The Brexit headbangers understand the EU far better than Theresa May

Few divorces improve by being dragged out. The PM should have listened to the ‘grumpy Brexiteers’

Mrs May hints she wants an extension to the proposed Brexit transition deal (without explaining why). The transition deal is itself an unfavourable extension, sort of, of our EU membership (keeping to customs union and single market rules, and still paying, but losing the power to affect anything). If the original extension and Mrs May’s extension to the extension are agreed, we would have taken well over five years from voting Leave to achieving it. That is almost as long as the entire Second World War.

The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, gallantly defending Mrs May yesterday, said: “She’s held firm.” She certainly has a very determined air, and picks holes in any alternative that others offer. But what is she holding firm to? It is something about not retaining “full alignment” between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit, yet not having a trade border in the Irish Sea. This is a self-contradiction, which she invented last December in her panicky rush to obey EU demands that she make “sufficient progress”. Now she wants us all to regard it as a principled stand for which, like Churchill in pursuit of victory, she offers only blood, toil, tears and sweat.

This position is bewilderingly stupid. More and more Tory MPS are blaming it on Mrs May personally. They are right that her strange mixture of stubbornness over detail and lack of conviction about the main issues is hopeless. But they are wrong that it is all her fault. Given the nature of the EU, it was foreseeable that something like this – whether on Northern Ireland or on some other aspect of Brexit – would happen to any British Government which tried to leave without fully leaving.

Some people, indeed, foresaw it. It is time to pay tribute to the group usually referred to as “the headbangers” – the European Research Group (ERG), those whom Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC this week called the “grumpy Brexiteers”. People should do this whether or not they share their views on Brexit, simply because the headbangers understand much better than Mrs May how the EU works.

First, the headbangers understand the big stuff. They know that the EU is a political project. That is why it is utterly inflexible about the customs union and the single market: what is at stake here is not primarily commercial advantage, but the sacred principle of European integration. It is why it insists that the European Court of Justice must be supreme judge of the rights of EU citizens in post-brexit Britain.

It is this EU principle, not any British one, which demands that post-brexit tariffs be enforced on goods that cross the North-south land border. Seeing the need to shift blame on this point, the EU brilliantly thought of the Good Friday Agreement (which has almost nothing to say about borders) and posed as its defender. Suddenly, it made it look as if it was the arrogant British who wanted a hard border. On this issue, however, the British are not arrogant, but supine. In December, Mrs May gave in completely, until half-prevented by the Democratic Unionists.

Knowing what they knew, after years of struggle stretching back to the Eighties, the headbangers understood that the EU would never allow us a Brexit deal which placed us half-in, half-out of its structures, unless on terms disadvantageous to us. We would never be allowed “cherry-picking”, unless the cherries we could pick were sour and prohibitively expensive. The “deep and special partnership” of Mrs May’s dreams would never be in the interests of Brussels believers in the European ideal. It is her dream – because she had never wanted to leave in the first place – but not theirs, and not that of those who voted Leave. The headbangers wanted no special relationship with Europe, just the normal civilities of neighbours trading freely with one another.

The headbangers were therefore highly sceptical of the premises and sequencing of the negotiations, and are being proved more right with every week that passes. They also furnished, and continue to furnish, practical suggestions about the detailed areas of Brexit policy. John Redwood is good on the financial contribution, Iain Duncan Smith on the immigration and welfare aspects, Owen Paterson on agriculture and fisheries, environment and Northern Ireland, and dear old everlasting Sir William Cash on the legal and parliamentary bits. The ERG has recently produced, for example, a report on how to facilitate Northsouth Irish trade with existing techniques and existing processes under existing law. Downing Street cold-shoulders it, of course.

And it wasn’t just the Eurosceptic old stagers who called the situation right. Brave younger people, eager to bang their heads just as hard against the Great Wall of Brussels, also stepped forward: Steve Baker to organise everything; Jacob Rees-mogg to give it a fruity, articulate voice. As a whole, they have been the most numerous, tenacious and well-informed parliamentary faction in modern times.

If anything, the “hard” Brexiteers have been too polite. Lots of them accepted office in Mrs May’s government, scarcely an unprincipled thing to do given her promise to the electors in 2017 that full Brexit – control of our borders, money, trade, laws – would be accomplished. It soon became clear, however, that they were in government only to be silenced or sidelined. Boris Johnson was excluded from the Brexit process, as was Michael Gove. David Davis was appointed to preside over it, but in practice was not allowed to. Dominic Raab is now the most important one inside the system. Because he arrived shortly before Mrs May’s plans began to unravel, he may be in a stronger position to benefit from it than his earlier colleagues above.

My point about the headbangers is a psychological one. They know what they want. In this they resemble – though on the other side of the fence – the Barniers, Junckers and Verhofstadts. With them, there is none of Mrs May’s begging for mercy. Of course, they would like a wide-ranging free-trade deal (such as “Super Canada”), but they are not trembling at the thought of not getting one. For them, “no deal” is not a black hole, but, to coin a phrase, a “backstop”.

Brexit is often compared to a divorce. Once attempts at reconciliation have failed, few divorces improve by being dragged out. Without the money settled, the children looked after or the property apportioned, the next bit of life cannot begin. Poor Mrs May is like an indecisive wife with a bad divorce lawyer. She hums I Will Survive, but doesn’t quite believe it.

“No deal” – better described as WTO terms – is uncomfortably abrupt, but is also a way of settling the matter without either side having to concede a point of principle. In this space yesterday, Fraser Nelson set out brilliantly what good policy following “no deal” might be. Good psychology is equally important. If Britain and the EU really and truly part, they will afterwards respect one another more than if they struggle on in a dead-end relationship. This is what the shaming spectacle of the present negotiations is telling us. There are other fish in the sea and, if we leave, we shall at last be allowed to catch them.

No, I shan’t see you on the People’s Vote march today. The people have already voted. How long before the politicians catch up with them?