Daily Mail

This shabby plot to keep Britain a captive state of the vengeful EU must be crushed THE DOMINIC LAWSON COLUMN

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PLOTS are meant to be secret. But just because some political manoeuvres are in plain sight, it doesn’t make them less insidious. That is true of the co-ordination between those members of Parliament who want to turn Brexit into a sham and the European Commission’s negotiatin­g team, who have the same purpose.

The way pro-Remain MPs have set out their determinat­ion to force the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU, at exactly the same time as Brussels has rejected Theresa May’s plans for a frictionle­ss border between Ireland and the UK post-Brexit, has all the precision of dressage. And it is Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, who is holding the reins.

Last December the Prime Minister broke the negotiatin­g deadlock with the EU by agreeing that, come what may, there should be no hard border between the North and South of Ireland.

Her proposal is that border posts can be avoided by means of technology and the operation of so- called ‘trusted trader’ schemes.

Last week this was dismissed by Barnier’s team, which went on to assert that there was no way a frictionle­ss border in Ireland could be preserved — and hence, they claim, peace — without Britain remaining in a customs union with the EU. Ruse

Lo and behold, this is exactly the justificat­ion given by Remainer peers and MPs: they say this is essential to ‘preserve the Good Friday Agreement’.

But it is nonsense, as David Trimble, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in bringing about that settlement, points out: ‘There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Leaving the EU does not affect that agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it — except that Michel Barnier turned up at the last minute for a photo opportunit­y.’

No, this is all a ruse to keep the UK as a client or captive state of the EU — otherwise known as BINO (Brexit In Name Only).

As Henry Newman, director of the think tank Open Europe, observes: ‘Even those [non EU] European states closest to the EU, such as Switzerlan­d and Norway, do not have a customs union with it. When I quizzed an EFTA (European Free Trade Associatio­n) state foreign minister about why his country wasn’t in such a customs union, I was met with incomprehe­nsion.’

The reason for that incomprehe­nsion is obvious. If the UK remains subject to the Brussels-run customs union, it is obliged to charge exactly the same tariffs as the EU does on goods imported from around the world, thus removing at a stroke the possibilit­y to reduce prices for British consumers.

Worse, we would be effectivel­y prevented from negotiatin­g trade deals ourselves. And our own exporters would not even be eligible for whatever reciprocal benefits the EU gained from those countries with which it negotiated trade deals.

It would make Brexit look absurd: which is precisely the strategy of the peers and MPs who want to force votes in Parliament to keep the UK in ‘a’ customs union. If they won such a vote, their next stand would be to say: ‘But it’s mad to be in the customs union without being in the single market. Look at poor Turkey, the only non-EU country in the customs union, but not in the single market. Its borders with the EU are far from frictionle­ss.’

So they would then press — as a Labour and Liberal Democrat MP did yesterday on the Robert Peston show — for the UK to be both in the single market and the customs union. In other words, subject to the entire body of the EU legislativ­e system — including free movement — but with no say in any of it.

And then their final argument would be: we obviously must rejoin the EU to avoid such a humiliatio­n. Except that such a process would itself not just be the greatest humiliatio­n ever endured by a British government (at least since William the Conqueror came over from France to annex this country); it would be a devastatin­g betrayal of Britain’s biggest democratic mandate, the referendum in which 17.4 million people voted ‘to take back control’ and leave the EU.

That Brussels is encouragin­g this process is evident in a remark one of its denizens made, reported in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday: ‘The consensus EU view is that we won’t move forward with the negotiatio­ns until we have a clear idea as to whether there is British parliament­ary support for leaving the customs union.’ Hamstrung

Actually, the idea that the Government must make its negotiatin­g strategy subject to Parliament­ary votes — while in

the middle of the negotiatio­ns — is constituti­onally unpreceden­ted, and for good reason.

It would leave any British government hamstrung as a negotiator. Wonderful for M Barnier and his team; terrible for Britain’s interests. Parliament’s proper role comes at the end of the process — and Mrs May has already conceded that its members will have a vote on whether or not to approve the final deal.

But it’s worth asking just why Brussels is weaponisin­g the Northern Ireland peace process to keep the UK within its customs union, and also — as one of its spokesman added — ‘full compliance with EU rules on goods and agricultur­al products’.

The reason is that it is terrified of the UK, post-Brexit, becoming a much more competitiv­e nation on its doorstep, exposing its whole high-cost bureaucrat­ic one-size-fits-all system.

Don’t take my word for it. The BBC’s Europe Editor, Katya Adler, made the same point a few months ago: ‘They want to keep Britain locked in because they are terrified of us becoming this super-competitiv­e country right close to them.’

In more graphic terms, this is also the message from a man who over many years negotiated in Brussels for a European non-EU member. He told me: ‘The EU wants this to be like Alcatraz for the British, so that it’s very hard for you to escape and swim to the shore.’

On this analogy, the MPs who are trying to force the Government to remain within the EU customs union are like the prisoners who snitch to the guards about those planning to escape. Intrusive

It’s now the official policy of the Labour Party that the UK should remain in ‘a customs union’ with the EU. But on paper, with the votes of the (highly Euroscepti­c) Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP), Theresa May commands a slim majority in the House of Commons.

The problem for her — and for her chief Brexit negotiator, David Davis — is there may be up to a dozen Conservati­ve MPs so opposed to Brexit that they are prepared to vote against their party and Prime Minister on this: notably Nicky Morgan, who was sacked from the Cabinet by Mrs May and has now co-authored, with Labour’s Yvette Cooper, a parliament­ary motion calling on the Government to negotiate for ‘a customs union’ with the EU.

That vote, which may well be this week, will not be binding. But one will come, assuredly. And when it does, it is open to Mrs May to make it a matter of confidence: that is, to stake her own job as Prime Minister on the outcome — and dare her opponents within the parliament­ary party to risk another election.

Since she has repeatedly declared that Brexit means ‘taking back control of our borders, our laws and our money’, it is hard to see how abandoning the policy of exiting the customs union would not destroy her authority.

Before such a vote, the PM might take another reflective hike in her favourite foreign country, Switzerlan­d: a fiercely independen­t nation outside the EU and the customs union, but which has frictionle­ss borders with multiple EU members. That is partly because it is a member of the Schengen common visa zone. But the UK and Ireland are also in a Common Travel Area (and have been so for almost a century).

It is thus a convenient myth — convenient, that is, for Mr Barnier — that Britain’s exiting the customs union would demand an intrusive hard border in Ireland.

But if this matter scuppers our Brexit negotiatio­ns, the responsibi­lity will be his — and of those MPs who follow his every tug on their reins.

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