Strengthening Britain’s Hand on Brexit

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/opinion/strengthening-britains-hand-on-brexit.html

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There is an undeniable dollop of hypocrisy in Prime Minister Theresa May’s call for a snap election on June 8 after insisting all along that she would not do something so “self-serving.” But in this case Mrs. May made the right call.

The election cannot change the outcome of last year’s referendum in which British voters shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. She is stuck with that. But what she will need is the backing of the British people for the extraordinarily difficult negotiations with the union to determine how, at what pace and at what cost to the British economy the separation is to be achieved. It’s also best for the European Union to know who it’s dealing with as it grapples with major challenges to its own future.

Mrs. May claimed she changed her mind on an election “only recently and reluctantly” because opposition parties and the House of Lords were weakening her negotiating stance. The real reason is more prosaic: The Labour Party under the far-left Jeremy Corbyn is a mess, and unless something startling happens in the next seven weeks, Mrs. May’s Conservatives will greatly expand their majority in Parliament. Elections will also give the prime minister, who took power last July without a national vote, a personal mandate.

Most important, a strong showing should give Mrs. May the flexibility and authority she will need once the enormously complex and fraught negotiations get going — after France and Germany hold their own national elections, the former this weekend and the latter in September. The European Union will resist making major concessions to Britain for fear of encouraging other members to exit, so Mrs. May will be under considerable pressure to make compromises that hard-core advocates of Brexit will strongly resist.

At that point, Mrs. May’s polling numbers are likely to sink, especially if she opts for a phased withdrawal at the cost of continuing to allow the free movement of Europeans into Britain for some time. That is a feature of union membership that Brexiteers especially loathe. Similarly, Britons still harboring hopes that Brexit can be avoided are likely to see them dashed once Mrs. May secures a firm mandate from voters.

All these passions are certain to peak as the March 2019 deadline for the Britain-European Union divorce approaches, so by pushing the next scheduled general election from 2020 to 2022 Mrs. May also gives herself a needed political buffer.

That, at least, is the picture at this juncture. There have been too many electoral surprises and misleading polls — including the polls predicting Brexit would be rejected in last year’s referendum — to take anything for granted. The election could re-energize Scottish nationalists, and after calling her own election, Mrs. May will have a hard time arguing that another Scottish referendum would be ill timed.

Whether Britain is wise or not to leave the European Union, the die is cast, and what is important now is to ensure a divorce that is the least disruptive and destructive to both sides. For that, Mrs. May is right to ask the British once again for their judgment.