Wargaming Brexit

I've been paying more attention to the ongoing British clusterfuck that is Brexit, primarily because I would like to go back to England next year. If the UK crashes out of the EU at the end of October, I very much doubt that being a tourist in London in spring 2019 will be an option.

Now that England has another hardline Brexiter as prime minister, what are the likely outcomes over the next few month?

The excellent Naked Capitalism blog has published an article in which the authors wargamed the last days of Brexit to see what might happen. It makes for interesting reading, and perhaps the situation isn't as bad as it might first seem.

The outcome of the game eventually resolved itself in a new referendum. By this stage the game had moved into the near future of early autumn 2019. The cross-party negotiations had failed to reach a breakthrough acceptable to both leaderships. Softer members of the Tory Brexit Delivery Group then split away from the party leadership, crossing the floor to support a new referendum. Interestingly, this came as a surprise to the game designer, Barbrook, who had anticipated a stalemate and a further extension of Article 50 at the end of October 2019.

If this suggests the game had a Remain bias, other moments in the scenario serve to refute this. At an earlier moment in the game a majority emerged in Parliament in spite of opposition from Labour and the Remain parties, for the kind of technological solution to the Irish border question favoured by the ERG as an alternative to the troubled ‘Irish backstop’. Assuming the dummy-player function, the EU then intervened via the umpire into the Parliamentary scenario to rule out an agreement without the backstop. With Parliament then voting against leaving without a deal, the political factions were confronted with the same problem they have at the current time.

The crux of this decision is ultimately a narrow one: few options are still available to parties, making the outcome relatively straightforward to model. Leave on the deal May has negotiated with the EU, which is unpopular with Brexit voters and with Labour Remain voters who would like a second referendum. Or negotiate changes to the UK-future relationship document (the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened by the EU) to make the Brexit deal softer, making it more palatable for the Labour Party but even less acceptable to Brexit voters and Brexiters in the Tory party. As the changes are not legally binding on a future Tory prime minister even a Labour Party leadership wishing to ‘deliver Brexit’ has little incentive to support such a deal. This leaves only two further choices. Hold new elections in the hope they might produce a balance in the Parliament more conducive to striking a deal. Or, move towards a new referendum, which includes the opportunity to remain in the EU.

I can only hope that saner heads will eventually prevail and an outcome like that mentioned in the article will happen. However, given who the Conservatives just chose as PM, I'm not making any travel plans.