Very astute article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the (pro-Brexit) Telegraph. He puts political and legal flesh on the theoretical bones of how Brexit will happen without really happening at all.
-Prime Minister Boris (or whoever) advocates going back to the pre-Maastricht rules on migration, so there's a right to work rather than free migration under the banner of EU citizenship. So no change then for all the industrious Poles who want to come, but the politicians can still spin us a story that they've saved us from an invasion of millions of benefit scroungers. And if they need more migration ammunition they can introduce an Australian points style system for non-EU immigrants, that would sound impressive but in reality it's not that different to what exists today.
-This is increasingly being described as the "soft Brexit" option, it would be acceptable to the majority of parliamentarians, and furthermore they'll rightly claim they have a duty to act for everyone, and that includes the remain vote as well as the exit vote.
-As well as Parliament this would certainly get the support of the Trades Unions, the City, and Industry.
-Furthermore there's a special duty of care actually written into the devolution settlements of Scotland and Northern Ireland. So a nervous politician could claim to angry Leave voters that his hands were tied, the referendum after all was only advisory, but there is a legal duty to protect the wishes of Scotland and NI.
-There'd be some ceremonial scrapping of some peripheral EU legislation, trivial stuff like curly bananas or high powered vacuum cleaners, enough to be able to say "look, we really have taken back control".
-Francois Villeroy de Galhau from the European Central Bank is already making encouraging overtures suggesting this route would preserve the passporting rights for the UK financial services industry, and the powerful German lobbying group, the BDI, is also suggesting this is the way to go, allowing two way trade between the UK and EU to be maintained virtually unchanged.
-Significantly the next PM will be emphasising the degree to which we're all conveniently playing by rules set not by the EU, but by global bodies above the EU; like the World Trade Organisation, Financial Stability Board, and Basel Banking Committee.
-Most important of all is Chancellor Merkel, and her mumsy directive "there is no need to be nasty", this trumps the federalist rage of Jean Claude Juncker so we can safely discount him.
-There's no doubt that Italy are desperate for just such a compromise, some of their banks suffered share price falls on Friday greater than in the post-Lehman mess, so their vote is virtually in the bag already.
Anyone who remembers "Yes Minister" will recognise immediately that this is almost certainly the way it will all play out. Brexit does really happen...just nothing actually changes.
