BORIS, HAMILTON AND BREXIT : YOU DON'T HAVE THE VOTES ?

 The epiphanous American musical Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda told the vivid life story of the extraordinary Alexander Hamilton, the orphan from the Caribbean who became the architect of the first federalist US government and founded its national bank as the first Secretary of the Treasury before his career faltered due to a public extramarital affair and penchant to write or talk over anyone in his path, ending in his tragic death by duel with Aaron Burr.

In a key moment, Hamilton brings his bank plan to a divided cabinet in a debate with his main opponent, Thomas Jefferson, where President Washington solemnly warns him that that 'you don't have the votes’ and to find a solution (which he did eventually).

Now, as then, we have the enfant terrible of British politics, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, an equally ‘nonstop’ speaker and writer (similarly saddled with a public dalliance with a pole dancing entrepreneur) on the cusp of ending the 3 1/2 year uniquely British stage show called Brexit with the same challenge to push through a last-minute compromise deal with the European Union before his self -imposed ‘must close’ deadline of Halloween (October 31).

And yet, it is still not happening as of this writing, for the same reasons Hamilton encountered : he doesn't have the votes. A scary time indeed for the United Kingdom as to its future as well as that of the European Union and their combined 514 million citizens.

A Climb Down or More Compromises ?

Theresa May, the former PM, was also not able to win the backing of her own Conservative (Tory) party, nor of most of the rest of Parliament, for her own version of Brexit, because of opposition to her agreement’s so called backstop solution for Northern Ireland (NI), which proposed that the UK remain in the EU customs union pending negotiation of a free trade agreement without a clear escape route for NI from the EU if the trade deal did not produce a solution agreeable to the EU to maintain the open borders and free trade on the island of Ireland required by the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998.

The backstop was an anathema to the hard-core right wing ERG (European Research Group) within the Tory party because it represented to them a surrender to Europe and also to the NI Democratic Unionist party (DUP) since it locked Northern Ireland into a potentially permanent partnership with the EU which they have opposed fearing an eventual 'border in the Irish sea' with the UK, contrary to their demand that the whole of the UK leave the EU together. Other parties also opposed because they didn't like Brexit or the Tories.

What Johnson achieved in his proposed deal, however, is the exact same result through other wording which is to keep NI in the UK’s customs area as a matter of declaration in law, but functionally within the European Union by means of accession to European standards on the Irish island, with an only slightly firmer 'out’ that the arrangement can be ended by a majority of Norther Irish on both sides of the political divide : a kind of having your EU cake and eating it result for NI, whose commerce nonetheless will face the UK customs border - guess what - on the Irish sea for goods (while not for movement of British citizens or lawful residents).

What has been swept under the rug is the likelihood that NI will never, ever vote to go back to the days of hard borders and reject free trade and open movement on the Irish island, hence a backstop by a different name locking NI into the EU and cross Ireland institutions forever.

And this is exactly where the DUP is balking, demanding, among other things , that a separate majority of the NI Unionist parties (in effect a Unionist veto) approve any continuation of cross Ireland arrangements when under the proposal the matter comes up to a renewing vote 4 years after a transition period into a UK - EU free trade agreement.

Other sticking points being debated turn on the issue on whether the UK will generally align in future trade negotiations to EU equivalent standards for goods if not EU laws themselves so that, the EU hopes, in letting go of the UK, it avoids creating by its own consent a low cost, low standard, and low wage unfair competitor at its door step (something which the left oriented UK Labour Party undoubtedly will continue to accuse the Tories of plotting when the matter does finally come to a debate).

The concessions have been a serious climb down for the Johnson administration, as it leaves the despised May deal largely in tact with the NI sleight of hand trick.

Like most compromises the proffered deal has, however, allowed both sides to claim victories of sorts, especially by cleverly kicking more contentious issues such as regulatory alignment and fishing rights down the road to future trade negotiations.

Not so for the DUP, now howling again in protest, knowing full well that it is, has been and remains a minority party in NI, with demographics running against it for the future, and thus is leveraging its very small hand to the hilt to extract further concessions, which could wreck the deal as a whole.

 Counting the Votes – and For What Result?

The big test comes down to the votes with or without the DUP.  

Johnson plans to push through the deal in a special session of Parliament on October 19, this Saturday, in an extraordinary sitting, a crucial day because he is required by the so-called Benn Act, passed by a majority of rebels and minority parties, to extend the Brexit date to the end of January 2020 if a deal is not approved by Parliament by that date – something which the Prime Minister said he would rather be dead in a ditch than do in his usual colorful language, hinting at as yet unclarified legal means to sabotage that requirement if necessary (although as of this writing he seems to have abandoned his red lines here as well).

The Hamilton analogy comes into effect here quite nicely because, as in all political machinations, the back room dealings are intense and the outcome momentous.

 The Federalist Remainers vs the Jeffersonian Brexiteers

As with Hamilton, Johnson will have to appease all factions to get his deal done, but unlike the fiercely held political positions of Hamilton and Jefferson, diametrically opposed in philosophy, the main driver towards approval now seems to be not different visions of where the country should be, but a complete weariness on all sides including the EU to finish the Brexit debate and close this play once and for all, national interest and impact aside.

