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“No deal can’t be taken off the table; it is the table.” You’ll hear this clever sound bite in Twitter feeds on both sides of the Brexit divide, but it suffers from the serious defect of being wrong. When we talk about no deal being the table, we mean that it is the present default position. No deal is now the ultimate default position. But no deal can be taken off the table. An alternative ultimate default is that we remain in the EU.
The European court of justice gave the UK an absolute right to revoke the article 50 notice and remain in the European Union. MPs could adopt legislation saying that, without an agreed deal by exit day (29 March or after an extension), our article 50 notice would be automatically revoked.
A bill ruling out no deal was given a clear democratic mandate by tonight’s vote. This is also in line with Labour party policy. Their 2017 manifesto said, “leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain”; and, “We will reject ‘no deal’ as a viable option.” Unless Labour supports legislation to take no deal off the table, it will renege on those promises.
If you are pro-Brexit, it creates a powerful incentive to agree a deal. MPs have now twice rejected the form of Brexit negotiated by the prime minister: they have also rejected Labour’s proposed softer Brexit, and tonight they rejected a third form of Brexit – no deal.
We still don’t know what we want because we have not had a national conversation about it. The people have not been asked if they want something sharply different from the European social model -- like the low-tax, low-public service, deregulated US model. This is the real debate when people talk about Brexit.
If MPs revoke, they can later renotify an intention to leave the EU. That might flow from a national conversation about the economy we want and the relationship with the EU that implies.
First, the government must be required to make time to pass legislation taking no deal off the table. Yvette Cooper’s amendment making time for an extension bill could be a model for that.
• Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project [The Guardian 13.3.19, edited KH]
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