Brexit Romantics like Johnson and Davis must accept the limits of reality
IN politics, there are Realists and there are Romantics, and Michael Gove and David Davis have just given a dramatic display of the difference. Boris Johnson, after a long struggle over which one he is, has finally proved he too is a Romantic – provided someone else is first. All were leading figures in the Leave campaign. All have fought hard for tough positions on the negotiations with the EU, and all were confronted with proposals they didn’t like at Friday’s cabinet meeting at Chequers.
Yet Gove went to the studios on Sunday morning to proclaim his eventual backing for Theresa May’s plans, while Davis went to No 10 that evening to quit.
The Realist decided to “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good”, while the Romantic could no longer be “a reluctant conscript”.
The former believes Brexit must be delivered and the Tories kept in power whatever the necessary compromises, and the latter thinks it just shouldn’t have to be like this. One feels his party must try to master the situation, the other wants to escape from it.
Dominic Raab, the new Brexit Secretary, is a highly capable Realist and his appointment amounts to a strengthening of the government.
The trouble with the Romantics, who dream of a cleaner or harder departure from the EU, is that they do not have an alternative plan for achieving that and are starting to endanger Brexit happening at all.
One of the reasons the cabinet, including most advocates of leaving the EU, rallied round the prime minister’s plan on Friday is that none of them, including Davis or Johnson, have been able to present any credible alternative proposal.
This is not because they are unimaginative – far from it.
It is because there are three major limiting factors on any plan. One is the make-up of the House of Commons, elected after the referendum and with no government majority. The Commons as currently
constituted does not support the harder forms of Brexit, with no customs arrangement with the EU and all the business disruption that would bring.
That may be frustrating for the Romantics, but restoring the sovereignty of parliament was the whole point of leaving the EU in the first place.
The second limitation is the businesses that are crucially reliant on moving their components, parts and finished goods seamlessly across our borders. It is theoretically possible to proceed with Brexit while ignoring the consequences for the likes of Airbus, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover. But it is unrealistic to try to do so.
People did vote to leave, but they did so with assurances the big manufacturing companies in the UK would be fine.
The third limiting force is the Irish Border. Cleaner breaks with the EU are not compatible with a completely open frontier, unless we were to permit a new economic border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK as Brussels would like. To the Romantics, this is an irritating distraction – a small issue inhibiting the realisation of a bigger dream.
But they can see this really, vitally, fundamentally matters. We should not be leaving the EU only to break up the UK. Peace in Northern Ireland and a settled relationship with the Republic has brought to an end conflict, bitterness and division that have plagued these islands for centuries.
Hanging on to that is of overriding importance; if anyone hadn’t reckoned on that in the referendum campaign then the smallest acquaintance with history would have been sufficient.
THE harsh truth is once you have accepted that these are inescapable limitations, you are driven to the kind of Brexit proposals set out at Chequers. So any Conservative opposing those plans needs to explain how they would get round each of those problems.
Is their plan to negotiate a deal that will be defeated in parliament, or drive tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs abroad, or jeopardise the Belfast Agreement?
This is why they have not come up with another plan, and it is why being a Romantic is all very well but of no practical use. It is an indulgence, not a policy.
Peace in Northern Ireland has brought an end to centuries of conflict and bitterness