Steve Baker & Sammy Wilson:

The only plausible outline of a successful UK exit from the EU with a deal is obvious. It is the offer made by the EU, extended to the whole UK.

The deal offered would: ensure security cooperation and participation in institutions of research and innovation, culture and education; deal with potential absurdities like any threat to flights, data or the mutual recognition of our driving licences; and result in an advanced free trade agreement covering all sectors with zero tariffs, no quantitative restrictions and including services.

The obstacles to this deal are two-fold: the border with Ireland must be made invisible and compliant in all circumstances, and the Prime Minister must ask for it.

The solution to the present impasse is to table a stand-alone treaty on trade facilitation with Ireland. It would deliver an invisible, compliant border under WTO rules and it would be suitable for inclusion in the ultimate FTA as the Irish border protocol to the trade facilitation chapter.

Ireland would have a permanent, legally enforceable backstop, consistent with all parties’ commitment to no hard border under any circumstances.

The EU would have a mechanism within their existing law for ensuring the integrity of the single market under WTO rules or an FTA. The whole UK would leave together, into a situation of self-government. Unlike an Article 50-based backstop, the solution would be legally sure and therefore enduring.

Northern Ireland is on the front line of the EU and Ireland’s demands, and the wrong Brexit would have implications for all parts of the UK. In Scotland, Unionists making the sound economic case for remaining in the UK’s internal market would have to explain why there are barriers to their trade with Northern Ireland.

Without an independent trade policy, Unionists could not bolster the unity of our country with improved access to key Northern Irish and Scottish markets in the USA and elsewhere. We would continue to look to Brussels and not our own Parliament for policy.

And if the EU does steal away with the UK’s fish, what could the UK Government say to Scottish fishermen who rightly counted on the UK Government to deliver them a fair share of the UK’s fish, only to see it negotiated away for nothing? Unionist MPs in Scotland would pay the price.

The current debate on the backstop – or the backstop to the backstop – is one no independent state should be having with its neighbours. The EU is demanding either that we split our country as we leave or that we remain under the structures of power of the EU without a voice in how that power is used.

If the EU believes it is entitled to break apart or subjugate the UK, then it is an outrage. But for the UK Government to entertain acquiescence in such an outrage would be a humiliation and a gross insult to people who sacrificed themselves through history to keep power under the consent of the governed.

We do not wish to see “no deal” with our EU partners. We share the Prime Minister’s ambition for an EU free trade agreement, but not at any price and certainly not at the price of our Union. If the Government makes the historic mistake of prioritising placating the EU over establishing an independent and whole UK, then regrettably we must vote against the deal.

If Parliament is forced to reject the Government’s deal, then we will once again have called the bluff of vested interest lobbyists and Whitehall scaremongers. And again we will have made the right choice for our democracy and our Union.

Steve Baker was a Brexit minister until July 2018 and is deputy chairman of the European Research Group. Sammy Wilson is the DUP’s Brexit spokesman.

‘The current debate on the backstop – or the backstop to the backstop – is one no independent state should be having with its neighbours’