Prime minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have both stated recently that the decision of the referendum in which British people voted to leave the European Union is irreversible. Even opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has said that he wouldn’t be in favour of a second referendum should Labour win a snap election but the rest of Europe continue to drop hints that they’d like the UK to stay within the EU.
Scotland voted heavily to remain and have even explored ways in which they could stay in the Union after March 29, 2019, while the thorny issue of the Irish border is no nearer to being resolved. That, above all else, could be the Brexiteers’ Achilles heel. No-one has yet come up with a solution which would satisfy all sides and time is running out. But, in common with the whole Brexit campaign, are the British public continuing to have the wool pulled over their eyes?
The diplomat who actually drafted Article 50 – the mechanism by which the UK will divorce itself financially, bureaucratically and economically from mainland Europe – has publicly stated there is nothing written down which would stop any UK government changing its mind right up to the moment it withdraws. It would be odds-on that a ‘stay’ vote would prevail if there was a second referendum but that’s not how politics work in the UK – there is no second chances once the public has been consulted.
However, that doesn’t marry with a quote from the UK chief Brexit negotiator David Davis, who said as recently as 2012 that ‘A democracy that has lost the right to change its mind has ceased to be a democracy.’
Europe’s fears, particularly heightened in Paris and Berlin, are that some of the EU’s more fragile economies may take a lead from the UK and quit the European Union. France and Germany have a great deal of money invested in a federal Europe but others not so. A break up would also affect the security of several countries, particularly those from the former Eastern Bloc.
Bet-At-Home have made a book speculating which will be the next nation to quit the EU. Greece, in massive debt and at loggerheads with the countries who hold the Euro purse strings, are only 2/1. Italy, another country with a severe debt problem, are 5/2. Some are forecasting a comeback for Ireland’s Tiger economy but that’s only in Dublin. The prospects for a boom for the rest of the country are less rosy and Ireland are 12/1 to be the first to follow the UK out of the EU with Bet-At-Home – that would certainly alleviate the border problem with Northern Ireland!
Bet-At-Home Odds for First Country to Quit the EU after the UK
Greece 2/1, Italy 5/2, Sweden 6/1, France 10/1, Ireland and Hungary 12/1, Denmark and Czech Republic 16/1, Netherlands and Cyprus 20/1, Romania 25/1, Poland 33/1
