Conservatives rally around a position that would disrupt the status quo, but by the time they are given the ability to achieve their goal, they realize they don’t have a plan to actually implement it. Fights break out among purists and centrists over whether to settle for something less, and the whole thing blows up in their faces. This description may sound like what American conservatives went through when Republicans failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, but it’s becoming an increasingly apt description of the chaos among British conservatives when it comes to Brexit.
Republicans, over the course of four election cycles, ran on the pledge of repealing and replacing Obamacare. The message was hated by elites, but ultimately electorally successful. When they achieved unified control of Washington in 2017 and finally had the power to deliver on their long-standing political goal, however, they realized that they had never thought much beyond the catchy “repeal and replace” slogan, and members of their caucus had drastically different ideas about what the phrase meant.
Fights soon broke out among those who believed “repeal and replace” meant what it said, scrapping Obamacare and replacing it with a different, market-based plan. Others seemed to think it meant making changes to the program. Still, others were skittish about doing much of anything at all. In the end, after months of negotiations, the prospect of any sort of repeal of Obamacare went down in flames. The only thing Republicans were able to achieve was to repeal the penalties for going uninsured and to grant more flexibility over the types of plans that could be sold. The latter was achieved only through regulatory actions by the Trump administration.
A very similar scenario is starting to play out in Britain, as the March 29 deadline looms for leaving the European Union.
Much like the Tea Party movement challenged the establishment of the Republican Party and got them to embrace the idea of repeal and replace, the Brexit vote represented conservative groups once viewed as outside the mainstream rejecting the establishment that saw attachment to the EU as economically crucial. In 2016, UK voters defied pollsters and shocked the world by voting to leave the union. The surprising vote forced the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and led to the premiership of Theresa May, who declared, “We must continue to be very clear that ‘Brexit means Brexit,’ that we’re going to make a success of it.” She added, “That means there’s no second referendum; no attempts to sort of stay in the EU by the back door; that we’re actually going to deliver on this.”
Yet, nearly three years after the successful Brexit vote, her Tory party is still arguing over how to actually implement it. Parliament has thus far voted twice to reject deals she offered aimed at smoothing the exit from the EU, and has also expressed opposition to the idea of leaving with no Brexit deal, and also been unwilling to hold a second national referendum on Brexit. May has been trying to convince holdouts that if they don’t accept her deal, that Brexit won’t end up happening, but critics have thus far seen that as a false choice, opposing what they see as Brexit in name only. Negotiating a delay in the exit deadline for two years is another option that has been floated, but is seen as effectively tantamount to remaining in the EU.
Monday brought some hope to May that maybe the opposition to her deal among hardliners was starting to erode.
One leading supporter of Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said “No deal is better than a bad deal but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union in the hierarchy of deals … A two-year extension is basically remaining in the European Union.”
But on the other hand, 23 other hardliners have rejected the argument that it may be necessary to accept a bad deal in order to avoid remaining in the EU. In a joint letter to the Telegraph, the members derided “soft Brexit” as “leaving in name only,” and said they are now being asked to choose between that and a delay that would effectively mean staying in the EU.
“Our moral course is clear: it is not our fault that we are confronted by two unacceptable choices, but it will be our fault if we cast a positive vote in favour of either for fear of the other,” they wrote.
There could be a third vote this week on a Brexit deal, but May has indicated it would only happen if it has a “realistic” chance of passing.
Brexit could soon join Obamacare repeal and replace as a lofty promise that lawmakers allowed to get away.
