Time for a truce in Brexit’s trench war

AT THE end of a depressing week in which our political discourse descended into a dialogue of the deaf, there were signs yesterday that a few green shoots of compromise may be emerging from the Westminster morass.

Although birdsong hasn’t exactly returned to the Brexit battlefield, these tiny sprigs give an indication of what common sense and calm reason could eventually yield.

And they came from most unlikely – and previously barren – sources.

Firstly, no less a figure than Jacob Rees-Mogg, arch Eurosceptic and front man for the European Research Group of Tory hard Brexiteers, actually conceded that Theresa May’s deal is not the worst option available.

In normal circumstances, this would have been a statement of the blindingly obvious. But not in these febrile times.

From such a purist – and one who has been so scathing about Mrs May’s approach – it represented a significant concession.

By saying that the May proposal was preferable to remaining in the EU and – crucially – that he’d vote for it if forced to choose between the two, Mr Rees-Mogg was recognising an uncomfortable truth.

No-one in this imbroglio is going to get precisely the Brexit they want, and only an injection of pragmatism from all sides can bring any viable solution.

There were more signals that the penny is beginning to drop in Europe, too. Dieter Kempf, head of the German Federation of Industry, urged the EU to give ground, saying a no-deal Brexit is ‘dangerously close’.

With 750,000 German jobs dependent on trade with the UK, he warned: ‘Our companies are staring into the abyss.’

If calamity is to be avoided, Brussels negotiators must be less rigid, especially on the Northern Irish backstop.

Unless that conundrum is solved, hope of a settlement is vanishingly slim.

Westminster politicians meanwhile, continue to treat the crisis as some sort of game. Several Cabinet ministers (all of whom should know better) engaged in a pointless Twitter spat over whether no deal was better than no Brexit.

And former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, in a naked bid to boost his own leadership chances, condemned Mrs May for failing to remove the backstop, and being too quick to agree to the £39billion ‘divorce payment’.

Do these people not realise how vain and foolish these bickering Tories look to an increasingly despairing public? It’s not only Brexit they are endangering but the very survival of their own party.

Then there’s Labour – even more riven and shambolic than the Government (and that really is saying something)...

Jeremy Corbyn is viscerally Eurosceptic, while most of his backbenchers are desperate to stay closely tied to the EU. He has no authority and no strategy, beyond pleading for a general election.

Almost every day, Labour MPs come up with new motions designed to scupper the possibility of no deal. But what’s their plan to obviate that outcome? Answer: they don’t have one.

So, like a cracked record, we must return to the simple truth. There is only one deal that delivers Brexit and avoids the economic demons that crashing out would unleash. That, of course, is Mrs May’s deal.

Rejecting it makes either no deal or no genuine Brexit almost inevitable.

And if there is to be any end to this fiasco, ERG purists, diehard Remainers, Labour wreckers and Brussels stonewallers must all face these facts.

So instead of endlessly telling us what they can’t accept, they must work out what they can. Rather than simply hurling grenades at each other, it’s time they ventured out from their trenches to seek an honourable truce.