It’s time for Major, Blair and Co to stop refighting the referendum
The ex-PMs should use their good offices to help Mrs May get the best possible deal from the EU
Abit like London buses, former prime ministers appear in pairs. Just as one turns up another follows close behind to tell the British people what a hash they made of things on June 23 last year. Tony Blair and Sir John Major spoke a week apart but seem to have timed their interventions to coincide with the debate in the Lords over the legislation to trigger Article 50 and begin the process of leaving the EU.
They were last seen together in Northern Ireland during the EU referendum campaign. Both men, joint architects of the Good Friday agreement, went to Londonderry to warn the nation what would happen if we left. Sir John said there was a “serious risk” of another independence referendum in Scotland and he could “envisage a different result” to the one in 2014.
He argued that a vote to leave the EU would risk “destabilising the complicated and multilayered constitutional settlement that underpins the present stability in Northern Ireland” – a situation that in his words would be a “historic mistake”. Mr Blair said Northern Ireland’s prosperity and its political arrangements could be negatively affected by a vote to leave. It would be “difficult if not impossible” to maintain the common travel area because checks would be needed across the border between the two countries.
I dwell upon these comments, made just two weeks before the referendum, because they are pertinent to what both men are saying now. Mr Blair, in his speech 10 days ago, said “People voted without knowledge of the true terms of Brexit. As these terms become clear, it is their right to change their mind. Our mission is to persuade them to do so.” Sir John, in a lengthy jeremiad delivered at Chatham House on Monday night, set out a litany of difficulties that face the country as it seeks to leave the EU – all of which were put before the voters by the Remain camp in the referendum campaign.
It is simply not true that the country bought a pig in a poke: the whole basis of the Remain effort to keep Britain in the EU was to scare the wits out of anyone thinking of voting to leave. Yet they still did; or enough did to win the vote, which is what counts in the end. Perhaps Sir John’s assessment of the difficulties that lie ahead will turn out to be valid, but we could have done without the Eeyorish gloom with which it was delivered.
Moreover, he does seem to be attacking the wrong people for old time’s sake. He said that the “hard Brexit” now being pursued is the fulfilment of the long-held ambitions of the Eurosceptics who made his final few years in No 10 so miserable. Yet some Maastricht veterans were not in favour of a hard Brexit and would have preferred a halfway house – staying in the European Economic Area for the time being to mitigate some of the possible cliff-edge moments that might now lie ahead.
It is, let us remember, Theresa May and a Cabinet largely comprised of Remainers who have set a course to leave the single market and the customs union. Equally, Sir John was scathing about the idea of turning Britain into a low-tax, enterprise-driven European version of Singapore. Again, it was not the Brexiteers who put this idea forward but Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, who voted to stay in the EU.
Why have these Remainers become such ardent champions of the clean break? They have done something that neither Mr Blair nor Sir John have managed to do (nor George Osborne judging by his speech to the British Chambers of Commerce yesterday) and that is come to terms with the fact that the debate is over and what matters now is how to deal with the consequences of the vote. Mr Blair wants to overturn it. Sir John says he accepts it and yet the whole tone of his speech suggests otherwise. They are essentially trying to reopen the campaign by making the same points now that they did then.
But Mrs May and most MPs have concluded that the result must be respected because to do anything else would render the democratic process redundant. Moreover, they also take the view that a decisive break with the EU is the simplest way of achieving this because everyone then knows where they stand.
Whether they can sustain this position depends on Parliament, and was always going to. Again, Sir John blames Brexiteers for trying to stifle debate; yet he knows better than most from the days of the Maastricht treaty ratification that if MPs wanted to stop this process they can find ways of doing so. They have chosen not to, and by a substantial majority, for precisely the same reasons that govern Mrs May’s approach: having asked the people to decide something that MPs were unable to agree upon they cannot now gainsay the country’s decision.
This is something that the Lords should bear in mind when it votes on an amendment to the Article 50 Bill which would write into law Mrs May’s assurance that Parliament will vote on the final Brexit agreement, as if that were ever in doubt. Supporters of this approach, such as Lord Heseltine, believe that if Parliament rejects the deal then the UK should seek fresh talks to get something better or remain within the EU. But this makes no sense: what possible motivation would there be on the EU27 to reach an agreement? They could simply offer nothing in the hope that the British decide they would rather stay after all. If peers pass this amendment, MPs will overturn it.
So instead of trying to reopen the referendum, the ex-PMs should use their good offices to help Mrs May get the best possible deal in the national interest. To suggest this is not, in Sir John’s words, to deny him the right to speak or belittle what he has to say; far from it. He should speak out – but it would be helpful were he to do so in a way that enhances the prospect of a successful and mutually beneficial outcome rather than diminishes it.
If two years hence, the Brexit talks are in such a mess that MPs want a rethink then they can doubtless find a way of insisting upon one – or, more likely, face voters in a general election. But if the deal is a turkey then we will just have to leave without one. The notion that we might slink back, cap in hand, and ask if we can stay would be the greatest national humiliation since the Norman Conquest.
When Article 50 is triggered later this month, we will pass the point of no return.