Boris: Cabinet must stage a mutiny
The PM’S plan to make us the ‘punk’ of Brussels is a recipe for endless strife in our country
THERESA MAY’S Brexit plans will force Britain to “remain in captivity”, Boris Johnson warns today, adding that the Cabinet should stage a mutiny.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the former foreign secretary says the Prime Minister is “on the verge of total surrender” to Brussels and that her plans are “a recipe for continued strife”.
Urging people to “savour the full horror of this capitulation”, he says Mrs May’s plans for a customs union backstop are “shameful” and cannot be “conceivably” supported by any of her Cabinet. It came as Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers warned Mrs May that she will “feed the narrative of betrayal” and be defeated in Parliament if the UK is “trapped” in a customs union after
Brexit.
Over the weekend, the EU rejected the Prime Minister’s plan for an “independent mechanism” that would enable Britain to break off temporary customs arrangements with Brussels after Brexit. The deadlock will increase pressure on the Prime Minister at Cabinet tomorrow, where a final decision on her Brexit plans is now likely to be delayed while negotiations with the EU continue.
It leaves Mrs May struggling to secure a November summit with European leaders to sign off her plans, increasing the risk that Britain will leave without a deal. Mr Johnson’s intervention comes after the resignation last week of his brother, Jo, who said the Prime Minister’s handling of Brexit represented a “failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis”.
Downing Street is braced for further resignations, with suggestions that four ministers who backed Remain could quit.
The former foreign secretary says that the backstop, which will keep Britain in a customs union with Brussels if no solution to the Irish border issue can be found, is worse than being in the EU.
He says: “I want you to savour the full horror of this capitulation. Under Article 50, the UK is at least able in theory to leave the EU. We do not have to consult any other authority. But under these proposals we are agreeing that the EU would have a say on whether this country is capable of making that final exit from the EU’S essential institution, the customs union.
“In other words, we are on the verge of signing up for something even worse than the current constitutional position. These are terms that might be enforced on a colony.”
He adds that “no member of the Government” should be able to support the backstop, but suggests that even if they rebel and secure the right to a “unilateral” break with the EU, it will be meaningless.
He says: “The awful truth is that even if the Cabinet mutinies – as they ought – it will make little difference.
“Even if we agree with the EU that the UK must have a unilateral break clause, so that we can go our own sweet way at a time of our own choosing, it is irrelevant because the programme and ambition of the Government is to remain in captivity, to stay in our cell, even if we are given the theoretical key to escape.”
He says that the Prime Minister will attempt to “bludgeon MPS into voting for surrender” by accepting her plans or the “chaos of no deal”, describing her approach as a “scare tactic”. Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, yesterday said any arrangement which gave the EU the power to stop Britain leaving the customs union would be voted down by MPS.
In Cabinet last week Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, told the Prime Minister that the failure to give voters a “definitive end point” to Brexit would “feed the narrative of betrayal”.
Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, warned that the customs backstop could be “harder to exit than the EU itself” because Britain will not have a unilateral right to leave.
‘The ambition of the Government is to remain in captivity even if we are given the key to escape’
Ireally can’t believe it but this Government seems to be on the verge of total surrender. With every day that passes we seem to be getting more craven. We have already agreed to hand over £39 billion for nothing – and certainly not a trade deal – in return. We have agreed to become the punk of Brussels, signing up not just to their existing rule book but to huge chunks of future regulation – even though we will have no say in drafting that legislation. We have agreed against all promises that the European Court of Justice will have a say in enforcing that regulation in the UK.
We have been so feeble in our preparations to leave the EU on WTO terms, and so unnaturally terrified of the consequences (greatly exaggerated by the scaremongers) that we have now said we will remain in the so-called customs union. Which means that our trade policy will be run by Brussels at least until 2022, and – at this rate – long beyond that date. We will not be able to do free trade deals of any great value. We will not be able to take back control of our tariffs, our borders, our money, our laws. It is not even clear whether we will be able to set our own VAT rates – and yet we will have no one round the table to argue the UK case.
As my brother Joseph rightly said when he resigned last week, we are already looking at the biggest failure of British statecraft since Suez. And it seems that the Prime Minister would like to go one better. She has recommended to the Cabinet not only that we agree to stay in the customs union under the so-called “backstop” arrangement, but that we actually abdicate the power to leave that backstop.
Under the shameful proposals now before Cabinet, it will be up to some joint UK/EU committee, or some “independent arbitration mechanism” to decide whether the UK – an ancient and sovereign nation – is finally allowed to come out, to run its own trade policy and set its own tariffs. And most incredibly of all, the whole process will be justiciable by the European Court of Justice – yes, that court that we were all told would cease to have any say in this country.
I want you to savour the full horror of this capitulation. Under Article 50, the UK is at least able in theory to leave the EU. We do not have to consult any other authority. But under these proposals we are agreeing that the EU would have a say on whether this country is capable of making that final exit from the EU’S essential institution, the customs union. In other words, we are on the verge of signing up for something even worse than the current constitutional position. These are terms that might be enforced on a colony.
No member of the Government, let alone the Cabinet, could conceivably support them, or so you would have thought. And yet the awful truth is that even if the Cabinet mutinies – as they ought – it will make little difference. Even if we agree with the EU that the UK must have a unilateral break clause, so that we can go our own sweet way at a time of our choosing, it is irrelevant: because the programme and ambition of the Government – as set out at Chequers and never yet repudiated by the Prime Minister – is to remain in captivity: to stay in our cell, even if we are given the theoretical key to escape.
On the present plans we will be a vassal state, and in the customs union, until such time as our EU partners may feel moved to enter into fresh negotiations on a trade deal. It is frankly hard to see why they should. The fifth biggest economy in the world is already voluntarily becoming their satellite – a handy and subservient market for their goods. They are trousering the £39 billion. And they are looking at a British Government that would seem willing to agree to sign virtually any treaty, if only the whole business would go away.
The so-called Chequers proposals are in truth very far from dead. The essence of the idea – that the UK should remain in the customs union and the single market for goods and agri-food – is what the backstop entails. And you can be absolutely sure that this idea will be at the heart of the “deal” that I have no doubt the Prime Minister will shortly and magically secure.
She will delay for as long as she reasonably can, and then she will say that unless MPS sign up to this surrender, we will have the chaos of “no deal”. As a scare tactic, it is infamous. The Government has deliberately and flagrantly failed to prepare the UK to walk away from the talks, the better to be able to bludgeon MPS into voting for surrender. As a scare tactic, it is also false: yes, there might be some temporary effects, but as with the Millennium Bug I do not think the planes would fall from the sky or that medicines would have to rationed, or any of the other nonsense. And it is also false as a pair of alternatives.
There is a much, much better way forward for this country – sketched out repeatedly by myself and many others: we get rid of the backstop; we agree with the EU, the Irish and the Commission that there is no need for a hard border in Ireland; and we get on with a Supercanada free trade deal.
As Jo Johnson rightly points out, the current approach is the worst of both worlds. Remainers will be able to make the powerful point that under the PM’S plan we will lose control, and that one way to regain it would be to send ministers back to Brussels and take back control by rejoining the EU. Those who want to leave will pull in the opposite direction, furious that the task has been so badly botched.
It is, in other words, a recipe for continued strife, both in the Tory party and in the country. This deal, when it comes, must be thrown out wholesale. It is not too late to do better – and the country deserves it.
‘The fifth biggest economy is voluntarily becoming the EU’S satellite – a subservient market for their goods’