May ‘no deal’ stance is kamikaze, say Leavers
Lord Owen warns Theresa May that her Chequers proposals will incur the wrath of the electorate
THERESA MAY has been accused of taking a “kamikaze” approach to leaving the European Union without a deal by deliberately highlighting the negative consequences for the UK.
Brexiteers had hoped that the publication next month of dozens of documents setting out Britain’s “no-deal” planning would show the impact it would have on the EU as well, giving the Prime Minister leverage in negotiations.
Instead, those who have seen some of the 70 technical reports say they only detail negative effects for the UK and government plans for mitigating them.
Mrs May was accused of trying to “panic” MPS, the public and businesses into accepting a soft Brexit.
Downing Street had planned to “drip feed” the technical papers about a nodeal Brexit throughout the summer but is now planning to release them over several days in late August.
Senior Eurosceptics said the plan represented “Project Fear Mark II” and was a deliberate attempt to “discredit” a nodeal Brexit and push through Mrs May’s Chequers compromise.
A Cabinet source said: “It is designed by No10 to do the opposite of what Brexiteers want. We could have made a strong case for no deal and said we were prepared. The way they are presenting it makes it look like Armageddon.
“It is a kamikaze approach to no deal. It’s total chaos. They are deliberately trying to make no deal look bad.
“It’s a fallacy to say it will be a disaster. It won’t. We need to highlight the risk for the EU, the negatives for them.”
It emerged yesterday that Steve Baker, who quit as a Brexit minister over the Chequers blueprint, commissioned a report on the cost of a no-deal Brexit for each EU member state while he was in office. He is now calling for it to be published and used to help convince EU member states that a freetrade deal on Brexit is in their interests.
He suggested that the implications of no deal for EU nations could be spelled out on billboards in member states.
Mr Baker said: “It seems clear to me that the government machine is working towards offering Parliament Chequers and Remain. I want the Prime Minister to make announcements that reinforce the credibility and feasibility of exiting the EU with nothing agreed.
“I am deeply concerned that the communications strategy is taking the opposite path of discrediting no deal in order to force Chequers through. It would be inexcusable to panic the public and markets to simply deliver an undesirable deal that would otherwise not pass through Parliament.” A No10 source said: “This is about what practically needs to be done if you end up with no deal.”
The backlash emerged after a series of “Armageddon” scenarios for Brexit were leaked in the run-up to the release of the papers. It was claimed yesterday that ministers had drawn up plans to send in the Army to deliver food, medicines and fuel in the event of shortages if Britain leaves the EU without a deal. The Government declined to comment.
Iain Duncan Smith MP, the former Tory leader, warned that attempts by Remainers to hijack no-deal planning would serve to undermine negotiations.
He said: “If it is Project Fear, it will be the worst of all worlds because it will send a signal to Europe that they are so desperate to avoid doing this, the EU will have them over a barrel.”
It comes as banks are invoking a “Dunkirk spirit” by preparing to lend billions to businesses to bolster the economy in the event of no deal.
It’s a stultifyingly hot day, not even the whisper of a breeze to stir the Thames at Limehouse, but it’s not just the weather that has got Lord Owen hot under the collar. “I think Parliament has let down the country,” he thunders. “Parliamentarians are a miserable lot, frankly. I think they were gripped by a religion and they can’t stop believing in it. And they have really managed to convince themselves that they are entitled in a strange way to thwart Brexit. They forget that they voted for the referendum – over 500 of them.
“Parliament has to accept that it’s gone out of their hands. But they can’t accept it. That’s been the most depressing thing. I believe that there are Tories, and they are in substantial numbers, who understand how dangerous it will be not to leave the EU. At the end of the day, this is what matters: are they prepared to put their country before their party? As for Sourpuss. What’s her name, Sowerbry?”
“Soubry.”
“That’s it. Sourpuss – I must not say this, but that’s how I deal with it. My family used to call Roy Jenkins Le Roi Jean Quinze. That’s how you deal with impossible people like Madame Sourpuss… by laughing at them.”
He is certainly laughing, the still handsome face is creased with mirth, but I can tell he’s angry. The most seasoned and diplomatic of men – he was foreign secretary by the age of 38, and is now 80 – has had enough. “We’re in a very, very serious political situation.
I think we’re running out of time, we’re running out of patience and we’re running out of people. I think that, in every sense, this is becoming dangerous.”
Since November 23, 2016, an increasingly concerned Lord Owen has been exchanging letters with the Prime Minister, trying to persuade her of the merits of preparing a reserve position if the EU destroys her bespoke option. Under his plan, and as specified in a new Withdrawal Agreement, the UK would stay in the EEA (European Economic Area) after we quit the EU on March 31 2019 and until, at the very latest, March 31 2021.
“I’m not talking about what I want,” he sighs. “Now it’s no longer a matter of personal preference, it’s that Brexit is this mess, so we’ve got to sort this damned thing out and fast.”
He deplores David Cameron’s lack of statesmanship and the fact that “absolutely no preparations had been made for this result. And having promised that they were going to stay and do what the people wanted – which was Wilson and Callaghan’s promise in 1975 – Cameron walked.
“A substantive politician doesn’t just walk away. Parliament gets into a crisis right from day one. Then we find the cupboard is bare – the civil service have done no work at all on the thing.”
