Editorial Comment

Everyone, from the CBI to the Chancellor, is trying to change our decision. They cannot be allowed to win

Vocal and aggrieved minorities have spent a year trying to subvert the democratic decision of the British people to leave the EU. They are flourishing in the climate of shattered self-confidence besetting the Government since the election. Their tactics are, however, now so blatant as to be preposterous.

David Cameron, who should top any Remainer’s blame list for Brexit, has allegedly asked Tory MPs to back the “Norway” option of staying in the European internal market, forcing us to continue to accept free movement of people. Philip Hammond, exploiting the Prime Minister’s weakness, goes freelance and briefs that we could stay in the EU customs union – forbidding us to conclude our own trade deals, and rendering Liam Fox and his Department for International Trade redundant. Finally, the Confederation of British Industry asserted that a final Brexit deal will not be done by March 2019, and so some “transitional” arrangements would be necessary. These included remaining in the internal market and customs union.

Those who voted to leave the EU were motivated by many considerations, all of which would be violated by the CBI’s “transitional” deal and by what Messrs Cameron and Hammond want. There would be no sovereignty over trade or immigration; and the European Court of Justice would still arbitrate over trading standards, and much else. In other words, they all – in common with large elements of Whitehall, academia and, as Dr Fox said last week, the BBC – are doing what they can to negate Brexit, possibly even to ensure that it doesn’t happen.

The CBI has a history of advocating policies that undermine our country and its economy. Although it purports to represent business, it bought unequivocally into the post-war consensus that by the late Seventies had pauperised Britain, forced it into special measures administered by the International Monetary Fund, and left the trades unions in control. Once its enthusiasms for corporatism and statist “national plans” had expired, it became obsessed with Europe, to the extent of demanding British membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. When that ended in the debacle of Black Wednesday in 1992, it learned nothing but soon gave full-throated support to membership of the euro. The CBI has repeatedly written off Britain’s capabilities to manage itself, demeaning the mercantile abilities of our businessmen. It has forfeited any right to be taken seriously.

The corporatist bias of the EU makes it a natural fit with the CBI, and explains the toadying obsession the latter has with the former. Why Mr Hammond should jump on this bandwagon is bizarre, and the sooner he has his chance to test the popularity of his views in a Tory leadership contest, the better. The CBI happily endorses lurid threats about Britain’s post-Brexit impoverishment that have come from European grandees, most recently Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator, who has warned Britain not to expect a “frictionless” border.

Mrs May, hobbled though she is, still had the gumption to remind our present partners in Europe that the imposition of “friction” on Britain’s border with the EU would not merely hurt us. In fact, it would hurt us far less than it would the motor manufacturers of Stuttgart and Munich, the white goods producers of northern Italy or the champagne barons of Reims and Épernay. In 2015 we had a £60billion trade deficit with the EU: the only country of all the other 27 that bought considerably more from Britain than vice versa was Ireland. If Europe rejects free trade with Britain, while we are concluding new deals with the rest of the globe – and according to President Trump, one with the US will come immediately we leave the EU – the real “friction” will come with the falling order books and rising unemployment of those nations whose noses the EU has chosen to cut off to spite its collective face.

Polls suggest that half who voted Remain have accepted the will of the people. Many businesses for whom the CBI purports to speak want to get on with the process, and to trade with new markets. That means an adjective-free Brexit, in March 2019, with us leaving the internal market, the customs union, the ECJ and, therefore, the EU – as our people wanted. The EU will soon discover that tariff-free trade is in their interests. It is attempts to subvert Brexit that harm our economy and threaten discord. The people have spoken; the remainers lost; but a prosperous future as a global trader awaits us. The Government must get on and deliver it.