Tag Archives: Soft Brexit

The impact of Brexit on UK policy on Northern Ireland

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Conor Kelly and Etain Tannam argue that Brexit reversed much of the progress of past decades in Northern Ireland by signifying a return by the UK government to a unilateral approach that prioritised traditional sovereignty in both its relations with the Irish government and with devolved governments. They conclude that Brexit has deeply destabilised the political settlement in Northern Ireland.

In the first 5 months of 2023, Northern Ireland was rarely far from our front pages as the Windsor Framework was negotiated between the UK government and European Commission in February, and the world’s media descended on Belfast for the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement’s 25th-anniversary celebrations in April. Yet, the Stormont institutions remain suspended, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has thus far refused to accept the Windsor Framework as the basis for returning to power-sharing.

To understand Brexit’s impact on the government’s policy, one must examine if joint UK-Irish EU membership between 1973 and 2016 impacted UK policy to Northern Ireland. We argue that while the Europeanisation of UK government policy towards Northern Ireland can be overstated, it had an indirect impact on the peace process by influencing the strategy of its key architect, former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume. In particular the EU’s model of  institutionalised cooperation and consensual policy-making has echoes in the 1998 Agreement. Thus, the process of de-Europeanisation since 2016 has had a severely negative effect on political stability within Northern Ireland and UK-Irish relations.

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The parliamentary battle over Brexit and the constitution

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Today sees the publication of a new book by the Unit’s Meg Russell and Lisa James, The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit. Here the authors summarise some of its key findings about why parliament was drawn into such controversy over the implementation of Brexit. They reflect on what these events teach us about our constitution, as well as what may need to change in order to avoid repeating such problems, and to mend the damage done.

The UK’s arguments over what became known as Brexit began long before the June 2016 referendum, and continued with increasing bitterness afterwards. Parliament was often central, both as a venue for such arguments, and in terms of disputes about its proper role. It and its members frequently faced criticism and blame. Our new book, published today, charts The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit, from the early pressures for a referendum, through disputes about the triggering of Article 50 and control of the House of Commons agenda, the repeated defeats of Theresa May’s deal, and Boris Johnson’s unlawful parliamentary prorogation, to the UK’s eventual departure from the EU following his deal. The book charts what happened, but also asks what went wrong and whether things could have been handled differently. It reflects on what these events teach us about the functioning of our constitution, and what if anything might need to change.

The book includes a wealth of detail about key political moments, and the roles of different individuals and groups. Here we focus on some of the bigger questions about the lasting legacy of the battles over Brexit for the culture and institutions of UK politics, and particularly for the place of parliament itself. A fuller version of this analysis appears in the final chapter of the book.

Referendums and public participation

The referendum of 23 June 2016 was only the third ever such UK-wide vote (the first being on European Community membership in 1975, and the second in 2011 on changing the House of Commons voting system). The handling of the referendum was the single biggest error of the Brexit process, from which many other difficulties flowed.

Unlike the 2011 referendum, which was underpinned by legislation setting out the detail of the proposed new voting system, no clear prospectus was offered to the voters for Brexit. Prime Minister David Cameron hoped to use the vote – described disapprovingly by the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee as a ‘bluff call’ referendum – to make the question of Brexit go away. Parliament never debated the substance of the question, the government did not detail the options, and civil servants were forbidden from preparing for a Leave vote. Leave campaigners argued at the level of principle, rather than on a specific plan. As one Brexit-supporting interviewee told us, ‘it was only [after the referendum] that different types of Brexit started coming to the fore. Soft Brexit and hard Brexit had never been canvassed before the referendum; the expressions were coined afterwards’. Issues that would soon come to dominate the agenda, such as membership of the Customs Union or Single Market, and crucially the Northern Ireland border, were barely mentioned during the campaign. This left the government – and parliament – in a very difficult position. The different options for Brexit had to be established only after the vote had taken place, and on this the voters had conveyed no clear instruction.

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Could innovative voting rules break parliament’s Brexit impasse?

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Following last night’s inconclusive votes in the House of Commons, MPs are heading for another round of voting on Brexit options next Monday. The hope is that new voting rules will help deliver a compromise solution. In this post, Alan Renwick argues that a bold approach to the voting system could achieve a great deal – though, ultimately, compromise will be attainable only if MPs want it.

