BREXIT TREACHERY

I don’t use the word lightly, says STEPHEN GLOVER. But how else to describe the ecstatic reaction of the CBI, the BBC and mandarins to Corbyn’s cynical speech?

TO LISTEN to some of the reaction to Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Tuesday, you would think the greatest orator and political thinker of the age had stepped forward to show us the way.

The wildly pro-Remain Confederation of British Industry (CBI) didn’t hide its support for the Labour leader, and the BBC was characteristically reverential.

Meanwhile, a former senior civil servant emptied a bucketload of ordure over his erstwhile boss, Cabinet minister Liam Fox, while sparing Corbyn.

But in truth, the much-lauded speech was short on specifics, as well as contradictory. For example, Corbyn insisted Britain should stay in the Customs Union, where, according to him, it would be possible to negotiate new trade deals in our national interest. That isn’t remotely feasible.

Not that this was reflected in the BBC’s voluminous coverage, which concentrated gleefully on the possibility that Theresa May might be voted down in the Commons in the coming weeks.

Doesn’t it say something about our debased political culture — and in particular the desperation of extreme anti-Brexiteers — that a half-baked and dishonest contribution such as Jeremy Corbyn’s doesn’t merely escape close examination, but is also welcomed in near-ecstatic terms?

It seems far-out Remainers are prepared to grab hold of almost any weapon, and form the most unlikely alliances, as they try to derail the Government’s efforts to get the best possible deal for this country.

Of all Corbyn’s new-found allies, the CBI must be the most asinine. Its directorgeneral, Carolyn Fairbairn, opined that his ‘commitment to a customs union will put jobs and living standards first by remaining in close relationship with the EU’.

Set aside the fact that his confused proposals make no practical sense. If Ms Fairbairn believes the Labour leader would ever safeguard jobs and living standards, she has taken leave of her senses.

Corbyn’s recipe for economic regeneration is higher public spending, which would increase the deficit — still about £45 billion a year — and add to our gargantuan £1.8 trillion national debt. That would probably be disastrous for business.

Reckless

Moreover, Corbyn and his sidekick John McDonnell have promised to reverse the Government’s cuts in corporation tax at a time when our competitors are slashing their business taxes. That would constitute a further setback for British companies.

Yet Carolyn Fairbairn ignores the dangers posed by Labour’s reckless economic policies even as she pats Corbyn on the back for a speech that made little sense, and carried a not- very- well camouflaged promise of vast subsidies for nationalised industries.

But then the CBI has a long and undistinguished record of being obsessively in favour of all aspects of the EU even when Brussels proposes policies likely to harm the businesses the CBI is meant to represent.

In the early Nineties, it backed membership of the exchange rate mechanism (the precursor to the Euro) which led to interest rates soaring into double figures until the UK crashed out of the monetary system in September 1992.

Never prone to learn from its mistakes, the fanatically pro-EU CBI also wanted Britain to join the euro before its launch in 1999, arguing wrongheadedly that the single currency would ‘deliver significant benefits to the UK economy’.

Being so often mistaken on European matters in the past has not engendered humility among CBI bosses, who trouser a £150,000 annual grant from the EU Commission. They were eager participants in the stories pumped out by Project Fear before the 2016 referendum.

Even so, to see the CBI embrace Corbyn’s maunderings about the Customs Union, while turning a blind eye to the threats he poses to British industry –— well, that marks a new low for this misguided and myopic organisation.

Is it not possible — even likely — that our pro-business Government has a plausible strategy for achieving tarifffree trade with the EU after we have left, if only it could be allowed to get on with it?

Not the least regrettable consequence of Corbyn’s intervention, and the ovation from the usual suspects, is that it may well embolden the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his masters to offer us less than they had been intending.

Theresa May wants a ‘ bespoke’ deal — a unique tariff-free trading arrangement with the EU that is justified by Britain’s economic importance. Brussels would of course far prefer us to stay in the Customs Union and Single Market rather than negotiate a special agreement.

Which brings me to Sir Martin Donnelly, a rabid Remainer and the former top civil servant at the Department for International Trade.

With stunning ill- grace yesterday, he tried to pre-empt his ex-boss Liam Fox, who was about to deliver a speech arguing that the UK should leave the customs union to seize new trading opportunities.

Sir Martin popped up on Radio 4’s Today programme to claim that the UK government was involved ‘not in a negotiation’ but ‘something for a fairy godmother’. Even if this were true (which I don’t believe), this was a disloyal and subversive thing for a former top civil servant to say on the airwaves not long before talks re-start. How the BBC’s Nick Robinson welcomed Sir Martin! He couldn’t contain himself. ‘Treat us,’ he begged. ‘I don’t want to taunt our listeners any longer.’

If the satirist Jonathan Swift had dropped by, he wouldn’t have received such breathless encouragement.

Weakening

Sir Martin’s scintillating bon mot amounted to saying that life outside the EU single market would be like swapping a ‘three- course meal’ for a ‘packet of crisps’. Brilliant!

It fell to Boris Johnson, interviewed later on the programme, to point out — as Nick Robinson omitted to — that the outspoken Sir Martin Donnelly had worked for some years as a civil servant at the European Commission in Brussels.

Former mandarins are entitled to their anti-Brexit views, but every time they criticise their own country’s negotiating team in public, and endorse the Commission’s position, they risk weakening their government.

A few weeks ago, the former head of the civil service, Lord (Gus) O’Donnell (acting in concert with two other former colleagues) said it was ‘completely crazy’ to accuse Whitehall of trying to sabotage Brexit.

Divisions

Well, former Whitehall big cheeses such as Sir Martin Donnelly are plainly working overtime to do exactly that, as are Lord O’Donnell and his mates. When will they learn that when divisions are publicly exposed in this country, the negotiators in Brussels are so much happier?

But perhaps that’s what they want. On Saturday, the pro-EU Financial Times (regarded, not unreasonably, by Eurocrats as the voice of the British Establishment) asserted that ‘Brexit is a damage limitation exercise and the EU holds all the high cards’.

Am I naive to hope that a Japanese- owned newspaper edited by irrepressible Europhiles might have a patriotic thought for a Government trying to secure the best possible outcome for this country?

Is it a fuddy-duddy idea that newspapers shouldn’t bolster foreign adversaries when they are engaged in a deadly serious negotiation with the Government of one’s own country?

Many of the members of our ruling class are instinctively defeatist. To judge by the unholy alliance that sprang up following Jeremy Corbyn’s lamentable speech, some of them are — I don’t use the word lightly — pretty treacherous, too.