We – and Brussels – would really like to know: what is going on in the PM’S head?
Mrs May won Cabinet agreement at Chequers. But her true convictions remain a mystery
The old Spitting Image joke about Margaret Thatcher is so famous that people think it actually happened. The waiter at Chequers takes her order. She asks for steak. “And the vegetables?” ventures the waiter. “Oh,” she says, waving dismissively towards her Cabinet colleagues, “they’ll be having the same.”
Theresa May’s method seems to be almost exactly the opposite. The “vegetables” say what they want, and try to order for her as well. She says nothing. No one knows what she wants. Her future biographer (no, I am not volunteering) will have to decide whether this technique was very deep or merely vacuous. In this confusing present, it is hard to know.
The 11 Cabinet ministers most concerned with Brexit spent eight hours in Chequers on Thursday, moving from one room to another in different seating arrangements, to achieve informality and new perspectives. By dinner, they had bonded well, and drove home content. What actually happened?
One of my sources – I shall not cause embarrassment by linking any insider with a brussels sprout, a neutral broad bean or a decent British turnip – claimed a decisive victory for the Brexitish side of the argument. The earlier Treasury-led attempt to keep Britain as a mere rule-taker from the EU had failed. At about 7.30 in the evening, with dinner pending, a minute based on the day’s discussions was served up at the Chequers table. It said that Britain would be ready to agree broad alignment with high EU regulatory standards, but be at liberty to take back control where necessary. Both the EU and the UK would accept the arbitration of an independent panel on disputes that might arise. The ministers present pronounced it palatable.
At last, I was told, Mrs May had made an actual decision and made the right one. Alarmed by this week’s letter of “support” from Jacob Reesmogg and his 61 European Research Groupers, and by the possibility of a blond resignation, she had realised that she simply could not agree to keep us within the regulatory legal tutelage which we voted to leave.
Other leading vegetables were not so cheerful, however. Sources close to one pointed out that although the British position agreed on Thursday is pragmatic, experience teaches that the European Commission is adept at scrutinising sensible suggestions with a doctrinal rigour worthy of counterreformation popes. Won’t it find Britain guilty yet again of the mortal sin of “cherry-picking” or the heresy of “having your cake and eating it”?
The mood at Chequers was good, but the Cabinet Committee’s decision was like the decision to buy a house “subject to survey”. It was not even an exchange of contracts, let alone a completed sale. It was non-binding.
Sources close to another légume inclined to the view that the Prime Minister had not given much to Brexiteers. In areas like the automotive industry, the current realities of trans-national manufacture require absolute conformity of rules across the EU. To undo them, in the view of many, would risk cutting Britain out of a pan-european set-up, with no compensating benefit. In such areas, the needs of “frictionless” borders and supply chains seemed to trump taking back control.
So, like everyone – and I do mean literally everyone – involved in the whole Brexit saga, I cannot firmly assert which way this is going.
Perhaps the most important thing is the passage of time – M Barnier’s famous ticking clock. On the one hand, this counts against the Brexiteers because, as more gets provisionally agreed, it gets harder to walk out and go for WTO rules.
On the other hand, time also makes it ever clearer – even to the Philip Hammonds, Amber Rudds and David Lidingtons – that we are, both in law and in fact, leaving the EU, and that this cannot be averted without a serious constitutional crisis.
Mrs May presumably calculates all of the above. Like Queen Elizabeth I with her suitors, she knows you gain more power by fostering the hope of a favour than by bestowing it. So, whenever she can, she delays. By being the least forthcoming Prime Minister in our democratic history, she makes people wait upon her words.
All the people I know who have talked to her about Brexit report the same thing – that they simply do not know what she believes. Something similar applies on the Continent, where M Barnier’s negotiators are spooked by having so little idea of her mind.
Arguably, this blankness is her greatest justification. Mrs May, after all, is wrestling with something which has never happened before – a momentous decision of the people against the will of all the main political parties and elites. It is extremely hard to give effect to such a decision, because most of those elites remain opposed. Yet that is Mrs May’s task, and she knows it.
When she says, “Brexit means Brexit”, this is what she must mean. Parliament asked the people to vote, and promised to abide by their decision. They decided, and so it is irrelevant – almost impertinent – for her to express her own opinions. The country voted. The duty of carrying out the popular will has fallen to her. If it can be done, she will do it properly. If it fails, so will she.
One suspects that she contrasts her own dutiful, almost humble attitude with that of the men shouting all round her. “Who cares about their stupid, show-off opinions?” she may mutter. “Typical men.” In this, if in few other respects, she resembles Mrs Thatcher: “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
Yet I do think Mrs May is missing something very important about the Brexit process. It is not chiefly about the technical nuances of the negotiations, though these will often matter greatly. It is not chiefly about Cabinet unity, though that is a rare bonus. It is about the right mindset. The Chequers thinking, though better than recent official positions, still has the wrong mindset. It says: “We’re leaving, so how do we minimise the damage?” It should be saying: “We’re leaving. So how do we maximise the opportunity?”
Ask it that way round and you might conclude, for example, that the alignment of goods with the EU has far more benefit than the alignment of services. We can’t have the (or even “a”) customs union, because that stops us making our own trade deals with a wider world, but we don’t need to fight to the death for divergence in every manufacturing sector. In finance, though, it is the City of London’s capacity to be different which attracts the world, not its uniformity with the Continent. Brexited, it could reinforce that strength. Half-in, half-out, it could be slowly sapped by the French.
As Prime Minister, Mrs May has not only to negotiate Brexit, but to expound it. This is a political task, and if she doesn’t undertake it, others fill the vacuum with the opposite intent. Hence Jeremy Corbyn, now belatedly fighting for customs union, hoping to wangle a Commons majority. Hence Tony Blair, trading on bogus credentials as the prince of peace in Northern Ireland to threaten Armageddon from the IRA unless we have a second referendum.*
In the forefront of Mrs May’s mind is the next round of talks, and therefore what to say to Brussels. But to be successful there, she needs first to know what to say to us.
On the World at One yesterday, Mr Blair praised the single market for ensuring “Britain’s enormous trade surplus with the EU”. In fact, Britain has a trade deficit with the EU of about £80 billion.