By CTMN
TES Contributor
@torqueative
In mere weeks, we will begin to get a sense of how a great political drama, that has captivated Britain and much of the world for so long with its shocks, twists and double-crosses, finally comes to an end.
An embattled woman holed up in the Capital, in office but barely in power, struggling to govern a divided island kingdom, staring into an abyss in no small part of her own making; the bearded idealistic pretender, given momentum by his support in the North, looking to exploit her weakness; the high-handed continentals, negotiating with the former and in uneasy alliance with the latter, hoping to restore their power over the island; and ever in the background, the unthinkable disaster that will come for them all, and the entire Kingdom, if they cannot overcome their differences, and work together to make sure it does not happen.
But the denouement of Game of Thrones is not the only thing happening in mid-April.
The first episode of the final season will launch a mere 48 hours after we discover whether Britain will have made an ignominious ‘no deal’ exit from the European Union, or have extended the time allowed to finalise – somehow – the much-maligned Withdrawal Agreement.
The parallels between the hit HBO series and the situation in the UK are eerie and multiple; not least how the show’s major houses roughly align with the UK’s political parties, in both their make-up and alliances. But perhaps the most significant commonality is the sense of the unknown, particularly regarding how each will end.
Famously, Game of Thrones (the TV series) has out-run the books on which it is based, which as yet remain unfinished. There is a vocal minority of readers who feel the books may never be completed, citing suspicions that the author, George RR Martin, is trapped in a deviously complex plot of his own making.
In Parliament the UK is witnessing a similarly interminable conflict over Brexit, with no clear path to its resolution – and all largely as a consequence of a Tory plot gone awry. There have long been three general camps: those for no deal, those for a second referendum, and those supportive of the proposed deal. Each have a loyal following, but each also draws the contempt of the majority of Parliamentarians.
The ‘no deal’ option, favoured by ardent Brexiteers, is dismissed by the majority on the grounds that, by virtually all projections, it would be economically disastrous for the UK, and akin to playing Russian Roulette with people’s livelihoods.
Support for the ‘second referendum’ is a minority opinion in no small part due to the sense that it would simply lead, in the event of a ‘remainer’ victory, to calls for a third referendum risking political instability by transmogrifying one of the world’s oldest Parliamentary Democracies into a de facto popular one.
The third option, the imperfect but workmanlike deal – an attempt to pragmatically alloy white-hot nationalism with cool economic rationalism – hammered out by the civil service smiths in White Hall and Brussels, and quenched in the spirit of compromise to ensure its durability, nevertheless maintains minority status in Parliament, too.
This fundamentally realistic deal is unpopular precisely because it is nobody’s ideal. Oddly, this has been seen as its great flaw, rather than precisely its strength. In leaving no side with the sense that they can exalt in total victory, or the sense that they must brood in total defeat, the deal laid the most important thing for the future: grounds for reconciliation between polarised parties, be it the UK and the EU, or the remainers and leavers within the UK itself.
The failure of any of the options to gain the support of a parliamentary majority may in fact be quite easily explained: there were three schools of thought in a body that requires an inherently binary majority. We are given to blaming politicians for the on-going conflict in parliament over Brexit, and the failure to find a resolution. However, as George RR Martin could perhaps attest, when a plot has trouble in its third ‘resolution’ act, it is sometimes better to look for the flaws less in the second ‘conflict’ act, but in the first ‘setup’ act – the premise of the story itself.
In the Brexit story, the core issue is that ‘the people’ were established as the primary protagonist, via a referendum, in its first act, before disappearing from the story entirely, leaving the conflict and resolution acts to be centred on another character – Parliament. Is it any wonder that this ancient and capable institution is struggling to resolve it? No late-stage plot contrivance can make up for a character lacking a clearly defined and well-established motivation.
Parliament has been tasked with completing someone else’s story, and it’s motivating principles are different than those that inform a popular vote. And the difference is simple: the people naturally prize the end product (i.e. Brexit), but parliament must always prize the sanctity of the process. Democratically-speaking, it is a difference between a hot-blooded approach, or a cold-blooded one.
The question, be it with Mr Martin’s books, or Brexit, is not ‘how will this story end?’ – a question relevant to a reader – but rather ‘how can this story be ended?’ – a question relevant to a writer. Martin may yet resolve his story about a fantastical version of Britain, but fact is often stranger than fiction, and Brexit, for the actual Britain, is increasingly fantastically strange.
Perhaps the most likely outcome is that we cannot write an ending at all. It may be a situation where there is never a Parliamentary majority to leave with a deal, or without a deal, or to formally dismiss the referendum result. Thus Article 50 might be simply extended indefinitely and on a rolling basis. Much as how the Koreans fought a ‘hot’ war in the early 1950s, but have technically never formally ended hostilities, we will likely look back at the last two years as the era of ‘hot Brexit’, when the view was that the popular will on a particular issue would prevail. The coming years may then be seen as those of ‘cold Brexit’, where parliamentary process foreclosed on the possibility of any conclusions being drawn. In the context of cold Brexit, we will all simply continue to go about our lives, continuing as part of the EU by default.
And, perhaps, this is exactly what Britain really, in its old creaky bones, wants most of all. We Brits love few things more than a good, long-running serial, and those few things include amateur dramatics, something to complain about, a foreigner to blame it on, and above all else, feeling like we are once again the centre of international attention. ‘Cold Brexit’ would give us all of these at once.
Mid-April will see the beginning of the end of Game of Thrones. For Brexit it will, at best, see the end of the beginning. Everything beyond that remains unknown. But in the Game of Unknowns, let us at least be clear about the central question: it is not how the Brexit story ends. It is whether it can ever have an end.
