Over at the FT (££) is an elegant piece by David Allen Green on the legal/constitutional steps that would be expected following a Brexit vote. Key point:

A vote for Brexit will not be determinative of whether the UK will leave the EU. That potential outcome comes down to the political decisions which then follow before the Article 50 notification. The policy of the government (if not of all of its ministers) is to remain in the EU. The UK government may thereby seek to put off the Article 50 notification, regardless of political pressure and conventional wisdom.

There may already be plans in place to slow things down and to put off any substantive decision until after summer. In turn, those supporting Brexit cannot simply celebrate a vote for leave as a job done — for them the real political work begins in getting the government to make the Article 50 notification as soon as possible with no further preconditions.

On the day after a vote for Brexit, the UK will still be a member state of the EU. All the legislation which gives effect to EU law will still be in place. Nothing as a matter of law changes in any way just because of a vote to Leave. What will make all the legal difference is not a decision to leave by UK voters in a non-binding advisory vote, but the decision of the prime minister on making any Article 50 notification.

I’ve posted this comment:

Note that the Cameron/EU Deal has this explosive point in the small print:

“It is understood that, should the result of the referendum in the United Kingdom be for it to leave the European Union, the set of arrangements referred to in paragraph 2 above will cease to exist”

NB that the package comes into effect ONLY IF AND WHEN the UK formally notifies the EU that it’s staying in. If the UK votes to leave in the June referendum, the whole package vanishes like a puff of smoke!

https://charlescrawford.biz/2016/02/29/brexit-v-ukineu-2/

Be all that as it may, DAG is right to remind us that pretty much anything in the way the EU works can be changed on the hoof or not as long as all member states (and grudgingly the Commission and EP) go along with the changes.

So don’t get too transfixed on the TEU texts as such, even though they in a sense do set negotiating parameters of sorts.

In this dramatic case, namely where one member state for the first time votes to Leave the EU, there will be a huge unprecedented operational responsibility on the personal shoulders of every serious EU leader to keep things calm and find a sane way through.

Some of those leaders will come under intense political pressure to offer their own voters a referendum. Some may (rightly) feel politically threatened or personally affronted by this startling new situation caused by the UK and be determined to ‘punish’ the UK pour encourager les autres (while also not overdoing it lest their own country go the same way and risk heavy punishment too). Everyone will be flailing around looking for a Plan.

Unless everything collapses around our ears, that Plan will involve having lots of dull meetings. Lots!

So D Cameron BEFORE he triggers A50 (as he has to do to maintain any last wisps of political and personal credibility) will work like a maniac to take soundings of leaders in Berlin and Paris (with some Madrid/Hague/Rome/Warsaw as well) to identify a process that steers the whole problem into those boring meetings.

The smart best-case outcome is a process that involves something like the following:

Agreement in principle that the UK will end up with a quick dirty interim EEA/EFTA type deal after lots of bickering/bargaining

Agreement in principle that EU leaders will launch a new Strategic Dialogue on the EU’s Future, with a view to big treaty changes in (say) five years’ time that recalibrate the EU and indeed Europe as a whole into two parts: Eurozone Europe (a sort of new superstate bringing together only those willing to accept its disciplines); and Free Trade Europe (a looser formation based on intergovernmental arrangements)

This outcome calms markets. It ends once and for all the ‘ever-closer union’ nonsense except for those who really now want it. It allows a framework for bringing in Turkey/Ukraine/ex-Yugos and maybe even Russia in due course. It reboots the legitimacy of the whole project by offering a Two-Sizes-Available-To-All package that each country freely chooses. It settles in a principled way the post-Cold War problem that Europe has too many countries and too few good clubs.

Above all, it allows Cameron/Merkel/Hollande/Tusk etc to show personal leadership in a way that is genuinely strategic, historic and constructive. Win-Win!

Has anyone got a better idea?