Why it’s wrong to blame the second referendum campaign for the Brexit crisis

Backing Theresa May’s agreement would have offered no escape from the current deadlock and disarray, writes Rob Merrick

One million-plus people joined the campaign to give the public another vote before leaving the EU (AFP/Getty)

Suddenly, as the UK teeters on the edge of a no-deal Brexit – a calamity Boris Johnson promised would never happen – it is all the rage to blame Remain supporters for our plight.

If only pro-EU MPs had backed the deal that Theresa May secured, instead of joining the millions who marched for a fresh referendum last year, all would be well – or so we are told.

This is unfair on so many levels – it is a basic principle that those who break it should mend it – but, more important, it is an illusion to believe the May agreement offered salvation.

So, if you were among those one million-plus people who joined The Independent’s Final Say campaign, to give the public another vote before the momentous leap into the dark that is leaving the EU, here’s why you have no reason at all to feel guilty.

Let’s imagine the deal had passed, instead of being defeated by a majority of 58 in the third so-called “meaningful vote” in March 2019 – the closest it came to success.

It is falsely described as a “soft Brexit”, but was no such thing because the UK was leaving the single market and the EU had thrown out her Chequers Plan, an attempt to adopt a “common rulebook” for goods.

In fact, it was a “blindfold Brexit”, with everything to be decided after the UK left – May herself referred to “a spectrum” of future choices – so offered only further disarray and disputes.

The other argument that it was ‘softer’ is that the UK would remain in a customs union, but, crucially, that was only until the infamous “Irish backstop” problem had been solved.

Brexiteer Tories were so furious at being “trapped in the backstop” they were threatening to use the obscure 1969 Vienna Convention to bust out of it.  

Remember that anger – May had been forced to pledge to resign if her deal passed – and consider the impact of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs carrying it over the line? A customs union was never going to last.

Of course, the solution Johnson eventually found was to sell out his Unionist allies in Northern Ireland by moving the customs border to the Irish Sea, allowing the rest of the UK to escape the trade bloc.

Is it not near-certain that May’s successor – probably Johnson in any circumstances, and definitely a Brexiteer – would have struck the same deal, whether still in the EU or not? I believe so.

So, the UK would have ended up in a very similar place, regardless of whether Final Say supporters had packed away their flags and that 2019 vote had turned out differently.

Different timetable maybe, but the same sorry mess. As I said, no guilt required.