Austin Mitchell

ALL the pompous complaints about President Trump’s interference in our politics can’t conceal the fact that he was right. Our efforts to fulfil the people’s will and get out of the European Union have been a model of incompetence; more Whitehall farce than demonstration of the art of the deal.

Britain’s performance since the electorate voted to come out of the EU, the lack of foresight or planning, the weakness of the Government, the splits in the parties and the clamour of fear from the vested interests makes one wonder whether our political system is any longer fit for purpose.

It’s as if Britain, a once-proud nation, has become so weak it can neither pay its way in the world outside Europe nor succeed in a European Union created to protect the industrial interests of Germany and the agricultural interests of France.

As if our business community has become so desperate from years of failure that it can’t envisage reaching back to the global markets it once served. And as if an elective dictatorship, a government once all powerful, can’t today negotiate a pig out of an insalubrious poke.

The pickle we are in has given rise to predictable new demands — led by the Tories’ former Education Secretary Justine Greening — for a second referendum. She and fellow Remainers hope the lamentable state of the negotiations will convince the 17.4 million who voted to leave Europe of the errors of their ways.

I wouldn’t be so sure. The public just want us to get on with Brexit. They are angry over Europe’s bullying, and bored rigid by a political class that’s not just incompetent, but utterly self-centred.

Demands

Instead of starting tough and making firm demands, we’ve faffed about and argued among ourselves about whether we want a strong Brexit, a soft Brexit or an invisible Brexit — when it’s not our decision to make.

It can only emerge as a result of our negotiations with an obdurate and obstinate EU. We’ve been too intimidated by Remainers who’ve undermined our negotiating position, worked in collusion with Brussels to create difficulties, and unleashed an exaggerated campaign of fear and disaster.

Instead of going in strong, making our demands and preparing the fallback position every negotiation needs, we’ve gone in on our knees, pleading so pathetically the EU has forced us into a cage, demanding concessions on money, citizenship and the Northern Ireland border (to suit them, not us) before they’ll even discuss the real issues.

They’ve consistently accused us of not having any clear proposals while rejecting every proposal that comes up and threatening to exclude us from every project we’ve already paid through the nose for.

The EU has nothing to learn from Trump on negotiating.

Perhaps Theresa May is a political genius who planned all this to get a deal that is acceptable to the timorous.

Perhaps she’s a slow decider who takes time (a year and a half) to make her mind up.

Perhaps she’s been terrified by the warnings of doom and disaster and the special pleading by every interest group that might be affected by Brexit, and so many that won’t.

I can’t guess what lies behind her reasoning. But the end result, clever or accidental, is that she’s sidelined the Brexiteers in Cabinet and forced the resignation of their leaders.

She stopped David Davis, her negotiator, from negotiating by transferring power to a Civil Service ever ready to compromise with anyone — particularly Europeans — to gain ‘goodwill’ rather than defend the national interest.

She forced the Cabinet to either accept a dog’s breakfast so pathetic no dog would sniff it — or let their nightmare, Comrade Corbyn, into power.

So after the Chequers debacle we end up starting the real negotiations as supplicants, begging for crumbs, rather than demanding what the electorate wants.

The position set out in the Chequers plan won’t be the final settlement. It can’t be because it has yet to go through the EU mangle.

The EU is held together by rules. It will fall apart if they’re broken. It’s already crumbling with the refugee problem and the inability to make an unworkable euro work for other countries besides Germany. The EU is desperate to humiliate us ‘ pour decourager les

autres’, as France’s President Macron might put it.

The result is the EU can’t negotiate rationally or reasonably and is determined to impose its sacred ‘ four freedoms’ on us — free movement of goods, services, capital and people.

They’ll try to pare down our pathetic supplication to turn us into an EU colony bound by their rules rather than an independent nation controlling its own destinies. Regulation without representation. The only way to salvage anything from such a humiliation is to tie Mrs May down to her own proposals as the Brexiteers are doing and to insist our two basic needs, control of EU migration and total freedom to make trade deals with other countries, must be conceded in full.

Getting both will rescue something from the wreckage and give us a base for a more gradual separation, but we’ll get them only if Theresa is as tough with the EU as she has been with her own party.

So far, she’s shown no inclination for that. So far, our national civil war over Brexit has given game and set to the resisting Remainers. It encouraged their yesterday’s men to come up with the idea of making it match, too, by demanding a new referendum.

Power

This ‘ people’s vote’ is their soft way out of the dilemma of a nation they see as too pathetic to solve its own problems. Their argument is that the politicians, the parties and Parliament can’t do what the electorate wants. So give power back to the people in the hope that they’ll change their minds and stay in the affectionate embrace of the EU.

Isn’t it ironic that these people who opposed the first referendum now want a second?

And that the very individuals who’ve been claiming the Leave majority were ignorant, racist, xenophobic, or manipulated by lies or by Russia, Cambridge Analytica and perhaps Disraeli from the grave, are now keen to return power to the peasants?

Their hope is clearly that the nation is so fed up with the whole business that national pride will collapse into apathy.

What seems to have escaped them, though, is the possibility that a nation whose people remain proud of their country — even if the elite isn’t — is so fed up with being messed about by an arrogant, inflexible EU that it won’t vote for humiliation and a return to subjugation.

Bullying

Think what a second referendum would be about.

In the unlikely event that Theresa May wins a deal on the basis of the Chequers proposal, people will be asked to vote on whether they want a watereddown Brexit that is far less than they demanded in the original referendum.

If in negotiations the EU dilutes the Chequers proposal, they’ll be voting on whether Britain should be given colonial status by the EU, subjected to its laws but unable to influence them.

There is a very real possibility that a British electorate, infuriated by EU bullying and Remainer intransigence, could reject both options. Then we would be left with the ‘no deal Brexit’ everyone fears.

Is that really what Justine Greening and her crew want?

The EU has long refused to allow the democratic wishes of electorates to stand in its way. It ignored the referendum result in Greece in 2015, when people voted against the severe austerity package being forced on them by the EU. It has vetoed votes in Ireland, France and Sweden, requiring their electorates to vote again so their electors can stand on their heads and ask pardon for disobeying Brussels.

But Britons are different. We tend to believe the man in Brussels isn’t always right.

And the truth is that Remainers could get the shock of their lives if they are successful in their demands for a second referendum.