Britain’s been reduced to tribalism by Brexit
IS NO price too high for a hard Brexiteer?
Having missed out on signing the Rees-Mogg ransom note to Theresa May, in which 62 Tory MPs demanded a no compromise Brexit, Aberdeen South MP Ross Thomson took to Twitter to make clear he wanted to be in the hijack squad too.
“Wholeheartedly back this letter of support to the PM which gives power to her elbow in these crucial negotiations to achieve a clean Brexit. Out of the Single Market, out of the Customs Union and delivers a special economic partnership with the EU that works for the whole UK,” tweeted Thomson.
A trio of Scottish Tory MPs are already on board as hard Brexiteers – and it should be no surprise to see Thomson shimmying up the anchor chain to join them on the decks of the free market brigantine. He was, after all, a spokesman for the Scottish Vote Leave campaign.
But Thomson’s majority in Aberdeen South is only 4752 votes strong, so running up a Jolly Roger for a hard Brexit is either courageous or dunderheaded.
One of the Rees-Mogg crew’s demands, laid out as May ushered her Cabinet to Chequers and towards some kind of compromise with the EU, is that any “implementation period” following Britain’s departure should be based on World Trade Organisation principles.
What would that mean? For Aberdeen, an oil city with some of the most expensive postcodes in the UK, it would be a continental shelf edge disaster.
Analysis by the Centre for Cities thinktank predicts in the decade after the implementation of new trade agreements with the EU, Aberdeen would be the city worst hit under any scenario.
Because of the impact of increasing costs on its oil sector, the forecasts are a 3.7 per cent hit on the economy in the case of a hard Brexit and 2.1 per cent in a “soft” scenario.
Thomson says none of the forecasts so far cover the bespoke deal May is aiming for.
He told me: “In my view, the letter from the ERG group gives more power to the elbow of the Prime Minister as she works, with our full support, for the best possible outcome.” Well, go tell them that on Donside. But at least Thomson and co are only taking a gamble with votes and jobs in Aberdeen. Across the water, they’re willing to wager the Northern Irish peace process away.
Faced with the impossible conundrum of how to stop there being a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the response now is to wish away the Belfast Agreement.
Tory MP Owen Paterson, a former Northern Ireland secretary, suggested that the landmark agreement had “outlived its use”.
Sammy Wilson, a senior DUP MP, said in the Commons that the agreement had “given a power of veto and blackmail to Sinn Fein”.
Jim Shannon, MP for Strangford, ventured that the stalemate at Stormont meant the agreement had failed, adding: “Therefore its value has to be considered and looked at for the future.”
The Dublin government condemned the comments as “reckless”, but reckless doesn’t even cover it.
Taking the lives of people in Northern Ireland and a hard-won, if imperfect, peace for granted is a fairly despicable low in the Brexit debate, even by the debased standards of tribal politics.
But just as our referendum bequeathed Scotland a propensity to let emotion overwhelm facts, a new tribalism is what Brexit has brought to Britain. For the tribe, no price is too high.