Brexit has plunged the United Kingdom into deep turmoil, and no one knows how it will emerge. Below, we'll explore how the world's fifth-largest economy wound up in this fix, and what might happen next.
Matters reach an ugly crescendo this week when Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's "Brexit" deal—the U.K.'s transitional agreement with the European Union (EU) to leave the supranational union—went down to defeat in Parliament by a vote of 202-432 on Tuesday, the biggest loss for a motion put forward by a sitting British government in over 100 years. This in turn led to a vote of no confidence, which May and her Tories survived in spite of their humiliating failure a day earlier, winning 325-306 with the help of their allies, Northern Ireland's right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Combined, these two votes kept the status quo in place, with May’s government surviving but also with no feasible deal to leave the EU capable of winning a parliamentary majority. But the clock is ticking: Brexit is currently scheduled to happen on March 29, with or without a deal. A "No Deal" or "hard" Brexit, where all trade between the U.K. and EU reverts to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms, would be the worst-case outcome for both the U.K. and the union, but hardline anti-Europe extremists nonetheless embrace the possibility.
How did the United Kingdom get stuck in this situation, careening towards a no-deal scenario that almost no one wants? There’s an epic quantum of blame to go around, and heaps of fault lie with former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, who allowed the referendum in the first place, and Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was never able to articulate a clear stance against it, among many others (including Vladimir Putin).
But in terms of the morass the UK is in right now—that is to say, the government’s utter inability to come up with any sort of viable way for dealing with Brexit—there are four main players you can point a finger at. We’ll start with the most obvious: the prime minister herself.
1. Theresa May
May became prime minister in the wake of the Brexit referendum in 2016. She had supported staying in the EU but vowed to carry out wishes of the so-called "Leave" faction, which won a narrow 52-48 majority. May was so set on following through with Brexit that she triggered its launch (a two-year process under the EU's governing treaty) on March 29, 2017 without much of a plan in place for how the U.K.'s departure would actually proceed. That’s what the two years were for, after all! May had a small but stable Tory majority for three more years to negotiate a planned, orderly Brexit before mandatory elections in 2020.
But what if instead, three weeks later, she called early elections?
Why would May do that? Well, she had a big polling lead over Labour (about 15 to 20 points), and she knew that Brexit would be easier to pass through Parliament if she had a larger majority, as the Tories were sharply divided over it. But May proceeded to run one of the worst campaigns in British history while Jeremy Corbyn and Labour ran one of the best, and May lost her majority entirely.
May managed to remain prime minister, however, thanks to an agreement with the DUP, which won 10 seats—just enough to stay in power. She also managed to retain her role as leader of the Conservative Party, despite the disastrous election outcome, because, frankly, no one else wanted to try to push Brexit through with a minority government.
It was at this point that May made her biggest Brexit-related error–even bigger than the election debacle.
It should have been clear to May that, given the deep divisions within her party, no Brexit deal could pass without significant Labour votes. But Labour's position in relation to Brexit was little better than the Tories', with some Labour members of Parliament (MPs) calling for a second referendum, some advocating a "soft" Brexit (under which many ties to the EU would remain in place), and some open to a harder Brexit.
Had May sought to bring Labour into the fold and attempted a cross-party negotiation with the EU, she quite possibly would have be felled by a Tory rebellion. But by not trying, she all but guaranteed the current stalemate.
2. Jacob Rees-Mogg and the European Research Group
Jacob Rees-Mogg is one of the most conservative Tory MPs and one of the most outspoken Brexit supporters in Parliament. He leads the European Research Group, or ERG, a right-wing think-tank supports a "hard" Brexit. Under such a scenario, the U.K. would sever most ties with the EU but pay a steep price economically and also bequeath itself some near-intractable problems, such as the prospect of reimposed border controls between the Republic of Ireland (an EU member) and Northern Ireland (a part of the U.K.)—more on that below.
Rees-Mogg and the ERG have been an ever-present thorn in May's side: They've opposed everything Brexit-related from the right and played a key role in the failed attempt to bring down May in December. While they don’t publicly advocate for an outright "No Deal" Brexit, the sense is that they wouldn’t mind it. Rees-Mogg even hosted a champagne party after May’s deal was defeated, if that gives you a sense of the kind of guy he is.
The ERG has threatened to bring down the government if the final Brexit deal isn’t hard enough, such as if it includes a customs union that would win over some Labour votes.
