Boris is right: The Chequers Brexit proposal is absurd
IN OUR dreary, jargon-filled world of politics Boris Johnson shines out as a blazing star. No other Conservative can match his ability to grip the public’s imagination. His capacity for generating controversy is phenomenal. Last week he again dominated the headlines, this time through his private life, whose wayward exuberance has led to the breakdown of his 25-year-old marriage.
Yet if diehard Remainers and his Tory enemies thought Boris would be shamed into temporary silence then they badly misjudged him. Monastic reflection is not his style. On the contrary he has returned to the Brexit debate with even greater verve as he heroically fights the cause of independence.
In an explosive newspaper article yesterday he savaged the Cabinet’s EU negotiating strategy, describing the Chequers plan as “feeble”, “pathetic” and “a humiliation” which had opened Britain “to perpetual political blackmail” by Brussels. With even more incendiary language he declared that Theresa May has “wrapped a suicide vest” around the British constitution and “handed the detonator to Michel Barnier”, the EU’s chief negotiator.
Eager to parade their loyalty to the party’s leadership, several Conservative ministers reacted with synthetic fury. Europe minister Alan Duncan declared that Boris’s attack on the Chequers proposal was “one of the most disgusting moments in modern British politics” while his Foreign Office colleague Alistair Burt, sounding like a snowflake student, wailed that the article had been “outrageous, inappropriate and hurtful”.
If Tory critics of Johnson put the same energy into upholding our interests as they have into denouncing Boris the Government might not be in such a mess over Brexit.
MUCH of the antagonism towards him is driven by jealousy because Boris has far more popular appeal than any minister. There is also the sense that the Tory establishment cannot counter the strength of Boris’s arguments against Chequers, so instead resort to abuse against him.
For he is absolutely right about the miserable nature of the Government’s Brexit strategy, which is squandering a golden opportunity to reassert British sovereignty and break free of the EU’s straitjacket.
After the Brexit vote in 2016 this country was in a tremendously strong position to decide the terms of our withdrawal. Britain had the global assets of a powerful economy, the English language, cultural influence, military strength and democratic stability.
It was the unaccountable EU, not Britain, that was in profound trouble because of its obsession with federal integration and the destruction of national identities, an outlook that has triggered angry populist movements throughout the continent. In Italy, Hungary, Austria, Germany and now Sweden, anti-immigration parties are major forces, something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Yet instead of exploiting Britain’s advantages our Government displayed timidity and appeasement. As Boris puts it: “At every stage in talks so far Brussels gets what it wants.”
So the EU’s demand for a £39 billion so-called “divorce” bill was agreed without anything in return, while the minor question of the Northern Ireland border was absurdly turned into a deal-breaking obstacle. More disturbingly, the Government failed to embrace Brexit with any enthusiasm or galvanise the machinery of Whitehall to implement it.
That failure was compounded by the Tories’ botched general election last year, in which Mrs May threw away her Commons majority and almost allowed Jeremy Corbyn into power. She has been paying the price for that disaster ever since.
Her political weakness lies at the heart of the widely despised Chequers scheme, which is the product of the ingrained, proBrussels orthodoxy of Whitehall that aims to emasculate Brexit and keep us tied to the Brussels regime, not least by accepting its regulations and by giving our officialdom a role as an EU tax collector.
Yet in its craven compromise, the absurdity of Chequers is that it pleases no one. Brexiteers loathe it because it fails to implement the referendum verdict. Remainers see it as unworkable, pointing out that it denies Britain any say in EU decisions. Brussels is equally dismissive because it does not rigidly adhere to the cherished dogma of free movement.
Barnier called Chequers “insane”, “not legal” and “an invitation to fraud”. Even if Theresa May could cobble together some sort of EU agreement based on Chequers it is doubtful it would get through the Commons given that Labour would be reluctant to support the Government and there are probably about 60 Tory Brexiteer rebels.
DESPERATE to prop up its flawed policy the Cabinet pretends that the only two options are either Chequers or a shambolic nodeal scenario. In reality there is a genuine alternative: a comprehensive free trade agreement that would be an improved version of the one Canada recently signed with the EU.
A Canada Plus deal would give Britain back control over our borders, justice, taxes and laws, as well allowing us to negotiate our own international agreements, exactly what the electorate voted for in 2016. Moreover the EU has repeatedly signalled its willingness to negotiate just such a deal.
It is not too late for the Government to change course. Theresa May has always prided herself on her “pragmatism”. Now is the time to show that quality. She should dump the discredited Chequers policy and unite her party behind real Brexit.
‘The Prime Minister must change course’