Time for Theresa to drop Dirty Harry tough talking to secure Brexit deal

FACEBOOK is the parish pump of human misery. A social network for finding old school pals and posting snaps of the grandchildren’s Crayola masterpieces has morphed into a timeline of tribulations.

On Thursday, a Strasbourg-based chum announced that a gunman had just opened fire on the city’s Christmas market. An hour later, an ex-colleague informed us that he had been hospitalised with a serious infection.

Soon afterwards, a friend uploaded a picture of a letter he had received from HMRC. To my surprise, this proved to be the most troubling post of the three.

This entrepreneur owns a small firm and the Revenue had written to advise him of the steps he and his clients would have to take in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Sharply visible amid the thickets of jargon were the thorns of further red tape, even more paperwork and bluntly worded new legal obligations.

These measures would feast on companies’ time and resources, swallowing a chunk out of their bottom line. For those already struggling, as so many of our small businesses are, under swingeing taxes and demanding overheads, this could deliver the death blow.

Hardships

My friend voted Remain but accepted the will of the majority. Now, some of his clients faced exactly the sort of hardships he had foreseen when he rejected Brexit at the ballot box.

And what were Conservative MPs doing? Instead of working to avert catastrophe, they were touring the TV studios, preening and posturing, sticking the boot into the Prime Minister and setting out their stall for a future leadership contest. For the first time, my friend wondered if a second referendum was such a bad idea.

That is where the intemperate antics of the past week have led – small businesses fearing for the future, Middle Britain finding no reassurance from the Tories, and people decidedly not ‘Remoaners’ starting to see the appeal of a ‘People’s Vote’.

The withdrawal agreement secured by the Prime Minister is not perfect, something Mrs May herself has acknowledged. The Irish backstop is a worst-case scenario measure but, given the turn of world politics in recent years, that does not make it an unlikely one.

Any differential treatment for Northern Ireland could imperil the Union, not least in Scotland, where the SNP would claim Northern Ireland’s alignment to the EU single market gave Ulster firms an unfair advantage over Scottish competitors.

It is incumbent on Mrs May to convince her European interlocutors of the need for tweaking the backstop arrangement. Without changes, it will not pass the House of Commons. If the Prime Minister can secure binding undertakings from Brussels about the temporary nature of the backstop, it is incumbent on MPs to back her and vote through her deal.

To head off the inevitable griping from Bute House, the Prime Minister could even consider using Corporation Tax powers (reserved to Westminster) to set a lower rate for Scotland during the transition period. This would more than offset any edge Ulster businesses gained from operating under the backstop.

For now, it seems a compromise will not be forthcoming, meaning the UK will crash out of the EU next March with no deal and no safety net. That would be the worst of all possible worlds and could visit significant harm on the UK economy. Forget breezy talk of walking away and not paying Brussels a penny. That kind of rhetoric is as dangerous and dishonest as it was when Alex Salmond pioneered it during the independence referendum.

There is one final roll of the dice left to the Prime Minister, and it is a gamble indeed. There is no majority in the Commons for a hard Brexit but there may be for a softer departure from the EU. Mrs May could drop what she’s been saying for the past two years, all that Dirty Harry tough talk, and craft a Norway-style deal in which the UK leaves the European Union but remains in the single market, upholding the referendum outcome without vandalising our economic system.

The UK could achieve this by joining Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in the European Economic Area, which would grant the UK (and crucially UK financial services) access to the single market.

There are disadvantages: EEA countries not signed up to the EU still have to abide by most of the rules, yet are denied a vote when those rules are being drawn up. This includes free movement of people, limiting the UK’s ability to control immigration, unless the Prime Minister could convince Brussels to compromise – for example, paying for bespoke market access that allowed the UK to operate free movement zones in certain parts of the country but not others.

Hostility

That would be a hard sell to the EU but Brussels’ scepticism would be nothing compared to hostility from Tory backbenchers. Yet here Mrs May has a trump card. Her victory in the confidence vote means she is shielded for a year from further attempts on her leadership.

This grammar school girl no longer needs to dance to the tune of the public school boys behind her. She can set out a framework for a softer Brexit more palatable to Labour backbenchers, who know the alternative to Mrs May is Boris Johnson and the most hard, chaotic Brexit.

The SNP would be painted into a corner by Nicola Sturgeon’s repeated calls for the Prime Minister to keep the UK in the single market. Downing Street can hardly be showing disrespect to Scotland by doing what Miss Sturgeon wants.

There are no ideal scenarios. Brexit is coming our way at 100mph and it falls to Mrs May – who has shown extraordinary stamina, not least for a sufferer of Type 1 diabetes – to apply the brakes and avert a collision. This is an endeavour of national import and petty bickering and personal ambitions must be set aside.

MPs who can’t do that are putting themselves before the nation and prizing fantasy over common sense. Soon not just Facebook but the whole country will hold them in contempt.