Brexit’s witching hour looms as ‘final’ EU deal is put on the table
This is no longer about hypotheticals – a vote for Boris Johnson’s deal will trigger a stark new reality
When it comes to Brexit, history has a way of repeating itself. For the third time in as many years, a British prime minister is striving to clinch a deal with the European Union that can find acceptance back home in London.
The precedents are not encouraging. On the last two occasions, the David Cameron and Theresa May deals were launched with great fanfare in Brussels after long days of negotiation, only to crash-land on arrival in Westminster.
They did so largely for the same reason. Both Mr Cameron and Mrs May both made such big promises on taking office that their achievements in Brussels, while not entirely without substance, paled by comparison.
The voters rejected Mr Cameron’s best efforts at the 2016 referendum, and then MPS thrice failed to back Mrs May’s efforts earlier this year. Will it be any different for Mr Johnson?
Like his predecessors, Mr Johnson promised big. Within days of becoming Prime Minister, he pledged to “abolish” the Irish backstop, take the UK “whole and entire” out of the European Union and set global Britain on course for an independent trade policy.
The deal, when it finally emerges, will be judged against these three key pledges. Early reports suggest that, technically at least, Mr Johnson will make good on his promises.
The customs solution for the Irish border is expected to leave Northern Ireland de jure in the UK’S customs territory even if, in practice, residents of Ulster will feel very much like they are living in the EU’S single market and customs union.
This arrangement is also not a “backstop”, it is a new future reality which will persist for Northern Ireland unless and until its political parties elect to leave that “special status”. That’s a definite “tick” when it comes to abolishing the backstop.
As for the independent trade policy, Mr Johnson has been clear that he wants a “zero-tariff, zero-quota” free trade agreement with Europe and does not seek the “high-alignment” model pursued by his predecessor.
Mr Johnson will claim that the UK is on a path to trade freedom, although quite how free will depend on the “level playing-field guarantees” that the EU is demanding in return for market access.
That, by the way, includes access to UK fishing grounds, too.
Can Mr Johnson succeed where Mr Cameron and Mrs May failed? There are reasons to think that he might: Brexit fatigue is setting in deeply now, lending extra impetus to that demand to “get Brexit done”.
Brexiteer MPS are also aware that, to quote the former Brexit secretary David Davis, that this could be the “last play” for Brexit, which might help them squint a little and overlook any flaws in the promise of a freetrading future.
And there is one huge difference with Mr Johnson’s deal that could prove to be both its salvation and its undoing: this deal, unlike the others, presses MPS’ noses hard up against the ice-cold window into a new post brexit world.
This will concentrate minds. The Northern Ireland arrangement is not a backstop, it is a new permanent arrangement that will divide the United Kingdom, howsoever it is camouflaged. The DUP is painfully aware of this.
The divide is made all the starker by the fact that it is this deal on Northern Ireland that turns the key on Mr Johnson’s clean-break Brexit, enabling the UK to “take control of its own regulatory affairs and trade policy” and set a fundamentally different course.
That may fill many Brexiteers with joy, but for many Labour MPS this means a frictional border with the EU, damaged supply chains and, in the long term, lower wages. Even some Tories, like Philip Hammond, the
‘This deal, unlike the others, presses MPS’ noses hard up against the ice-cold window into a new post brexit world’
former chancellor, believe these hankered-after deals have “very limited” economic value, as he told this newspaper last week.
Treasury and a plethora of thinktank models estimate that this hard-brexit approach will hit UK public finances by between £16billion and £49 billion a year; indeed, these projections are not so different from the cost of a Wto-rules Brexit.
This is no longer about hypotheticals – a vote for Mr Johnson’s deal, is a vote to trigger a stark new reality. That will, of course, spur some to back Mr Johnson, but it may deter others in equal, or perhaps greater, measure. Brexit’s witching hour is fast approaching.