The one fatal outcome would be Brexit as an EU rule taker

Ever since Napoleon Bonaparte was emperor of France it has been a core principle of British foreign policy to prevent a coalition of Continental European nations being lined up against us. Over the years we have practised a policy of “divide and survive” and, indeed, shed blood and treasure to secure it.

Last Wednesday in Salzburg we succumbed to precisely that fate.

It will be for historians to judge how we have arrived at this position.

David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, is almost certainly right that EU deals are only concluded at the eleventh hour. I voted to Remain at the referendum, but not for any great love of the EU. As a minister in the Nineties and again between 2010-2012 I found the EU bureaucratic and undemocratic.

I hoped that over a generation, British influence in securing sensible reforms would grow and believed that the problems facing us in the future – migration, climate change, pandemics, protectionism, terrorism – all require less narrow nationalism and more international co-operation if they are to be successfully confronted.

I have never known a time of such deep division in the Conservative Party.

I was a whip throughout John Major’s Maastricht negotiations in 1992-93. Night after night we secured the narrowest of victories in the division lobbies as the Tory Party tore itself apart and was subsequently destroyed in the worst defeat for generations in 1997.

I lost my seat. Today the position is far, far worse.

So what is to be done? The Government will propose and the Commons, as the elected chamber in a parliamentary democracy, will decide. But the Government itself is in an extraordinarily weak position. The House of Commons is increasingly aware that power, especially on European matters, resides on its benches and not in No10.

We are now likely to face a choice between the Prime Minister’s plan and leaving with no comprehensive deal at all. The Chequers proposals were welcomed at least in answering the European Union’s increasingly frustrated question: “What do you Brits actually want?” It was put together by the Civil Service and imposed, humiliatingly, on the Cabinet (“If you don’t like it you can walk home”) as the least worst common denominator.

The Prime Minister shows courage in stubbornly defending it as the only practical solution. But it is far from clear that the House of Commons will accept it.

Increasingly attractive to colleagues is the “Canada plus plus” scheme championed by the former Brexit secretary. This proposal must at least be worked up so that the “pluses” are properly fleshed out.

However, following Salzburg, no-deal has become increasingly likely, notwithstanding its uncertainties and dangers.

Even the birds in the trees know that the Conservative Party leadership is now in play, but no responsible colleague could possibly propose a change of leadership at such a critical juncture in this national crisis.

Finally, remember this: the one solution that would be fatal for British politics is for the UK to leave in any substantial way as a rule taker.

The day after we left those of a Remain disposition would argue that we had achieved the worst possible result, and start a campaign to make us a rule maker again.

Brexiteers would argue that we have not really left and would continue to campaign to do so. Leaving the European Union as a rule taker is a recipe for misery, division and on-going feuding which would truly deliver for Britain the worst of all worlds and the humiliating failure of the momentous changes set in train by the result of our referendum.

Andrew Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield, was the Government’s chief whip until 2012.

‘No really responsible colleague could propose a change of leadership at such a critical juncture in this national crisis’