Labour has no right to carp on Ireland issue

It is the prerogative of opposition parties to duck the difficult questions a government is required to answer. But on the issue of the day, Brexit, the Labour Party’s evasiveness and policy confusion have gone far beyond the cut and thrust of normal politics.

In the Commons yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn denounced the state of the Brexit negotiations as a “shambles” following the Prime Minister’s failure to move the talks forward in Brussels on Monday. The issue on which a possible deal foundered was how regulations would apply on the island of Ireland when the border between north and south becomes a land frontier between the

UK and the EU.

The Prime Minister’s proposals for dealing with this have alarmed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has a pact with the Tories to give Mrs May a working Commons majority, and its concerns need to be allayed if progress is to be made. However, the Irish government, which thought it had an agreed text with London, is unhappy at the prospect of any changes.

The dispute has highlighted the central dilemma facing Mrs May: how to leave the EU single market and the customs union while ensuring there is no “hard border” in Ireland and at the same time preserving the integrity of the UK. Brexiteers fear her answer to that conundrum will negate the trade advantages of leaving and are suspicious of recent developments. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, made clear yesterday that the “end state” sought by the Government has not yet been discussed by the Cabinet and won’t be until the EU agrees to move on to the next stage of negotiations, which requires the DUP to come on board.

Squaring this particular circle will be difficult; and Labour cannot be allowed to get away with pretending it is easy, since the party would need to provide answers too, if it were in office. The official party policy appears to be that, after a transition period, the UK would leave the single market and the customs union. So how would they resolve the Irish question?

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, takes a diametrically opposed view to what should happen from the positions previously adopted by the party leader and John Mcdonnell, the shadow chancellor. Labour has shifted ground on this subject more often than the Vicar of Bray, though the party makes his contortions of principle look positively straightforward by comparison.