Hand on heart, I’ll find a way to beat the backstop

EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General reveals plan to rescue Brexit and pledges . . .

THERE will be no fudge!’ Geoffrey Cox booms to me with conviction and passion, as well as a slight hint of desperation. Moments earlier the Attorney General had burst into his office, scarf trailing behind him, with the urgency of a Battle of Britain pilot returning from a mission, but already hungry for the next sortie.

Which, in a sense, is what he is. In a few hours he is leaving for Brussels for a set of talks described by a Cabinet colleague as ‘ the most important bilateral diplomatic negotiations since the Munich crisis’. But before he departs, ‘The AG’, as he is known, wants to make his case directly to the readers of The Mail on Sunday.

That morning – last Monday – a report had appeared claiming he had abandoned plans for a legally binding exit mechanism to the backstop, the blood-red line etched by Conservative Eurosceptics as the price for backing the Prime Minister’s Chequers deal.

The article implied Cox will be forced to massage the legal advice he presented to the Prime Minister on November 13 – warning she could be bound into a customs union ‘indefinitely’ – if he is to help her deal pass the Commons on Tuesday.

‘ I will not change my opinion unless I’m sure there is no legal risk of us being indefinitely detained in the backstop,’ he pledges. ‘I am putting my hand on my heart. I will not change my opinion unless we have a text that shows the risk has been eliminated. I would not put my name to anything less.’

As he does so, he leans intently forward on the edge of his green ministerial sofa, as if he feels he can force a deal through purely with his own strength of character.

But as Cox privately knows, strength of will is not going to be enough. Not least because his energies are split between placating two separate – but equally unyielding – forces.

FIRST he must convince the European Union to grant meaningful concessions. And, secondly, he must convince sceptical Tory MPs that those concessions have sufficient legal weight to withstand the challenge from an army of spurned Eurocrats.

On the second point, Cox is well aware that the European Research Group has established a ‘ Star Chamber’ of eight qualified lawyers – seven of them MPs – to pass their own legal judgment on his negotiating efforts. Yet he professes to be unfazed.

‘ I’m only too aware there are over 100 lawyers within a mile and a half of Westminster who will give an opinion on a deal,’ he jokes. But what he challenges with direct and deadly seriousness is any suggestion he would tweak his advice purely to help Theresa May secure a political solution to her Brexit crisis.

‘I have been a barrister for 36 years, and a senior politician for seven months,’ he insists. ‘My professional reputation is far more important to me than my reputation as a politician. If the risk of being trapped in the backstop had not been removed, then I would make it as clear and plain and in exactly the same way as I did on November 13.’

So what precisely is it he intends to wrest from the cold, dead hand of Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker, to save the day for the nation? On the detail of the negotiations, Cox is more circumspect. But it is an open secret in Westminster that he is pushing for an ‘arbitration mechanism’ that would enable Britain to leave the backstop at a time broadly of our own choosing.

This has been painted as a surrender by some hard-line Brexiteers, who want the backstop completely excised from the agreement. But Cox is adamant that the deal he is seeking will, in his words, ‘give us the unilateral right to trigger the process that would lead to our exit from the backstop’.

IFT HAT device is an arbitration mechanism, it would, he admits, give the EU the opportunity to appeal against Britain’s withdrawal. But he insists that, if the EU did try to bind us in bureaucratic chains, it would be easy to demonstrate negotiations had been exhausted. ‘It would be obvious by that point we had been going round in circles,’ he explains.

Even more importantly, any arbitration mechanism would dramatically alter the balance of power between UK and EU negotiators.

‘The key thing is the onus would be on them to prove we can’t leave. And they would have to try to do that even though we wouldn’t have evolved our positions in months. It’s the reason why some EU officials don’t like it – it works.’

But even if he can win approval for this plan from the EU, there is no guarantee it would be sufficient to placate Tory MPs convinced Brexit is being shunted into a Brussels siding.

Which is why he floats one tantalising prospect in front of the recalcitrant rebels.

‘If we did secure an arbitration mechanism, it could be triggered on the very first day we entered the backstop. That’s because the transition period would have already given two years for completion of negotiations.’

The backstop would not have been formally removed, but it would effectively have been neutered.

Before we can explore this possibility further, the door opens and a bark comes from the corridor. ‘Geoffrey, we have to go. Now!’

The AG is again being called into battle. The view in Westminster is that the odds are stacked against him. That his opponents – foreign and domestic – do not intend to yield. That Theresa May has finally run out of time to get her Brexit deal over the line.

But Geoffrey Cox has placed his hand on his heart and pledged to me he will do his duty. I believe him. I have no other choice.