Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 21st of March 2019 to The Sounding Line.

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A little over a week ago I wrote the following about about Brexit:

“The whole point of Brexit is to get out of the EU customs union. That is what is necessarily for the UK to have a meaningfully independent trade and regulatory policy. The Irish Backstop in Theresa May’s transition plan virtually guarantees that the UK ends up in a customs union one way or the other (read why here), and an extension virtually eliminates  all of the UK’s negotiating leverage on the backstop and opens the door to a general election and/or second referendum.

If today’s vote to extend Article 50 passes, I personally don’t see a path out of an EU customs union.”

As was widely expected, the vote to extend Article 50 passed last week.

When I wrote that article, I did not believe that the EU could be so obstinate as to make an Article 50 extension explicitly conditional on the UK Parliament passing the transition deal, a deal which has already failed twice by wide margins. Yet, that is exactly what the EU has now done. Counter to the EU’s aims, doing so has made passage of the transition deal much less likely, and in turn, ‘No-Deal’ Brexit much more likely.

If the EU thinks that by making an Article 50 extension conditional on the passage of the transition deal, they are pressuring Brexit holdouts to support the deal, they are fundamentally wrong.

The dedicated clique of Brexiteers in Parliament, people whose support is needed to secure to pass the transition deal, will only back the deal if the alternative is no Brexit at all. Many overtly prefer ‘No-Deal’ Brexit to the transition deal. Their fear is an extension of Article 50 not ‘No-Deal’ Brexit.

Making the Article 50 extension conditional on passing the deal keeps the possibility of No-Deal Brexit alive and virtually guarantees that at least some of the hard-core Brexiteers will not support it. In its second vote, the deal came 75 votes short of a majority. The support of virtually all Brexiteers will be needed and some are now virtually guaranteed to vote against it.

Failure of a third vote on the transition plan certainly does not guarantee ‘No-Deal’ Brexit, but it does make it much much more likely.

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