Cabinet Leavers must use their influence

The Government’s draft Withdrawal Agreement is deeply flawed and, if the Prime Minister wants to squeeze it through the Commons, it will surely have to change. One option is to disregard the Brexit rebels and make common cause with Labour. That would be a recipe for disaster. Labour wants a perpetual customs union, which is not a million miles from the open-ended customs arrangement found in the withdrawal deal – and thus one can see the grounds for a grand compromise between the two positions that would leave the UK following the EU’S rules indefinitely. Brexiteers have to stop this from happening: two paths are open to them.

One is a vote of no confidence in Theresa May, which would be an almighty gamble. Assuming that her critics get the 48 votes they need to spark a challenge, it remains likely that she’ll win and risks leaving her in post for at least 12 months. There might well be something honourable about publicly taking on the Prime Minister in this manner – to act in the open and with principle – but it’s fraught with dangers that could have unintended consequences for both sides.

The very fact that the Prime Minister has faced a challenge could weaken her authority, and just 48 votes against her would presumably translate into 48 votes against the withdrawal deal – an important figure. The Conservative Party has 315 seats in the Commons and is kept in power by the DUP’S 10. The Prime Minister needs around 320 votes to pass the withdrawal deal.

At present, it looks as if she can already wave goodbye to the DUP’S support and perhaps a few die-hard Tory Remainers. If there are just 48 MPS willing to sign letters of no confidence then by that number alone, the Government is already over 50 votes behind on what it needs – and some of the Scottish Tories could push that figure even higher if they stage a rebellion over fishing.

How does Mrs May propose to make up the difference? Even if she mends all her fences with the DUP and the Scottish MPS, even if she wins over a few Labour Leavers, she will still be short. And those are the circumstances under which she might make a devil’s bargain with Jeremy Corbyn.

Hence, the decision of some Brexiteers to remain within the Cabinet and rewrite the deal contains logic – so long as they really do put their influence to good use.

There’s a lot of work to do. At present, the draft agreement offers too much taxpayer money for too little, risks trapping Britain in an open-ended customs union arrangement, can bind Northern Ireland to a deeper regulatory relationship with the EU than the rest of the country, and could be difficult to quit unless the EU permits us to go – and why should Brussels be nice to us? Yes, this draft only covers the transition, not a future trade deal, but it gives the EU a competitive advantage during that transition and every reason to cling on to it for as long as possible.

As for the arbitration of any disputes, a fiveperson panel can be called upon to help, but the bulk of the agreement is covered by EU law and that requires reference to the dreaded European Court of Justice. Leaving the ECJ was one of the primary reasons for the Brexit vote, and yet under the terms of this draft it could retain a powerful role. Carl Baudenbacher, the former president of the European Free Trade Association court, said: “It is absolutely unbelievable that a country like the UK, which was the first country to accept independent courts, would subject itself to this.”

Correcting all these errors has to be the priority for Brexiteers inside Government, and they must argue their case forcefully. At some point in the future, each minister will have to answer the question: “What did you do during the Brexit crisis, daddy?” Steve Baker has implied that no Tory who backs the Withdrawal Agreement will be considered sufficiently pro-brexit to win a leadership contest, and certainly to support it in its current form could look like a betrayal of principle. There is thus no personal advantage in standing by, but, more importantly, it could prove disastrous, too, for the country, for Brexit and for the Tory party.

As for Mrs May, if she does face a confidence vote and does survive it, she must know that this will only offer a temporary illusion of stability. The vote that really counts is the substantive one on the deal itself – and she would do much, much better to get a good withdrawal deal passed with the support of pro-brexit MPS than to force any damaging compromise through as part of a grand coalition of MPS who, by-and-large, actually want to see Brexit stopped. The withdrawal draft currently looks like the kind of deal that a Remainer would come back from Brussels with – happy because it leaves us so tightly bound to the Continent. As it presently stands, it risks being a betrayal of the referendum result.

A vote of no confidence in Mrs May is fraught with dangers that could have unintended consequences

There’s a lot of work to do. The agreement risks trapping Britain in an openended customs arrangement