Phantom of Brussels will haunt us if we fail these tests

For a while, even after last year’s general election, it seemed that we might be able to put Brexit behind us and come together as a country to build a stronger and more prosperous future outside the European Union. Both the main parties in the election campaigned on manifestos committed to respecting the result of the referendum. People could and did choose between the parties based on other more familiar issues and political debate seemed to have been restored to a sense of normality.

Now we are finding it is not quite as it seems. When people said free movement would end it seems free movement as we know it would end and instead we could have another kind of free movement. The customs union could end, to be replaced by a customs union. And the single market – we are leaving that but could stay in a new kind of single market – and so it goes on. We voted to leave the EU but unless the Government gets a grip, EU membership as we know it could end only to be replaced by a new kind of EU membership. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

If we are to be haunted by the resurrected corpse of de facto EU membership, then there are five tests to exorcise a phantom Brexit at Chequers today and identify the real thing.

Do we take back control of our laws – and end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice so that we elect the people who make the laws that affect us?

Do we control our borders – so we can have an immigration system that works for us, allows us to have the same rules for EU and non-eu migrants if we want to and to keep out people who have committed serious crimes or threaten our security?

Do we control our money – can we cut taxes like VAT on domestic fuel if we want to, and do automatic payments to the EU come to an end?

Do we control our trade – can we negotiate meaningful deals with other countries, end the export of live animals if we want to and control our fisheries so that we support our coastal communities?

Do we leave in March 2019 – because any further extension of the Article 50 process would betray a deep reluctance to respect the referendum result?

If reports are right, then what we are likely to be told after the Chequers meeting is that the Brexit we voted for

is off the table. If so, the 17.4 million who voted Leave will have been badly let down by their political class.

As we move past the second anniversary since we voted to leave the EU, the so-called “People’s vote” campaign for a second referendum chooses to ignore the vote the people have already had. Untruths are piled on hyperbole. Scenes of disaster are paraded. Leave voters cartooned as the hard-right, nationalists and racists.

The conduct of the negotiations is too often made to look a shambles. Our government machinery seems unprepared and in too many cases unwilling to do the job. Meanwhile the Brussels machine pours scorn on poor lost Britain and for our part we look ready to give in. There are moments when it is like watching a third rate England team from days past, their heads down and belief gone, endure the agony of a penalty shoot-out against a much better European side.

And it is England that is probably more divided than the other nations of the UK. A majority in London voted to Remain and the rest of England voted Leave. The divide is deep and it is cultural. Part of the failure to make a success of Brexit is that the institutions charged with making it happen are dominated by London interests who just don’t believe in it.

It could have been different. Imagine a referendum where the “yes” vote wins by 50.3 per cent to 49.7 per cent. “It is a victory… However narrow their verdict, it is a ‘yes’ vote”,” says the BBC’S political editor. The next day there is no campaign to overturn the result. No one is rushing to court or claiming that the result has no weight because it was after all just advisory. In this world, no one says the implementation must mean compromise to accommodate the wishes of the 49.7 per cent. There is no attempt to half implement the result, water down the result or overturn the result with a second referendum. People accept the result and they get on with it. This is no utopia. It is what is supposed to happen when our democracy gives people a referendum. And it describes what did happen after the 1997 referendum on devolution in Wales.

It is of course part of our democracy that people can campaign for political change. But we should be careful when we start to pick and choose the political institutions we respect and those we ignore.

Parliament gave the people the right to decide our membership of the EU in an in-or-out referendum. The people decided to leave. If the Cabinet and Parliament now decide to ignore them, so be it. But as they say in football, don’t for a moment think it will be all over. 17.4 million voted to leave the EU and to take back control. The outcome we voted for has not been delivered. We haven’t taken back control and until we do the campaign won’t be over and the job won’t be done.

Gisela Stuart was chairman of Vote Leave