This is where the cold realities of what is happening in the United Kingdom are exposed, as regardless of the impulse towards finality, in Johnson’s Brexit play, the Jeffersonians could win – and with potentially the same disastrous results which Hamilton envisaged without a strong central government backed by a national bank in charge.

Hamilton’s plan for a strong central government was based on a firm belief that a central government with financial strength provided the source of stability, credit and therefore growth for the country, domestically and internationally, much as the Remainers credit the EU with peace and stability across a previously war torn continent, opening markets for UK businesses and providing huge opportunities for its citizenry without inhibition across the 28 country region.

The Jeffersonians believed in contrast that each state should bear its own finance and not be responsible through a central bank for the collective strength of the country, a decentralized model which was arguably more democratic.

 This is essentially the same Brexiter ‘nativist’ sentiment, equating unencumbered local interests with the same motivations that drove ‘states rights’ for so long in the United States.

Hamilton was on the right side of history, something Jefferson conceded in the play and in fact in later life, never seeking to unwind the national banking system (now the Federal Reserve).

In the case of Brexit, regardless of the solution which may be worked through by the Johnson government, all economic indicators, including the currency and property markets, loss of GNP, the UK Central Bank's warnings, and the latest independent think tank studies, point to the EU separation leading to decreased productivity, investment and tax revenues, with, as former Chancellor Philip Hammond pointed out, only limited off-setting long term benefits from free trade deals which could be struck between the United Kingdom and other countries.

Equally threatening and way more immediately ominous is the fact that as Northern Ireland in the proposal is being treated differently than the rest of the Union, the Scottish National Party (SNP), the third largest group in Parliament, is revving up demands, in exchange for its opposition support for a new election or referendum, for a renewed call to independence through a second independence referendum of its own, although it lost by 54 to 46% exactly the same referendum a little more than 5 years ago.

This is eerily reminiscent of the Jefferson's advocacy to protect Southern interests in the Hamilton debate which led to secession and the United States Civil War only 70 years after the formation of Hamilton’s national bank in 1791.

The logic of the Scottish nationalists is simple: if Northern Ireland can stay in the European Union on a de facto basis, why should not the people of Scotland be able to vote for separation from the United Kingdom so that it too can remain in the European Union and enjoy its benefits?

Whether one agrees with a splinter movement’s right to ‘self-determination’, despite the base logic of the SNP’s argument, most voters in the United Kingdom as a whole would not agree that the Union should be wrecked for the sake of Brexit.

This is in a different way what the DUP fears from its own parochial perspective - that the Johnson deal in effect separates NI from the rest of the Union, ignoring the fact the due to population trends in a few decades the area will or should be predominantly Catholic and pro a united Ireland anyway.

Through all the ongoing noise on all sides, the tide of Brexit weariness sweeping the country and Brussels nonetheless manages to obscure the greater dangers and specific risks the march towards British nativism entails.

 The Votes and the Options

 The choices before Parliament as of this writing remain devilish and for the history books:

1/         Close the Brexit show and get it over with (even if buying off the DUP with more grants is required), making the best of it in the typically British stiff upper lip way regardless of the likely consequences.

2/          Put the agreement to another the referendum before elections so that the issue can be decided once and for all (including by several million voters who were teenagers at the last referendum and who, the Remainers hope, could tip the balance by taking a different view of being part of Europe).

3/         Obstruct a deal once again agreed between the EU and a British government, and call an election - a referendum by other means, where, however, if you take current polls as the arbiter, the Tories could win a crushing majority and bring their program and deal - or the much more feared hard ('no deal') Brexit alternative right back to the table with a real and insurmountable majority.

Earlier in the week the Government chief Parliamentary spokesman, Jacob Rees-Mogg of the ERG faction, contrary to President Washington in the Hamilton play, indeed proclaimed that he does have the votes. This morning, as President Washington told Hamilton, Mr. Johnson does not have the votes, or at least not yet.

As the worm turns, the most important question before Parliament remains more fundamentally votes for what and at what cost ?

The Lessons of History

History has a way of repeating itself, even if with different characters and tunes, and you can listen to Mr. Manuel's brilliant hip-hop rendition here and read the lyrics for a better comprehension of that parallel universe in those different but familiar times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNTssCJJTHY

If a deal is to pass, we can only hope for a Hamiltonian compromise.

As of this morning, who knows - it seems it just may take moving the Parliament to Belfast, permanently, just as Hamilton made his compromise by agreeing to move the erstwhile US provisional capital, Philadelphia, to what is now Washington DC, closer to South.

Sound familiar, if in an Irish context, and even if a highly fanciful and rhetorical solution ?

If the next weeks’ activities in Parliament do not give rise to a ‘Brexit, The Hip-Hop Musical’, the story will certainly be turned into an opera - whether comic tragicomic or just tragic remains to be seen.

Erik D. Lazar 

Mr. Lazar, a London-based international lawyer, is Director and Founder of Transatlantic Law International, a global business law firm, with affiliated firms in over 95 countries.