deal with Canada. That led Peter Ziga, the Slovak economy minister, to wonder, “If we don’t agree with Canada, with whom will we agree?”
But it may not be that simple. David Davis, secretary of state for exiting the European Union, said on Thursday that the government was assuming that — if the High Court ruling stands — legislation would be needed to invoke Article 50 of the European Union treaty. Cecilia Malmstrom, the bloc’s trade commissioner, went further, saying with a smile, “If we can’t make it with Canada, I’m not sure we can make it with the U.K.”
That would open myriad possibilities for delays and amendments, perhaps ones that commit Britain to remaining part of the bloc’s Customs Union or its internal market of 500 million consumers. The European Union found a way to buy off the Walloons, a tactic it often relies on when under great pressure. But few think lurching from crisis to crisis without addressing fundamental problems is any way to manage an alliance of 28 nations that share important aspects of sovereignty including, for 19 of them, a single currency.
In any event, Parliament will almost certainly press Mrs. May to be more specific about her objectives and strategy for a British departure from the European Union. Once she does that, she may have more problems containing hard-line pro-Brexit factions in her own party, who are already warning darkly of any slippage from a clean break. And then there is the vexed, complicated problem of Britain and its exit after more than 40 years, which few European countries either expected or wanted. Like the guest at a party who overstays his welcome, Britain and its internal psychodrama are getting on the nerves of its European partners, who fear further economic and political uncertainty to add to the already unhappy mix.
In retrospect, it was Mrs. May’s refusal at the outset to consult Parliament that placed her in this difficult position, and not just in the courts. Mr. Phillips, the Conservative lawmaker who resigned on Friday, crystallized his objections last month in an opinion article in The Guardian newspaper. He wrote that depriving Parliament of a chance “to say where it thinks these negotiations should end up is, at its core, undemocratic, unconstitutional and likely to exacerbate the divisions in our society to which the referendum gave rise.” The British government and the ruling Conservative Party are deeply divided about what kind of relationship they want with the European Union, apparently having forgotten that the other 27 nations must unanimously agree to any new deal, and what Britain wants is not entirely the point.
Those who want a softer Brexit believe Mrs. May has overreached, not just by failing to consult Parliament but also through the harsh language she has adopted on immigration. The frustration for Brussels is that it cannot force Britain to act. It has to wait for the government to trigger Article 50, which begins a two-year negotiating period for exit. While many European leaders had wanted Article 50 to be invoked immediately after Britons voted to leave on June 23, they agreed to the March timetable.
In order to participate in the European Union’s internal market, countries normally have to accept free movement of people, something Mrs. May appears determined to curb. By taking this tough line on migration, Mrs. May risks a backlash from business. That remains Mrs. May’s stated goal. But the High Court decision — which the government is appealing to the Supreme Court — has created the potential for months more delay, as well as the prospect that Parliament might lay down negotiating parameters that could make the talks even more difficult.
Critics of a hard Brexit are beginning to organize better. The opposition Labour Party has appointed as spokesman on Britain’s exit, a former director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, who is regarded as an able politician. Another effective Labour lawmaker, Hilary Benn, has been elected chairman of the new parliamentary committee that will scrutinize government policy on leaving the bloc. Mrs. May’s few public statements imply that she is leaning toward a “hard Brexit,” emphasizing control over immigration and Britain’s borders, even if that forces the country to leave Europe’s single market and hurts the economy. But the pro-European forces who make up a majority in Parliament, emboldened by the court ruling, may now have the means to soften her stance enough to keep Britain in the single market.
After a period out of the spotlight, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, has assumed a higher profile, arguing for a departure that minimizes economic “self-harm.” Many members of the House of Lords, given the chance, would seek to blunt the impact of a withdrawal. That would mean compromising on immigration, which is anathema to hard-line supporters of Brexit in her party and right-wing nationalists. The haggling could go on for some time.
However, there is little appetite among politicians to try to block a British withdrawal because opinion polls tend to show no big shift in the public mood. On Friday, in telephone calls with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, Mrs. May said she was confident she would meet the March deadline and that the government would win in the Supreme Court, which will hear the case in early December.
Mrs. May also has the support of the British newspapers that had supported the campaign to leave, some of which viciously criticized on Thursday the judges who reasserted one of the principles some proponents of Brexit had espoused: the sovereignty of Britain’s Parliament. But not everyone is so sure, and the timing matters. The bloc’s leaders want Britain out before elections for the European Parliament, scheduled for 2019, and to allow for planning a new European Union budget. Mrs. May’s original timetable works for that, but it is no longer certain she can deliver on her promises. And no one really knows how to handle, or budget for, a Britain that is not yet out but does not want to be in.
In a front-page banner headline, The Daily Mail tabloid described the judges as “Enemies of the People.” In Berlin on Friday, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, “Dragging things out won’t serve anyone.”
He warned Britain against expecting special treatment and urged for negotiations to start as soon as possible.
“Two years sounds at first like a lot of time,” he said, “but if you look at the complexity, two years is comparatively short.”
Mr. Johnson, who backed Brexit, said that Britain would leave the bloc but remain a part of Europe. But the future balance of the relationship remains extremely unclear.
As a measure of Britain’s febrile political mood, the largely right-wing British press, which mostly supports Mrs. May, attacked the three High Court judges for being “out of touch” and seeking to undermine the popular referendum in favor of Brexit. One paper, the popular and often rabid Daily Mail, had a huge headline under photographs of the judges, reading, “Enemies of the People.”
Even the more staid Daily Telegraph headlined its front page: “The judges versus the people.” With that was a front-page column by Nigel Farage, the leader of the pro-Brexit U.K. Independence Party, saying that the court ruling means that “a great betrayal is underway.”
Even though Mr. Farage and the “Leave” camp won the referendum handily, 52 percent to 48 percent, many, like him, are obsessed with the idea that Mrs. May is feigning support for Brexit and that the government, Parliament, the judges and “the elite” will betray the more than 17 million voters who wanted out of the European Union.
It is an obvious irony that one prime reason they had for supporting Brexit was to restore the full sovereignty of Parliament, a stance taken by the judges, too, but inconveniently now, because it might slow down Britain’s exit.
Mrs. May also faced criticism from another front on Friday, when a Conservative member of Parliament, Stephen Phillips, who supported Brexit but has accused her government of trying to sideline Parliament, resigned his seat.
Last month, he crystallized his objections in an opinion article in The Guardian in which he said that “not giving Parliament the chance, before Article 50 is invoked, to say where it thinks these negotiations should end up is, at its core, undemocratic, unconstitutional and likely to exacerbate the divisions in our society to which the referendum gave rise.”
With a small majority in Parliament, Mrs. May is being urged by some, including The Times of London, to call an early election to win her own mandate and increase her majority at a time when the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties are weak.
She has vowed not to have an election before its scheduled date of 2020, but if Parliament creates too many difficulties and delays for her, she may have no choice.