PM must find another approach to Brexit
Theresa May has to rethink her Brexit plan. She has no choice. Either she does it, or it will be done for her, possibly at the country’s expense. Speaking in Northern Ireland yesterday, she sounded as though nothing had changed and this is the final offer on the table. Speaking in Brussels, Michel Barnier welcomed the plan’s concessions to the EU and asked for more. This plan has no future in the form that Mrs May seems to think it inhabits.
The plan has been public for only two weeks and it has failed key objectives. It was meant to unite the Cabinet. Instead David Davis and Boris Johnson quit over it, sending to the backbenches two articulate new critics. Mr Johnson, in a devastating resignation speech, said the UK was “volunteering for economic vassalage”.
The plan was meant to unite the Tory party. The theory went that, if the Cabinet Leavers backed it, they could sell it to the rebellious backbenchers on the basis that “there is no alternative”. But the split in the Cabinet gave a green light to a split in the party, which led to amendments to the Customs Bill – one of which effectively makes the facilitated customs arrangement, as it was originally designed, inoperable. The Europeans are watching. The British debate over the plan, observed Mr Barnier, is “not over”.
Finally, the plan was supposed to be presented to the EU as Britain’s closing proposal, backed by a united country. It is fantasy, however, to imagine that Europeans will completely accept it. Mr Barnier said that Brussels cannot swallow the division of goods and services – with alignment for the former and not the latter – and he wondered if Mrs May’s deal didn’t still leave the UK with a competitive advantage. That, of course, is one of the central goals of Brexit. Britain voted out in the expectation of short-term disruption, yes, but also in the hope of future prosperity, because we would be free to cut regulations, reduce taxes and trade closer with emerging economies. A Brexit that leaves the UK tethered to the sclerotic EU economy would be a bad Brexit – and that is precisely what the EU is agitating for.
Part of the problem is that Britain has approached this whole endeavour with such reasonableness. We thought both sides would want to depart as friends, so we have made one concession after another: a £39 billion divorce bill, guaranteed citizens’ rights, continued defence and intelligence co-operation. Mrs May’s deal continues this trend: it offers a common rule book that effectively forces our goods trade to comply with EU rules, limits to deregulation, a mobility framework that is essentially free movement for work, and so on.
Britain gives. The EU asks for more. The only thing that keeps the UK from offering itself up on a plate is the knowledge that we could always walk away with no deal. This threat has not been taken seriously thus far. Now the Government appears to be spending money in preparation for it, and warning businesses to get ready. This is welcome, but Mrs May is still running around seeking solutions on the EU’S terms. Even her visit to the Northern Ireland border is an acquiescence of sorts. Britain should never have accepted that the border has anything to do with Europe. We have allowed our policy to be dictated by Eurocrats and the Irish prime minister, a man so detached from the facts he suggested this week that, in the event of no deal, British aeroplanes will be banned from Irish airspace.
This is the weekend that Tory MPS, breaking for summer, go home to talk to activists. What will they be told? If the Telegraph Letters page is anything to judge by, it is that voters are tired of being insulted by Brussels. That someone should remind the Europeans that a no-deal would hurt them as much as us – the EU’S exports would be hit and they can say farewell to that £39 billion. And MPS will probably discover that anger towards Mrs May’s plan has not abated just because the Government won a handful of votes in the Commons this week.
The grassroots are demanding alternatives. Ultimately, Mrs May will be forced to find one. The EU will demand more concessions; Parliament has shown that there is no majority for granting them. There is also no majority for no deal. The Prime Minister must face reality.