Here’s my first post-Brexit vote piece for the Telegraph that’s been noticed here and there:

Now what? In particular, do we leave the European Union, or not? Above all, what’s the Plan?

The core possibilities are these:

  • We leave the EU and try to become a sort of European Singapore (i.e. an independent trading nation outside all European trading arrangements)
  • We leave the EU but stay in the wider European trading schema, eg by becoming a member of the European Economic Area (as Norway) or the European Free Trade Association (as Switzerland). In either case we have to negotiate a complex relationship with the EU’s Single Market and its migration regime
  • The EU undergoes a major upheaval to restructure itself and we decide (through referendum or otherwise) to stay in that new formation
  • We don’t leave the EU but somehow a new relationship within it is agreed. Public confidence in democratic politics is (just about) maintained
  • We don’t leave the EU: nothing changes. Public confidence in democratic politics collapses

The Leave campaign was strong on what it did not want, but studiously ambiguous on what should happen if it won the vote. It now has to unite around bold strategic decisions, ideally in this positive spirit…

… Mighty as the Leave referendum vote was, it’s not a “decision to withdraw”. That has to come from the Government, probably supported by a vote in Parliament. In announcing that he was stepping down David Cameron left it to his successor to work that out. Yet Boris Johnson’s ensuing statement was oddly categorical:

“It is vital to stress there is no need for haste, and as the Prime Minister has said, nothing will change in the short term except how to give effect to the will of the people and to extricate this country from the supranational system. There is no need to invoke Article 50.”

He did not say: “There is no need to invoke Article 50 for the time being”.

Was he dropping a fat hint that the UK is open to a protracted haggle with EU partners over a “reformed” EU that in due course the UK might agree to be part of? Or that Article 50 will be triggered only when the clear outlines of a New Deal have been identified, with the Article 50 procedure kicking in to launch the legal formalities needed to move favour of (say) an EEA-type result? Do he and the top Leavers have any idea of what to do now?

Ah, that‘s a question. Can it really be true as some reports say that Number 10 instructed the civil service NOT to write down anything on Brexit planning lest it leak to horrible Remain campaign embarrassment? Luckily for David Cameron the startling gyrations of the doomed Labour Party have distracted people from probing that one too far.

Obviously Leave did not have a Plan as such. They were too divided over any ultimate non-EU model (migration etc) and (to a degree not unreasonably) must have decided to focus on winning the Vote first. Plus the government in general and D Cameron in particular had promised loyally to take forward a Leave referendum result, so (of course) the government had to have made some contingency plans therefor and they would be good enough to get things started?

Wait…

They didn’t??

Hmmm. Never assume.

Back to my Telegraph piece that concludes thusly:

EU capitals including London need to start working for real change. Informal discussions are already starting. Whether he likes it or not, David Cameron will have to do important work on all this before he finally leaves Number Ten.

It’s possible (and arguably likely) that we won’t formally leave the EU for several years to come, if at all. You enjoyed this referendum? Don’t rule out a new referendum on a different EU with a different question and a different result.

It’s also possible that we’ll formally leave the EU and e.g. join the EEA/EFTA in only a few months’ time, if London and key capitals decide that this is the swiftest safest way to get things stabilised.

Between those two possibilities – we leave the EU within months, or never – lie all sorts of sub-options.

Don’t take any notice of anyone saying that X or Y or Z “must” happen. There is no “must” here.

Just choices that we know now, and choices that may not yet exist but will emerge once the serious talking starts.

I have been exchanging Tweets with lawyer David Allen Green aka Jack of Kent (who as far as I know is no relation of Tom of Finland) over the significance if any of the fact that Article 50 has not been triggered by London. David is making the argument in the FT (££) that if Article 50 has not been launched by now by London following the referendum it probably never will be, so (by implication) some sort of complex fudged UK/EU continuing membership is likely.

Here he is parsing Donald Tusk, President of the European Council and previously PM of Poland (ie someone who has a Brussels top job pulling together the views of EU member states and ergo someone who keenly Understands Voters):

First, Tusk accepts the Article 50 notification is to be made by the next UK Prime Minister, and that the decision has not yet been made by the UK to make that notification.

Second, he accepts the merits of delay: “that some time is now needed to allow the dust to settle in the UK”.

And third, and this is very subtle – see how he describes the referendum outcome: “the results of Thursday’s referendum”.  Note how he uses “results” not “decision” – and carefully uses the plural form in doing so.

These remarks, by themselves, do not mean that the Article 50 notification will never be made; but they do mean that the European Council accepts that the referendum, by itself, was not the (or, even, a) decision, and that the European Council accepts that there should be delay in the decision being made.

As previously argued here, I don’t see much significance in London not triggering Article 50 immediately: far wiser lots of careful quiet consultation first over what then happens:

Whatever happens the EU treaties now have to change in the coming years. It’s highly unlikely to be possible or desirable politically simply to have everything else continuing as before but with the UK not in the EU club.

In other words, the legal forms are important but they don’t matter. What matters is answering the key strategic questions. Then you find the legal language to make it all happen.

It follows that the key negotiations can be conducted and concluded in a couple of years without Article 50 being triggered at all. Or, perhaps, Article 50 will be triggered only when the clear outlines of a New Deal have been identified, with the Article 50 process kicking in to launch the legal formalities needed to finish things off.

Otherwise things are going as expected, with the European Parliament (Schulz) and European Commission (Juncker) aka Schuncker speedily making a fool of themselves by ‘demanding’ that the UK open divorce proceedings ‘immediately’, only to be ignored by Reality. NB too the core contradiction in how ‘Brussels’ handles all this complex problem of problems: Brussels trumpets that the UK is still an EU member with all existing rights and obligations (not least to keep paying towards official salaries) but also is starting improperly playing procedural games at UK expense.

Watch out especially for sharp rivalry between the Schuncker Brussels Bureaucratic Establishment and the member states (led by Tusk who himself has problems with Warsaw) over the first key issues of any negotiation: who is in the room on the day, who prepares the briefs, and who takes the official record? It’s already started haha.

To be continued…