Can Labour again save Tory PM from Eurosceptic rebels?
How ironic that possibly the greatest obstacle to Britain achieving a sensible exit from the EU is that group of 60 Tory MPs who last week ganged up to oppose Theresa May’s repeated insistence that we must remain “within” the EU single market. According to a report on they believe that to stay in the single market would be “virtually the same as remaining in the EU”, still subject to “virtually all its laws”.
So blind are these hardline Brexiteers to the practical realities of what we are up against that they seem not to realise that, by leaving the EU but remaining free to trade in the single market as members of the wider European Economic Area (EEA), we would in fact be subject to only 5,288 of the 19,868 EU laws in force. Far from having to obey “virtually all” the EU’s laws, we would escape almost three quarters of them, leaving only those that would give us the right to continue trading within the single market much as we do now. Any of the suggested alternatives would in one way or another be an economic disaster. Furthermore, we could hope to gain other advantages, including the right to exercise some control over immigration and no longer being subject to the European Court of Justice.
A further irony is that, if Parliament is given a vote and those 60 Tory MPs choose to oppose Mrs May’s wish to remain in the single market, she might be saved by all those Labour MPs, led by Jeremy Corbyn, who want us to stay in it. On October 28 1972, also faced with a backbench rebellion by Eurosceptic Tories, Edward Heath only won his crucial vote to take us into Europe with the aid of 69 Labour MPs, led by Roy Jenkins, who rebelled against their own party to support him. After Labour MPs helped overcome a rebellion to take us into Europe, it could be Labour MPs enabling Mrs May to survive a Tory rebellion over the best way to take us out.