Endgame?

TALKING POLITICS

Catherine Carr

News, News & Politics

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We weigh up where we've reached with Brexit, now that the big choices can't be avoided for much longer. Is a second referendum any more likely than it was a week ago? What terms will the EU demand for an extension of article 50? And can May finally prevail? With Helen Thompson and Chris Bickerton.

Talking Points:

Are we finally approaching the endgame on Brexit? The sequence became more clear this week: 1) a vote on May’s deal; 2) A vote on no deal; 3) A vote for an extension
The case for an extension remains unclear: the EU states will want something concrete.
Kenneth Armstrong thinks that the key question around an extension is whether it would last 3 months or 2 years. What the extension would mean is also an open question.
What would happen if May’s deal went down? Neither side has an alternative.
David thinks that there are only two possible outcomes at this point: May’s deal or a general election
Although Helen argues that this logic leaves the EU out of the equation.
Even the Financial Times is talking about a second referendum, but how would you actually get the legislation through Parliament?
Chris says that Corbyn’s strategy seems to be to edge Brexit over the line while distancing Labour and himself from it.
The withdrawal and the political agreement still contain a lot of possibilities for a harder or softer Brexit.

Mentioned in this Episode:

Kenneth Armstrong on the Cooper-Letwin Article 50 extension proposal

Further Learning:

And as ever, recommended reading curated by our friends at the LRB can be found here: lrb.co.uk/talking

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, my name's David Rundsman and this is Talking Politics. Back to Brexit. Are we finally
0:18.0	approaching the endgame?
0:28.0	Talking politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books.
0:33.2	As politics speeds up, slow down with a subscription to the LRB,
0:38.7	where Brexit and Trump are only part of a picture that includes, well, everything else.
0:47.9	Read relevant pieces and subscribe at a special rate at lrb.co.com.uk forward slash talking.
1:01.8	In a moment we're going to hear from Helen and Chris, but first we wanted to check in with Kenneth Armstrong, who is our resident expert on European law.
1:05.9	And appropriately or ironically, he is in Brussels this week.
1:14.4	So we asked him to give us some thoughts on his phone, and here I am on my phone, letting you know that after Kenneth, it'll be Helen and Chris.
1:24.1	A short extension in the face of a rejection of the withdrawal agreement, I'm not sure it is really going to do anything other than push back the cliff edge.
1:29.1	The vote that I think that was more significant on Wednesday was the significant vote against the Labour Amendment on its alternative vision for the future relationship
1:35.0	based on a customs union, regulatory alignment with a single market, etc. That then suggests that
1:44.0	what we still only really have in play is some version of the
1:49.4	Prime Minister's deal and whether that can at some point command a majority. I've been in Brussels
1:58.3	this week and one of the things that somebody said to me yesterday is that this was all supposed to be the easy part of things and the real negotiations were yet to come in terms of negotiating the future relationship, which was to happen once the UK leaves.
2:15.3	Now, given that MPs have rejected the Prime Minister's version of that so far,
2:23.8	given that MPs have also rejected the Labour alternative vision of what that looks like,
2:29.4	given that they've also said that they don't want a no-deal Brexit,
2:33.3	it's not completely obvious that there is a consensus
2:37.8	that will then help drive those negotiations forward. And that's very, very risky.
2:43.5	Helen Thompson and Chris Bicketon with me, as you've just heard, Kenneth Armstrong, is in Brussels.
2:49.8	Let's just pick up on a couple of the things that Kenneth said there.
	...

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