Cabinet rifts remain as Barnier mocks Britain’s ‘backstop’ plan

Because Theresa May is a facilitator rather than a leader she has allowed the EU to make all the running

THERESA MAY has insisted she has “strong views” on Brexit as she responded to Boris Johnson’s claims that she needs to show more “guts” in negotiations with the EU.

The Prime Minister rebuked the Foreign Secretary for suggesting Northern Ireland was “the tail wagging the dog”, as she said the border issue “matters”.

There was no suggestion of Mr Johnson being sacked, however, as Downing Street said he retained the Prime Minister’s “confidence”.

Meanwhile, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, making a speech in Berlin, responded to Mr Johnson’s demands for a more aggressive approach by suggesting drily that being “collaborative” produced better results than being “confrontational”.

It came as Michel Barnier, the EU’S chief Brexit negotiator, poured scorn on Mrs May’s “backstop” plan to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, saying it “raises more questions than answers”. He mocked Mrs May’s “Brexit means Brexit” mantra by saying “backstop means backstop” as he rejected her insistence that any such arrangement should be time-limited.

Mrs May, attending the G7 summit in Canada, dismissed Mr Johnson’s suggestion that Donald Trump might do a better job of Brexit negotiations by saying: “The Foreign Secretary has strong views on Brexit, but so do I. That’s why I’m getting on with delivering Brexit.”

In response to his claim that fears over the Northern Ireland border solution were “nonsense”, Mrs May said: “The border between Northern Ireland and Ireland matters. It matters to people who live on both sides of that border, it matters to the United Kingdom because we want to ensure that we’re delivering a Brexit that works for every part of the United Kingdom and that includes Northern Ireland.”

Despite the splits in Cabinet, a Yougov poll published yesterday showed the Tories with a seven-point lead over Labour, their biggest lead since last year’s general election. The Conservatives were backed by 44 per cent of voters, with Labour on 37 per cent, after an increase in the number of working class voters saying they would vote for Mrs May’s party.

Regardless of the rows in Cabinet over the direction of Brexit, Mrs May will have difficulty convincing Brussels to accept her “backstop” plan.

Mr Barnier said: “If we want to build a new relationship there needs to be more trust but there also needs to be more realism about what’s possible and what’s not possible. Being very frank, this paper raises more questions than it does answers.”

After Mr Johnson’s leaked comments about “taking the fight to the enemy” in the Brexit negotiations, Mr Barnier added: “We’re not going to be intimidated by this form of blame game.”

Mrs May suggested the Cabinet deadlock over the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU might not be resolved for another month, and disclosed that she will take her Cabinet for an awayday to Chequers in July to thrash out their differences and discuss plans for a Brexit white paper.

In his conversation secretly recorded on Wednesday night, Boris Johnson fantasised about what the Brexit negotiations would be like if Donald Trump were in charge. “There’d be all sorts of breakdowns,” said the Foreign Secretary, “everyone would think he’d gone mad. But you might get somewhere.”

You might, indeed. Mr Trump would know what he wanted, which is the first requisite of successful negotiation. And he would constantly, publicly, loudly, say what he wanted, which is the second. Obnoxious but effective tweets would pour out after each bruising Brussels round. He would stir up his followers. Even suave Michel Barnier would look flustered.

From the first – even before her bungled general election last year – Theresa May has not known, or said, what she wants. Although she has always had the mandate of people at the referendum, although the Commons passed Article 50 and although it voted for the second reading of the Withdrawal Bill (which comes back to the Commons next week), she has acted as if the issue was too complicated for public discussion. She loves saying, “We’ve been very clear”, but seems to mean the opposite.

Under her leadership, the negotiations have been obscure, technical and bureaucratic. Therefore they have been captured by bureaucrats and made confusing. It soon became apparent that Mrs May preferred form to content. She does not mind what is in the agreement, but she does mind that agreement be achieved. She sees herself more as a facilitator than a leader.

Her Brussels counterparts quickly understood what this meant. They could frame the talks according to their priorities – insisting, for example, on the money, and that the Northern Irish question be cleared up before trade talks, even though the question is chiefly one about trade. Then they could achieve what they wanted – a disadvantageous deal for Britain which upheld their various dogmas about trade rules, borders and the power of the European Court of Justice. Although Mrs May has the democratic legitimacy they lack, she ceded control to them.