MPs last night declined to give majority backing to any of the eight Brexit options put before them. The architects of the ‘indicative voting’ process expected this and have therefore reserved next Monday for a second round. They hope to find a route towards a compromise that will break the Brexit impasse, and they have repeatedly suggested that a different voting process could facilitate that.

There are at least three fundamental questions about that process. First, what options will be included? All of last night’s options – plus the deal as it stands – might go forward, or they could be whittled down to a shorter list, or some options could be packaged in a new way. Second, how should the choice be structured? Writing on this blog earlier in the week, Meg Russell suggested that the options put should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and that two dimensions – outcomes and processes – should be separated out. Some MPs have adopted similar arguments. Third, by what voting system should MPs make their choice? Last night’s ballot used a series of yes/no votes, but something less crude is envisaged for Monday.

All of these questions are crucial, but this post focuses largely on the third. Its message is that MPs could indeed greatly ease the path to compromise through their choice of voting system. The rules cannot, however, do all the work on their own. Compromise can be reached only if MPs want it. Continue reading →

Could an ‘indicative vote’ break the Brexit logjam?

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albert_weale (1)An indicative vote on the government’s Brexit deal has been suggested as a means of determining which of the options available to parliament has the best chance of securing the support of the House of Commons. In this post, Albert Weale examines how an indicative vote process would work, and whether or not it offers a workable solution to what appears to be a parliamentary impasse.

Pressure is growing for an indicative vote in the Commons to break the Brexit logjam. Such a vote would allow MPs to vote on a number of alternatives to the government’s ‘deal’, as laid out in the Withdrawal Agreement announced in November. The purpose of such a vote would be to see whether there was significant support in the Commons for each of the specified alternatives. A similar exercise was tried in 2003 when the then Labour government was seeking support for reform of the House of Lords, and in particular what balance of elected or appointed members a reformed upper chamber should contain. It did not work then, but could it work in the case of Brexit? Answering this question depends on three things: how many options are voted on, how the votes are counted, and the extent to which MPs engage in strategic voting. All three elements interact in complex ways.

To understand the basic logic, consider a simplified version of the various options that are likely to be proposed. With no abstentions, a majority on a motion in the Commons requires 320 votes to pass. In Figure 1, I have shown five possible motions that could be put to an indicative vote. Other things being equal, the more alternatives there are, the harder it is to obtain a majority for any one of them. Continue reading →

The executive’s Brexit: the UK Constitution after Miller

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The judgment of the Supreme Court in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union required the government to seek parliamentary approval (through legislation) for the triggering of Article 50, which formally started the Brexit process. In this post, Mark Elliott, Jack Williams and Alison Young argue that parliament has failed to capitalise on the court’s decision and that it is the executive, not parliament, that is truly in control of the Brexit process.

Whether you like your Brexit ‘hard’, ‘soft’, or ‘red, white and blue’, one thing is clear – this will be the executive’s Brexit. Despite the Supreme Court decision in Miller handing parliament a golden opportunity to shape Brexit, Theresa May’s government has been in the driving seat, largely unimpeded, ever since the 2016 referendum in favour of leaving the EU. Parliament has consistently been a passenger.

The first pitstop on the executive’s journey to Brexit was the triggering of Article 50. As is by now well known, the government claimed that it already had the power to trigger the process of the UK’s leaving the EU by virtue of its foreign relations prerogative. Indeed, the government’s initial intention was to trigger Article 50 by the end of 2016, necessitating an expedited process in the Miller litigation, leapfrogging the Court of Appeal to ultimately reach the Supreme Court by the end of the year. If one believes that the triggering of Article 50 (in March 2017) was premature, then it is troublesome to imagine what would have happened if, in the absence of the litigation, it had been triggered six months earlier.  

The Supreme Court came down firmly in favour of parliament, ruling that the government would be able to initiate Brexit only if parliament were to empower it to do so, albeit that the UK parliament could lawfully go ahead and authorise the triggering of Article 50 whether the devolved legislatures liked it or not. This was on the basis that the foreign relations prerogative does not extend, by its very nature, to changing or affecting domestic law or rights. At the time, Miller therefore appeared to be of immense political significance because it put parliament so firmly in the Brexit driving seat. However, 18 months on, the picture looks rather different, and the judgment has proven to be far from the final word on the underlying controversies. Continue reading →