Patrick Robertson:
It’s not too late to dump this toxic Brexit plan and grasp Canada Plus – a failure to do so will be fatal
Britain’s constitutional crisis – underway for some time – has entered a new, more dangerous phase. To anyone who has read history, it is plain that the public reaction, when it finally comes, will be devastating to behold.
No amount of dissimulation, manipulation or lies can disguise the truth: the Chequers plan is not a “compromise” or a negotiating position. It is the public face of a ploy to keep the UK inside the EU by tying our hands on rules governing goods, food, the environment, the workplace and much else, and maintaining the supremacy of European law in our country.
How would the UK set its own rules on services when 20 to 30 per cent of a car is classed as services? How would we negotiate trade treaties with third countries that accept our services but want greater access to our market for their goods? How could we turn away cheap labour from Europe when our low-productivity economic model would bleed out without it? And with the EU’S influence so firmly anchored in our political life in perpetuity, how far would Parliament dare to diverge on issues like state aid, competition policy or public procurement rules for fear of “consequences”? Under Chequers, the idea that Britain could ever truly recover control of fisheries, let alone its borders, is for the birds.
But the greatest concessions are yet to come. The surrender of our independence will be salami-sliced over the years of transition and beyond. When the deal is finally reached, it will be wrapped up in an Association Agreement modelled on that of an EU pre-accession country – so a future Parliament would be able to vote to rejoin the EU without waiting for years to realign UK and EU law. That is the plan that has been hatched in Brussels in full sight of No. 10 and is the reason why – the Prime Minister’s assurances notwithstanding – Chequers is an undeniable, hitherto unimaginable betrayal of the biggest vote in the history of our country.
The problem for the Government and the parliamentarians who support this travesty is that it isn’t going to work. The public sees the betrayal all too clearly, even if they may disagree on which details anger them the most. What has infuriated them above all else is the fact that Parliament voted explicitly to give this decision to the people and the Government promised to honour the result.
A further source of anger is the manner in which the Prime Minister is perceived to have conducted the negotiations – if one may call them that – with the EU. Theresa May has made no less than nine major strategic concessions, in exchange for nothing – from accepting sequencing, the appalling Irish backstop and a wholly unnecessary two-year transition as a vassal of the EU, to offering £39 billion with no strings attached, turning down the free trade agreement proffered by Donald Tusk (he repeated the offer yesterday), and swallowing an unenforceable “political declaration” in place of a legally binding document setting out the future relationship.
Each concession has emasculated the British negotiating position and the ability to obtain a fair deal that the country could live with. There has not been a red line in the Government’s stated negotiating position that Mrs May has not violated.
Which brings us to the suicidal decision not to dump Chequers and grasp Canada Plus while there is still time. To quote Boris Johnson, Chequers is “dangerous and unstable – politically and economically”. Even if the Government were to get its way and impose Chequers, public discourse would be forever laden with toxicity, while under the yoke of Brussels, the daily grind for all would be a stream of rules written elsewhere that could never be changed or rescinded, without even the fig leaf of democratic representation. How could any sensible person believe that such a scenario is a recipe for the stability and growth of our nation?
In the 30 years since I founded the Bruges Group, no period resembles this so much as the days after Maastricht – with just one difference. The Conservative wipeout that followed in 1997 will look like a walk in the park compared to what will happen at the next election if the government does not U-turn on Chequers.