‘Both Labour and the Conservatives will be plunged into turmoil if swathes of MPs defy their leaders’
IDON’T know if Mark Drakeford goes barefoot in his ministerial office, but he gave every impression of working his socks off in pursuit of a Brexit deal with the UK Government.
For months, the Finance Secretary beat a path to Whitehall for talks about what should happen to powers in devolved areas such as agriculture that are today held by Brussels when the UK leaves the European Union.
He would emerge from the Cabinet Office and, on a chilly pavement, give updates on the slog towards compromise and agreement.
The stakes were high for the different UK administrations. The Welsh and Scottish governments regarded the original EU Withdrawal Bill as nothing less than a “naked power grab” which would allow Westminster to set pan-UK rules in a host of areas.
For their part, the Conservatives wanted to ensure the UK didn’t dissolve into chaos in the wake of Brexit. If each nation started setting its own rules on animal health or food standards, it could suddenly become difficult to transport produce from Wales to Scotland or vice-versa.
The Welsh Government recognised the need to preserve a single market for the UK but wanted to do it in a way that would not undermine the devolution settlement. Last month it announced a deal had been done, the contentious clauses in the legislation would be rewritten and a host of commitments were made.
Welsh ministers didn’t present the outcome as an unadulterated triumph and the SNP Scottish Government didn’t sign up to the deal, yet it showed that Wales’ team had been sincere in their determination to both protect the settlement and avoid a constitutional crisis.
But then Jeremy Corbyn went to Scotland.
There, the Labour Party remains in a state of crisis. Instead of enjoying Welsh-style dominance of the devolved legislature, it has just 22 of the 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament, fewer than Ruth Davidson’s Tories.
Scottish Labour has decided that the changes to the EU Withdrawal Bill secured by their Welsh comrades do not go far enough. Today they are expected to join their SNP colleagues in voting to refuse consent to the Bill. The Labour family is split.
Mr Corbyn used his visit to Glasgow to declare he was “very happy” with this decision and stated there is “a power grab going on by Whitehall”, claiming the UK Government is “taking powers from Brussels that then ought to go to Scotland, Wales and English regions and instead hoarding them in Whitehall”.
He added: “That is unacceptable to us and we have made that very clear.”
There were no reports of loud shrieks heard in Mr Drakeford’s Cardiff West constituency, but it was hardly a vote of confidence in the deal he has worked for months to secure. In fact, it was the opposite.
A “power grab” is precisely what the agreement is intended to avoid.
This raises the question of how Labour MPs will be whipped when the Bill returns to the Commons from the Lords, where it has suffered a string of defeats. Mr Corbyn has certainly handed a giant box of ammunition to Plaid Cymru AMs, who will today accuse their Labour opposite numbers of selling out devolution when the Assembly debates whether to grant consent.
Mr Corbyn has seemed supremely relaxed about Labour in different parts of the UK pursuing different policies. He has spoken admiringly of Labour’s role in removing the internal market in the NHS in Wales.
But at a moment when nothing less than the arrangements for how the UK will function outside the EU are being decided, Mr Corbyn has undermined the Welsh Government while endorsing his MSPs’ plans to vote with the pro-independence SNP.
If such radical divergence on a critical issue regarding the future of the UK is tolerated, can the party leadership and the whips slap down parliamentarians who take different positions on Brexit?
Pontypridd MP Owen Smith was sacked from his role as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary when he made the case for a second referendum. But last week 83 Labour peers, including Lord Kinnock, rebelled and voted to keep the UK in the European Economic Area (EEA).
This would allow the UK to negotiate a Norwegian-style relationship with the EU. The former Labour leader warned that Mr Corbyn will be guilty of a “serious evasion of duty” unless Labour changes its stance on Brexit.
Now we have the spectacle of former leadership contender David Miliband standing on a platform with the Lib Dems’ Sir Nick Clegg and the Conservatives’ Nicky Morgan, calling for the UK to stay in the EEA.
Both Labour and the Conservative will be plunged into turmoil if swathes of MPs defy their leaders and back this option. The question is whether significant numbers of MPs who fear that leaving the EEA will devastate the communities they represent will decide this is a time to put loyalty to their constituents and their country before their party.
It would be an almost revolutionary moment in British politics if proEU MPs of all colours resolved to grab power themselves and defy their whips. Only certainty that the country faces a profound crisis would see MPs dispense with the tribalism so firmly entrenched in the Commons; rebels would face deselection and personal condemnation.
But just as Scottish Labour MSPs have looked at the deal agreed by their Welsh counterparts and decided it’s not for them, MPs who firmly believe the UK’s future prosperity (and Northern Ireland’s peace) depends on the closest possible relationship with the EU may shun the visions of Brexit preferred by Labour and Tory leaders and pursue a very different future.
And if they are searching for the precedent of someone who spent years rejecting the diktats of whips and following his convictions, even when that was a lonely thing to do, they may take a glance at veteran rebel Mr Corbyn’s example.