DUP’S ‘red line’ threat to bring down Government
Party will vote against Tories if Northern Ireland forced to stay in single market or customs union
THE DUP has warned it will bring down Theresa May’s Government if Northern Ireland is forced to stay in the single market or customs union after Brexit.
Nigel Dodds, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party at Westminster, said his party would vote against the Government if any of its “red lines” on Brexit are crossed.
Britain and the EU are deadlocked over how to ensure that there is no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit.
Mr Dodds told the Conservative Home website: “If, as a result of the Brexit negotiations, for instance, there was to be any suggestion that Northern Ireland would be treated differently in a way, for instance that we were part of a customs union and a single market and the rest of the UK wasn’t... for us that would be a red line, which we would vote against the Government.
“You might as well have a Corbyn government pursuing openly its antiunionist policies as have a Conservative Government doing it by a different means.”
It comes as Tory MPS will today hold a symbolic vote on keeping Britain in a customs union. Bob Neill, Nicky Morgan and Sarah Wollaston are among those backing the motion, which urges the Government to “include as an objective in negotiations... the establishment of an effective customs union”.
Ministers have said that the vote is “meaningless” because it is not binding. As a result, Tory MPS will not be whipped into attending the vote.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, yesterday said he would have personally “failed” if the UK has to stay in a customs union after Brexit.
He also suggested that the EU was posturing when it last week ruled out Britain’s solutions over the Irish border as he insisted Brussels was simply setting out “opening positions” for negotiations. He told the Brexit select committee: “I do not expect the solution to be an extension of the customs union. I would view that on my part as a failure.”
Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “With regards to being in a customs union, once you leave the European Union – if you stay in the customs union – you cannot negotiate your own free trade agreements.
“Genuinely, I cannot understand why anybody accepts leaving the EU but staying in the customs union. That’s the worst of all worlds.”
In the Commons, Mrs May said: “In voting to leave the European Union
‘You might as well have a Corbyn government pursuing openly its anti-unionist policies’
[British people] voted to leave the single market and the customs union.”
Mr Davis left open the possibility that Mrs May could be forced to return to Brussels to seek a new Brexit deal if MPS reject her original offer.
He admitted that a Commons resolution to approve the Brexit deal could be amended by MPS, amid concerns among Brexiteers that pro-european Tory MPS could join forces with Labour to keep Britain in the customs union.
Mr Davis told the Brexit select committee that the “meaningful vote” on a resolution to approve the Brexit deal could be amended. “If you can tell me how to write an unamendable motion, I will take a tutorial,” he said.
Mrs May delayed a Cabinet debate over Britain’s future relationship with the EU until next week. The Brexit war cabinet met yesterday but did not discuss the options for a customs relationship with the EU after Brexit.
Boris Johnson, David Davis, Michael Gove and Liam Fox are opposed to plans for a customs partnership, which would see Britain collect tariffs from imports on behalf of the EU. They believe it is unworkable and could see the UK stay in the customs union, limiting opportunities to make free-trade deals.
It is unlikely, when David Cameron called his referendum on EU membership, that he was aware of just how many gambles he was taking simultaneously. He was betting the house not just once, but at least four or five times, as we are only now finding out. He wasn’t merely hoping to crush the Euroscepticism that had overshadowed British politics since the late Eighties, or staking his career on the outcome, or even risking the election of our first hard-left, antiwestern prime minister. These, it turns out, were almost second-order bets compared with Mr Cameron’s real, existential roll of the dice.
Without understanding what he was doing, he was putting the British establishment to its greatest moral and practical test in decades. How would it cope with a Leave vote? Would it accept the verdict, and find it in itself to fight for the best possible exit for Britain? Would it implode in a morass of incompetence? Or would it go rogue, embrace a weird ultra-elitist identitydriven class war, and declare the end of the UK’S long and glorious experiment with democracy? And if it did embark on such a reckless course, what did it think the response from an already disillusioned public would be? A shrug, or something a little more robust?