Triggering Article 50 was another disaster. “Article 50 is not a negotiation. I keep reminding people.” (He can be quite lordly, can the good Lord.) “Article 50 was designed by Lord Kerr never to be used. They thought no government would ever be foolish enough to do it because it’s so weighted against the country going out. The 27 [other states] come to an agreement. They have to get the approval of the European Parliament and that’s it. The offer comes from them and we are receivers, supplicants. We either accept the offer or we say no.”
Then came the self-inflicted wound of the general election, the loss of a decent Tory majority and a Prime Minister with all the inspirational qualities of a melted Solero. “I’m not going to criticise Mrs May. She was given an extremely difficult hand. I think she has courage and she has persistence, but persistence can be very damaging, particularly if it is basically blind-headed obstinacy. She’s in her tramlines and she can’t deviate so she’s in grave danger of ending up with Brexit in name only – Brino. That would be totally against the referendum result.”
On the Chequers deal, he is excoriating. “It’s a wishlist,” he snaps, “it’s not a negotiating position. A lot of sensible civil servants acquiesced to Chequers because they know it’s not going to last. They know it’s a wishlist and Mrs May knows it too. She’s not stupid. If she were here talking honestly, she would tell you exactly where she’s going to move and give in to Barnier.
“It’s been pretty well flagged up, [Philip] Hammond is already talking about special rights for immigrants from the EU. I’m sorry, but where she’s going is not acceptable. If she stopped now, I think most people could just about live with it, but it won’t stop there.”
The failure to prepare for a WTO exit from the EU (reverting to World Trade Organisation terms) is a particular beef. “The PM has convinced herself that a WTO exit would be damaging. But if she had genuinely prepared for it, the first thing you’d have done is bought more roll-on roll-off ferries, established a pattern of European truck trade which was spread much wider than Southampton, Felixstowe and Dover. You’d have used some of the East coast ports if you were actually serious about it.”
But they’re not serious?
“God, no,” he whinnies in disbelief. “They’re not serious. They’re just going through the motions because she’s convinced that she can deliver her bespoke agreement in the face of opposition from the Brexiteers because the Parliamentary numbers are on her side.”
Er, what about the wishes of the British people?
“Well, that’s why I believe it’s very dangerous. It won’t even be a slow fuse. They’ll know that this is just Brino. Farage will pounce. The mood in the Brexit cities and towns will start getting ugly. These people don’t believe a word their politicians say. There’s an elite and they’re just not listening. The Leave voters were fully aware of the fact there would be some economic downsides. They were not voting for prosperity. They were voting to have more control of their affairs and challenge London dominance.” The ultimate irony, he points out is, “what Leave voters feared about the Establishment is now being enacted.”
Lord Owen and I last met in the middle of the referendum campaign amid relentless carpet-bombing by the Remain campaign, which had all of Whitehall on its side. I was starting to lose faith that we could ever untangle ourselves from the Brussels giant squid, but the doctor reassured me in his best bedside manner. “There is no cause for concern. The British people can see through this nonsense.” Diagnosis correct, thank goodness.
Today, we have a whole new batch of scare stories, with a disingenuous PM urging us to “take comfort” from the fact that there are plans to stockpile food, blood and medicine in event of a no-deal Brexit.
“Oh, yes, they’re using fear again,” he snorts, “The sad thing is we all know that in the hands of a more charismatic politician the referendum result would have carried the country, we would have stood firm and everybody would have believed in it. Instead…”
Has he been shocked by the resistance to the referendum result? “Well, I knew the [European] Commission would never willingly let us out and, within our own Parliament, people are determined to block the whole process. They lie through their teeth, saying it’s this problem or that, but really they just don’t want to leave.” Initially, he was surprised by Tony Blair’s involvement. “Then I thought, actually, every time he opens his mouth it helps us.” Wolfish grin.
As a veteran of bruising international negotiations – he spent six years negotiating in Africa with Robert Mugabe and Ian Smith; in the Balkans with Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadic – he marvels at the Government’s failure to get other political parties around the table or to grasp that the EU would always be intransigent. “Why are they are holding to their four principles? Well, they are federalist principles and they are what they intend to build a European state on. Therefore, they are not going to give them up.”
Lord Owen has stayed quiet for 18 months, growing ever more vexed as our options dwindled. “It is a great, great shame we didn’t have a Leaver as the PM. The public has been outmanoeuvred. It is so obvious what is going on. What is going to come out of her bespoke negotiation is bad.”
He has decided to speak out now because he thinks we are in a hole and there’s still time to switch track to his EEA option. The hardcore Brexiteers don’t like it, he admits, “because they are afraid we could wind up with a Norway. But it would get us out of the ECJ, we could get a fishing policy immediately, an agriculture policy and there’s a Liechtenstein loophole on immigration.”
Bless! Only Lord Owen would be familiar with the Liechtenstein loophole. His knowledge and his passion puts people half his age to shame. He says that, although she’s written back, he’s not convinced the PM has read his letters or absorbed their argument.
“She thinks she’s got the party on her side. Ha! Has she been reading the letters column of The Daily Telegraph lately?” Tory MPS who fall in with May’s Chequers plan “ought to fear the wrath of the electorate and of their own Tory Party members”.
‘The Leave voters were fully aware of the fact there would be some economic downsides. They were not voting for prosperity. They were voting to have more control of their affairs’