3. The DUP and the Good Friday Agreement
Despite the ERG's intransigence, and despite May’s refusal to seek cross-party support for a Brexit deal, there was a slim chance that an agreement could nonetheless have been cobbled together. There are Labour MPs who strongly supported Leave, and others who believe they have to follow through on what their constituents voted for, regardless of their personal feelings on the matter. Setting aside Northern Ireland, it's possible to imagine a deal that squeaks through with the support of most Tories, some Labour rebels, and the DUP.
But Northern Ireland does exist, and it remains raw from the low-level but often deadly guerrilla war known as "The Troubles" that lasted for 30 years, until it was brought to an end by the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
To make a very long story short, peace in Northern Ireland was achieved in part because membership in the European Union minimized the difference between living in Ireland and Northern Ireland by diminishing the importance of the border between the two. As a key example, there are no custom checks on the island, and the border itself is now scarcely noticeable, much like it is when driving between states in the U.S. Britain leaving the EU would seriously complicate this.
There are a number of issues, but the pivotal one is custom checks. If the U.K. and the EU don't form a customs union (something May has so far rejected and the ERG bitterly opposes), then there would have to be custom checks between the two. Ireland (and therefore the EU) rejects the re-introduction of custom checks or any kind of hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
An alternate proposal would leave Northern Ireland—but not the rest of the U.K.—in a customs union with the EU and establish customs checks between the two islands (that is, Ireland and Great Britain). But the DUP is fanatically devoted to ensuring that Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom and therefore opposes, along with many Tories, any plans that would treat the country differently from the rest of the U.K.
In other words, to reach a deal, the U.K. would need custom checks somewhere, but not on the island of Ireland and not along the Irish Sea. The basic topographic impossibilty of such a notion vividly illustrates the insoluble nature of this issue.
May's deal would have punted the issue to the next stage of talks: Believe it or not, this is only a transitional agreement; the U.K. and the EU would still have to negotiate a final status agreement. It calls for a backstop if an agreement is not reached on the issue that would temporarily keep the U.K. aligned with the EU's customs regime until the EU and the U.K. agree it’s no longer needed.
But if that backstop were to remain, a future British government could change its custom rules but would have to leave Northern Ireland on the other side of the "customs" border. This made no one happy, least of all the DUP, since such a possibility would of course raise the prospect of different treatment for Northern Ireland. The DUP therefore opposed the agreement and threatened to bring down the government—on whose support it's dependent—if it passed.
4. Moderate, pro-"Remain" Tories
Far less coherent than either the ERG or the DUP are pro-EU Tories, who supported the "Remain" campaign and would like to see a close relationship with the union even after Brexit (similar to Norway’s arrangement with the EU despite its lack of membership). This faction has been far more loyal to May and their party than the ERG and has not threatened to bring down the government over a Brexit agreement they oppose. In the same way that "moderate" Republicans in the U.S. always tend to cave to the party line in the end, these folks really don’t want to rock the boat.
So while the pro-Remain Tories have mostly been ignored during this process, the one red line they’ve put out is a refusal to accept "No Deal" Brexit. A handful of these folks have made it clear that if a rock-hard Brexit were to become inevitable, they would instead bring down the government to prevent it. And so far there’s no agreement that has anywhere near the votes to pass without lots and lots of Labour votes suddenly appearing, which would almost certainly set the ERG off.
What Happens Next
After surviving the no confidence motion, May said that she would launch talks with leaders of the other parties and speak with a variety of MPs to seek a way forward. Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, replied that he would not meet with May unless she took a "No Deal" Brexit off the table. Public jousting aside, there really doesn’t seem to be any clear plan in place to resolve this impasse.
May’s intention was to bring her deal back for a second vote, hoping that pressure from markets and the looming March deadline would swing votes, in much the same way that Congress passed its gigantic bank bailout on a re-vote as the 2008 financial crisis swept in. But the size of May's defeat, as well as an upcoming amendment that's likely to pass and would require the government to seek an extension to the March 29 deadline, renders that prospect highly suspect.
And even with this amendment, an extension would only delay a resolution. It doesn't solve any of the many, many problems facing May and the U.K.. On top of that, elections for the EU Parliament set for May of this year would complicate any lengthy extensions, as the U.K. is not scheduled to take part in them.
May can only survive by kicking the proverbial can down the road, as there is no apparent way to either pass a deal and keep the government together, or to hold the government together through a Brexit that goes through without any deal. Yet May’s government continues to rule out anything that could possibly change the current facts on the ground, and so Brexit trudges on, with no end in sight but a drop-dead date that looms closer every day.