It was a gigantic experiment and, 22 months on, we are still no clearer on the results. The chances of Brexit being stopped keep on rising, as a result of a lack of leadership, competence and commitment and the efforts of an extraordinary Remainer counter-offensive. If MPS, in a moment of madness, decide to keep us in the customs union, robbing us of much of the possible upside of Brexit, or if the Government decides that it will use the Irish question as the excuse to surrender, then all bets will be off.
Even a decade ago, there would have been little doubt that the British establishment would have gone along with the popular will, especially when expressed in such a stark way. Blairism, in its original incarnation and for all its terrible flaws, was democratic and populist. Today’s political culture has degenerated to such an extent that it may be that the Brexit vote came too late to save the establishment from itself. If so, it would threaten a fundamental truth about our political system.
Until now, Britain has brilliantly absorbed the big tidal waves of social, political and economic change: to many foreign observers, this ability to compromise, to internalise massive change while retaining our existing institutions, is the very essence of Britishness. The country has coped with religious change, the emergence of capitalism and democracy, industrialisation and the end of aristocratic power, the rise of socialism, decolonisation, world wars and the spread of globalisation with remarkable continuity, though the nonsense of the past few months reveals that our elites are finding it tougher to deal with the anticorporatist, anti-technocratic revolt.
The French find our remarkable ability to reinvent ourselves – our profound pragmatism – especially fascinating as they don’t function or think in this way. We don’t do proper, bloody revolutions that sweep everything away and reset the clock. For a variety of reasons, including luck and geography, we are Burkean, not Cartesian: we change to preserve, and from within. We have never had a Year Zero or suffered the trauma of occupation (at least not since 1066); in that sense, we share with the Swiss a long history of relative stability which makes us almost uniquely attractive to investors and free-thinkers.
Our elites have long been willing to refresh themselves by absorbing new members, be they from different social groups or overseas, a tradition the monarchy is continuing today. Until Brexit, our ruling class knew when to back down; it understood that it pays to compromise rather than resist beyond breaking point. Even when monarchs were removed, as during the Glorious Revolution, James II was replaced by William and Mary, not a president. The Cromwellian interlude didn’t last long, and there was a clear (but slow) downwards shift of political power and a spreading of prosperity.
Time and again, the British system was able to broker compromises. One of the most quintessential was the reform of the House of Lords in 1911: not quite everything changed, and certainly not appearances. Even our break with Rome led to the establishment of the Church of England, that most Catholic version of Protestantism. We didn’t embrace full communism after the Second World War, and it only took five years for Winston Churchill to return to power. Thatcherism was a compromise between real, radical capitalism and the welfare state; Blairism was sold as a means of smoothing over Thatcher’s rough edges.
Brexit needs to be approached as merely the latest such chapter in Britain’s long history: we must regain self-government while minimising economic dislocation. Theresa May’s challenge was to show how she, a Remainer, could normalise Brexit and the public’s demand for democracy and control.
The Remainer caricature of Brexit as a protectionist, autarchic, xenophobic, inward-looking, isolationist project would be spectacularly disproved. Britain would genuinely leave the EU, including the single market and customs union, but remain closely tied to it through a comprehensive trade deal. Her mission was to take the fringe appeal and the populism out of Brexit and embrace the Global Britain vision. We wouldn’t turn our back on all immigration but would control it more closely, as demanded by public opinion in all Western societies.
In fact, a Brexit implemented by a centrist politician from a centreright party would be a very British reconciliation of liberalism and nationalism, a perfect synthesis. The ruling classes would absorb Brexit and make it theirs, just as they had once absorbed democracy, capitalism, socialism, free trade and the other great ideological and cultural shifts.
May could still pull off a miracle and deliver a real Brexit; or if she loses her nerve, the next Tory leader could push it through. I still believe that we will leave, for real and on time, but if I’m wrong one thing is certain: the Remainers won’t have the last laugh.
There is one overriding lesson from Britain’s history: for all their current muscle-flexing, the elites cannot win a head-on confrontation with the public or halt big, historic shifts. To survive, they always end up adapting and accepting the inevitable. They will do so again this time. It may take another referendum, or another election, but in the end we will leave the EU.