Brexit betrayal would be disaster for democracy
Prime Minister faces a fate worse than Major if she does not rethink Chequers agreement very soon
My punch-drunk friends in No10 would be foolish to mistake the polite bonhomie towards the Prime Minister at this week’s 1922 committee meeting with any sign that she’s turned a corner in her relations with the parliamentary party. Many MPS are nearly as bored with Brexit as the public, but still have little affection for their beleaguered premier. Respect for her resilience is another matter.
In the wake of the hopeless 2017 general election campaign and Theresa May’s self-declared invoking of the Pottery Barn rule (“You break it, you remake it”), the bargain struck to keep her in post was that, in return for her colleagues’ grudging acquiescence, she would be trusted with delivering a Brexit that closely approximated to that which the electorate voted for and were told would happen – on the steps of Downing Street in July 2016, at Tory party conference in 2016 and at Lancaster House in early 2017.
Naturally, if you tell the voters you want a free-trade agreement as part of an ambitious future economic partnership – a “Canada plus”-style deal – with frictionless trade and no tariffs and minimal non-tariff barriers, close cooperation on security and intelligence, beneficial EU agency participation and bespoke bilateral agreements with the EU, it’s not unreasonable to assume that’s what they expect you to deliver.
Yet what we have seen, as Boris Johnson rightly articulated, is abject capitulation before we’ve even got on the Eurostar at St Pancras, a collapse in political courage combined with a failure of imagination in the upper echelons of the civil service. The supine cultural cringe to the EU and the rampant establishment Stockholm Syndrome have been at the heart of too many Whitehall departments and inculcated their ministers, too. MPS have not been immune: now, the most voluble champions of scrutinising the minutiae of Brexit are those who could barely bother to turn up in the Commons to debate the EU’S injection into every facet of our national life over the past 45 years. Add to that the Prime Minister’s modus operandi, of tightly bound advisers, true believers and validators, trusting few others and hardball tactics for those who fall foul of Team May, and we end up with a Nixonian scenario: a mindset that has led Mrs May into the cul de sac of Chequers, via a politically and constitutionally questionable route.
What was hitherto Government policy was dispatched into oblivion by a shadowy group of civil servants. They designed a new policy, rolled the pitch with Brussels offline, bounced it like a googly on the Cabinet with 20 hours’ notice and produced a Soviet-style communiqué indicating unanimous support, which, of course, was mendacious. And they misled ministers in the responsible department as part of the bargain!
So, it seems unsurprising that it has bombed with Conservative MPS, the wider party and the electorate. “Didn’t we have a great policy?” they say. “You told us so at the Mansion House, Florence and Munich speeches.”
Incompetence is bad but incompetence and duplicity is worse – not to mention the careless incivility to senior ministers, such as David Davis, who supported the Government’s erstwhile policy and have been repaid with a little less than full loyalty.
If you don’t even explain logically the realpolitik as to why you’ve been wrong since the election and you’re nevertheless correct now, then your own supporters are likely to be at least confused, if not angry. If you play Remainers against Brexiteers in the Commons, it might result in a tactical win, but doesn’t do much for unity in the long term. That requires vision, leadership, courage and self-belief.
Thus, Mrs May is on borrowed time: she either has to radically reboot the Chequers agreement – especially in respect of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, trade policy and the unworkable “facilitated customs arrangement” – or junk it altogether. Otherwise, either Martin Selmayr and the EU or Jacob Reesmogg and the European Research Group and an opportunistic Labour Party will render it unnegotiable or politically toxic and kill it off.
The last Prime Minister to assume that it wasn’t strictly necessary to explain their policies (in his case the catastrophe of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism) and the associated volte-face was John Major. The cold fury of the voters at the betrayal of election pledges culminated in the epoch-making 1997 electoral rout.
Voters have long memories, and if Mrs May doesn’t want to suffer an even worse fate by being seen to betray Brexit, she needs to change course very soon. Failure to do so may tip the Tories into an existential crisis, make “no deal” a likely outcome in March 2019 and potentially facilitate the most extreme elements of Right and Left to destroy our cherished system of parliamentary democracy, if voters feel deceived and ignored.
It’s time the Prime Minister trusted the instincts of the British people. Isn’t that the best legacy for Mrs May?
Stewart Jackson was the MP for Peterborough from 2005 -17 and chief of staff to David Davis in the Department for Exiting the EU from 2017-18 FOLLOW Stewart Jackson on Twitter @Brexitstewart; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion