Our best chance for an orderly departure
The Government’s tricky challenge in today’s vote on the Brexit deal is to win over individuals from opposite ends of the spectrum: Brexiteer Tories and Labour rebels. The result could be tantalisingly close. The process hands enormous power to those being courted, along with a historic opportunity. Here is a chance to be a hero, to be one of the MPS who restores faith in democracy.
Three and a half years after Britain voted to leave, people are sick and tired of the delay and fed up with procedural trickery of the kind dreamt up by Oliver Letwin. We are stuck in a holding pattern; business is at its wits’ end. The deal that Boris Johnson brought back from Brussels this week isn’t perfect, but there was only so much he could achieve as the prisoner of a Remainer Parliament – and what he has wrung out of the Eurocrats could put this madness behind us.
Yes, the DUP has its objections, but they are essentially party political and local, and not every unionist agrees: Lord Trimble, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has endorsed Mr Johnson’s deal. As for the complaints raised by Nigel Farage, it is striking that Leave.eu has said the deal lends Britain “the opportunity to get out of the European Union”. What happens afterwards will be in the hands of the people, because the most controversial aspects of the old Withdrawal Agreement are now in the Political Declaration and thus up for future negotiation. It is time for Brexiteers to rally around the possible. They must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
As for Labour MPS, they know that they face an existential crisis. The party is sliding in the polls; they are threatened in the North not just by Mr Johnson but by the Brexit Party. Almost all Labour MPS are pro-remain, but a significant number of them hold seats where the locals voted Leave (with passion) and they know perfectly well that they are haemorrhaging what remains of their working-class credibility.
Labour’s position on Brexit doesn’t make sense. Jeremy Corbyn is apparently opposed to Mr Johnson’s deal because regulatory alignment has been placed into the Declaration; Britain’s standards on the environment and workers’ rights will be put at risk, he says. But this would only be the case if the Conservative Party intended to erode them, which it doesn’t, and if the Tories stay in power from here to eternity, which it’s in Labour’s gift to prevent.
Mr Johnson’s deal repatriates power to Parliament to add or subtract regulations, and there were plenty of social reforms passed in the UK prior to our membership of the Common Market. Once we’re out of the EU, it will be up to the voters either to elect a Tory government, which will hopefully cut red tape, or a Labour one, which will dramatically increase it. This is called “democracy”. What does it tell us about Mr Corbyn’s Labour that it doesn’t have confidence in its own ability to win elections and thus control legislation? How can voters trust a party that wants to see law imposed by Brussels rather than passed by the UK Parliament?
Reasonable Labour MPS have to ask what loyalty they owe to such a terrible leader or to his absurd Brexit policy. If Labour was at least a consistent, pro-remain party of conviction, its position might earn some grudging respect – but the current policy is to vote down the Government’s deal, negotiate an alternative, hold a referendum and, very probably, campaign against what they have negotiated. Remainers and Leavers can see this for the unprincipled fudge it is, and Labour MPS will eventually have to face their wrath on the campaign trail.
Gloria De Piero, Labour MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, described a constituent who came to her office, “a lifelong Unite member who voted Leave”. She said: “He begged me to vote for a deal.” How is that constituent, and millions like him, going to feel if Mr Johnson’s deal is defeated by just one or two votes – and their own Labour MP walked through the wrong lobby?
Most Labour MPS owe their leadership nothing: on the contrary, it has consistently embarrassed them. They do owe their constituents an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the deal and, in the final analysis, they must see that this is politically the best chance for an orderly Brexit that the country has. If they put partisanship aside and vote it through, it would be a shot in the arm for our democracy – proof of integrity, of a willingness to do the right thing in the national interest. A sign that the Commons still listens. Parliament must resist vexatious amendments and reject delay.
Victory for the Johnson deal won’t end Brexit overnight: after this comes the negotiations for a free-trade agreement which, as we have suggested, will see many things put back on the table all over again. But at least we can put the referendum behind us and start the bigger debate over how to make Brexit work to everyone’s advantage. Left and Right must unite to get Britain moving again.
It is time for Brexiteers to rally around the possible. They must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good
How can voters trust a party that wants to see law imposed by Brussels rather than passed by the UK Parliament?