So, Brussels wins all the big points and Britain scampers behind, making much of piffling concessions. In December last year, for example, the EU insisted on keeping Northern Ireland in “full alignment” with the EU internal market and the customs union. This threatens to sever Northern Ireland from the mainland, an issue way beyond the EU’S rights. Britain was allowed the following qualification: “The United Kingdom also recalls its commitment to preserving the integrity of its own internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it”. Note that phrase, “The United Kingdom … recalls”. It can recall as much as it likes, but the EU offers nothing in return. What the UK “recalls”, Brussels can forget.

This week, in one of his periodic bursts of bluster, David Davis threatened to resign unless the Government stuck an end date on its “backstop” proposal. Downing Street duly came up with the following form of words: “The UK expects the future arrangement to be in place by the end of December 2021 at the latest.” No suggestion that its expectation could make a blind bit of difference. But that pseudo-nelson touch (“England expects ...”) satisfied Mr Davis’s notion of honour. He decided to stay put, though the spin-doctors boasted that they had given him nothing of substance, and Mr Barnier said there could be no backstop date anyway.

Note, by the way, that all these to-ings and fro-ings about exact verbal formulas take place between British ministers. They generate great heat – and brief smiles in the few moments when agreement seems to have been reached – but they make little difference to Mr Barnier. He must feel a lucky man. At an earlier stage of proceedings, he thought he might have to concede something like the CETA deal between the EU and Canada. Now he sees some of our leaders crawling back towards a (sort of) customs union and single market.

Don’t just fantasise about Trump. Imagine how different it would be if Philip Hammond’s Treasury (which Boris rightly fingers as the most negative of all government forces) were to fight for Brexit opportunities; or if the Cabinet as a whole saw the voters’ choice as a unique blow for freedom rather than an administrative headache. Imagine if Mrs May herself – breaking the habit of a lifetime – were to reach over the heads of the negotiators to converse with the voters she is supposed to represent. Never before in our history have 17.4million people voted for anything, yet we have a Prime Minister who finds the subject too frightening to discuss with them.

Brexiteers are right to feel gloomy. If you follow the trajectory of Brexit policy since Mrs May became Prime Minister, you will see it move slowly but steadily in a direction governed by fear rather than hope. Today, the “Project Fear” which lost the referendum for George Osborne and David Cameron is born again in the Government’s attitude to “No deal”.

Although preparations are allegedly being made for that eventuality (with Steve Baker the minister in charge), no one believes this is really happening.

This is what Boris means when he complains about “Millennium bug”-style scares. We are shutting down options when we should be opening them up. The unreconciled elements – the House of Lords, the Civil Service, the BBC, the CBI, Blairite Labour, the Financial Times – are clawing back through the passage of time what they lost in the referendum.

It is not the moment, however, to give up hope; for at least two reasons. The first is that, despite everything, we are still leaving. None of the blocks thrown in the way has so far worked. In the referendum itself, in the general election (where 84 per cent voted for parties committed to Brexit), and in all the key Commons votes, Brexit has been reaffirmed. Next week, the Commons considers the Lords’ amendments. The numbers are tight.

I cannot claim to know the minds of wavering Conservative MPS (especially waverers who plan to leave Parliament at the next election and feel that they have little to lose unless the Tory whips treat them nicely). But I find it hard to believe that elected Conservatives will decide to vote for the sweeping amendments sent to them by unelected, mainly Labour and Liberal Democrat, peers, rather than backing their own Government in a tight spot. With a few exceptions, they are concerned citizens, not wreckers.

If the votes went the wrong way, Remain sympathisers would not prevent Brexit, they would merely knock weapons out of the Government’s hands in Brussels. They would also create a breach between elected and electors, from which only Jeremy Corbyn could benefit.

The second reason is more worldhistorical. When you look around the globe today, you are not seeing the death of sovereign states of which the EU constantly dreams. The big powers – the United States, China, India, Russia, Japan – are independent nations, and prouder of that fact than before. The EU is in relative decline, and the energy comes from those – most recently in Italy – who want it to change. In 2016, we chose that change and embraced the possibilities of freedom. It really does seem extremely unlikely that we would now act like the prisoners’ chorus in Fidelio in reverse.