Who would get the blame for a no-deal Brexit?

It’s the beginning of November, and Britain has left the EU with no deal. There’s been no election or referendum to endorse this. Maybe the immediate effects are so negligible that far from there being any blame there is just widespread mockery of the Jeremiahs. Maybe they are catastrophic. More likely, they lie between the two but are sufficiently disruptive to irritate and even alarm the general public. There are shortages of some foods, price increases, longer queues at borders and so on.

Not the end of the world, after all, say the Brexiters. But for ordinary people there’s a discernible impact on the taken-for-granted amenities of modern life. Suddenly, all those who have tuned out of Brexit through boredom, indifference or exhaustion will be paying attention again, and looking for the culprits.

The question is who gets the blame? This could soon cease to be merely hypothetical. Politicians will quickly begin finger-pointing. Voters will be looking to assign fault. Yet everyone will deny responsibility. Who will be given ownership of the mess?

The answer will depend in part upon how this had come about. Was it because Boris Johnson’s government found that the EU would not renegotiate Theresa May’s deal and he declared that this made no deal inevitable? If so, Brexiter politicians and no doubt many members of the public will blame the EU. Indeed, Johnson has already strongly signalled this in his first days in office. Sub-villains will be May and her team, who will be accused of having paved the way for no deal by not having “negotiated properly” when in office. Remainers, the civil service and “the establishment” will also be in the firing line.

Alternatively, suppose that Johnson does come up with a revised deal, as he claims to be his intention and to be perfectly possible, which he tries and fails to get parliamentary approval for. Then, the finger of blame will point at MPs—including those pro-Brexit MPs, presumably the ERG and the DUP, who had voted it down. They, in turn, will attack Johnson and his government for having yet again betrayed the true Brexit flame. Indeed the hardcore Brexiters have already begun to rehearse this line. Again, there will be subsidiary blame for May, the EU and Remainers.

But ultimately, one of the most important groups will be mainstream Leave voters. And for this portion of the electorate there will be an obvious guide to their verdict. They will recall that no deal was not remotely what was promised during the referendum campaign. On the contrary, it was repeatedly said that a deal would be very easy, that Britain would hold all the cards and, even, that there was no prospect of a sudden change since a deal would be agreed before the UK actually began the formal exit process.

For those voters, it will be fitting that the prime minister who failed to deliver those promises was also the leading figure in the campaign that made them. That is likely to matter because, however no deal came about, the fallout within the Tory Party would surely mean an election. After all, given the paper-thin majority it will only need a couple of anti-no-dealers to cross the aisle and the government will be finished.

Since it is unclear whether Brexit now has majority support and abundantly clear that no-deal Brexit does not, the Conservatives are likely to face considerable wrath in the voting booths.

Moreover, the resentment and anger will be huge in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there was never majority support for Brexit, and in the latter case where the effects of no deal will be most dramatically felt. There, the blame will be attributed not just to Johnson and the Brexiters but to Westminster and the functioning of the Union itself.

The other dimension of blame will arise from the fact that such a Brexit would not be a final, decisive event, with negotiations over and Britain embarking on its future, whatever that may be. On the contrary, it will set the stage for an immediate and urgent set of mini-negotiations in pursuit of the side deals which Britain will inevitably need to make with the EU. These are likely to occur within a highly antagonistic environment, and every single side deal made will inevitably be denounced by Brexiters as a betrayal—not just of Brexit but of no-deal Brexit. Yet if such deals are not made, public anger with the government for the ongoing disruption will ramp up.

Perhaps the blame for no deal will be attributed largely along the lines of the Brexit divide itself. In this way it will not only continue but intensify the bitterness of that division. Depending just how dire the effects of no deal are, that could turn very nasty indeed. It’s become a standard line amongst Brexiters to threaten civil unrest if Brexit is not delivered. But that threat also exists, and to a greater extent, if Brexit is delivered without a deal and without a vote confirming that the majority want such an outcome.

But the most dangerous scenario of all will be if the blame is put not on this or that political grouping but upon the political class and political system as a whole. That’s quite likely, given that it will chime with the anti-politics mood that has been growing for at least the last decade. Opinion polls already show a lot of support for the idea of “a strong leader who will break the rules.” We’ve seen that movie, and it doesn’t have a happy ending.