Over the past several months, like many outside the United Kingdom, I have observed the chaos that has been the process of negotiating and ratifying the terms of the agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union over the terms of the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union (a.k.a. Brexit). While it is easy as an outsider to have my own opinions about what is in the best interest of the U.K. and the rest of the world in terms of the ultimate outcome, the subject of this post is mostly about what lessons that we can draw from this chaos for our own politics.
The first lesson of Brexit is the difference between the Brexit referendum and the typical referendum in the U.S. In the U.S., a referendum is typically a vote on a legislative-type proposal. In other words, we are being asked to approve (or reject) a specific statute or constitutional provision or tax or bond. By contrast, the Brexit referendum were about two concepts — staying in the European Union or leaving the European Union with the terms of continued membership or departure to be defined at a later date. While there are always problems with voting on a specific proposal (no proposal is ever perfect and a referendum is essentially a take-it-or-leave-it vote in which you can’t just approve the good parts), a vote on a concept leaves it to the future to put meat on the idea.
The U.K. is now dealing with the problem of defining what Brexit really means. And that requires reading the tea leaves of what the slim majority that supported Brexit really wanted. And, in such circumstances, the final version may differ significantly from what voters thought they were approving in the original referendum.
The second lesson of Brexit is how difficult negotiations with other countries really is. Notwithstanding the statements from our fraudster-in-chief (of course, not backed up by any meaningful results over the past 26 months), negotiating an international agreement is hard. Politicians in other countries are also responding to the interests of key interest groups in their countries (even a dictatorship like North Korea requires the leader to take into account potential power centers that could move to replace the leader). As such, what your voters want (or were anticipating when they voted for you or a proposal) may not be something that the other countries are willing to give.
In the case of Brexit, the main troublesome issue has been the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. While both the U.K. and Ireland were part of the E.U. (as they were when Ireland and the U.K. signed the Good Friday Agreement regarding Northern Ireland), the border was relatively insignificant. The E.U. as a whole is a single customs/tariff block. Thus, while both countries were in the E.U., there was no need for customs agents at the border to make sure that goods entering the U.K. from Ireland or vice versa complied with the customs rules of both countries. Once, the U.K. leaves the E.U., however, there will be a need for a more regulated border to assure that goods leaving the U.K. meets E.U. rules and vice versa. Ireland does not want those checks to be at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (as Ireland sees that as a step back in increasing the connections between Ireland and Northern Ireland that are part of the Good Friday Agreement). On the other hand, the politicians in Northern Ireland who want to remain part of the U.K. do not want the customs barriers to be between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. The current draft of the withdrawal agreement includes some tentative provisions (that only take effect if the E.U. and U.K. are unable to reach a final agreement) that would potentially result in such a regime.
The third lesson of Brexit is about the difficulty of passing legislation on a complex issue. In my home state, this past decade, we had to deal with a U.S. Supreme Court decision barring mandatory life without parole sentences for offenders under the age of eighteen who had committed murder. As a result of this decision, our legislature had to create a new sentencing regime for such offenders. This process took several years because of the sheer number of options for alternative sentences to life without parole — a range of years, life without parole for some period less than life (i.e. a number of years with various alternative numbers suggested), etc.
Brexit is facing the same problem in the U.K. You have a significant number of members of the legislation who (like the voters who voted in 2016) oppose Brexit in its entire. That leaves the majority that apparently supports Brexit to reach an agreement on what Brexit means, particularly in terms of the future relationship between the E.U. and U.K. Since many of the voters in the U.K. want to retain as many of the benefits of E.U. membership with as few of the costs of E.U. membership (and the E.U. absolutely is opposed to allowing departing members to keep the benefits while shedding associated costs), the part of the agreement setting forth the outline of the future relationship (with the final terms to be negotiated during a transition period) is a key difference between those who want Brexit. This week, after rejecting the current negotiated agreement twice, Parliament held “indicative votes” on several potential alternative concepts to be explored in a round of re-negotiations. None of these alternative concepts was able to get a majority. After this first round of voting, Parliament rejected the current agreement for a third time.
Put simply, there is a substantial group in parliament who thinks that the current draft involves the U.K. being too closely tied with the E.U. — a situation in which this group thinks that the E.U. will have power over the decisions of the U.K. but the U.K. has no input into the decisions of the E.U. (Whether this perception is accurate is separate from the fact that this groups wants an agreement with fewer ties between the U.K. and the E.U. ). Another group wants closer ties between the U.K. and the E.U. They think that most of the problem provisions in the current agreement comes from the fact that the U.K. will not be part of a customs union with the E.U. (For both groups, there is also the issue of what the E.U. would be willing to agree to if negotiations start over to explore these alternative proposals.) Because everybody in Parliament appears to be insisting on their version of the “best” solution, it is unclear what position represents the “median” member of parliament. Passing legislation requires figuring out where the median is and what your preferred solution needs to concede in order to get that median member willing to support your proposal. This need is why many compare legislating to making sausage. It can be a dirty nasty process of haggling in which the ultimate solution is seen by almost everyone as a sub-optimal solution but it is the only solution that can pass.
The U.K. will continue its dissent into chaos this week when Parliament will undergo a second round of indicative votes. Whether this second round will show that there are members willing to move to a compromise solution is questionable at best. Clearly, there is a substantial block who would rather scrap Brexit entirely. And there are some who would rather scrap Brexit than agree to a bad deal but are not willing (yet) to vote to scrap Brexit or send it back for another referendum (perhaps with multiple options or questions). And there are some who want Brexit but are holding out for their version of Brexit. To get from this impasse to a legislative solution will require one of two things: either the “only a good Brexit” folks decide that they need to send this matter back to the people for the people to define the terms on which they want Brexit or the supporters of Brexit need to reach a consensus on what they want in an agreement.
What we are seeing in the U.K. is a dysfunctional legislative process being played out in full view of the public. However, it is not unusual in legislating complicated and critical issues. As we in the U.S. move forward to picking a new President, it is important that we understand that when the new Congress and new President address climate change and immigration that the final legislation will not be perfect. As with the Affordable Care Act in 2009-10 (and every major piece of legislating dating back to the Constitution in 1787), the final draft will include compromises that many will find distasteful. However, the alternative to such compromises is frequently doing nothing rather than passing the perfect proposal. Hopefully, we can learn from the current mess in the U.K. when we get the power to fix our own messes again.
