May’s capitulations are catastrophically incompetent

Britain faces being trapped in a nightmare, a legally binding agreement or a hugely damaging backstop

The political declaration being finalised this weekend is supposed to outline the future relationship between the EU and the UK. In fact it leaves many important points of principle unresolved. The key point is that this declaration is not legally binding, whereas the Withdrawal Agreement will be. So the UK is already legally locked in to the hugely damaging terms in the agreement, but the terms we want are only in the non-binding political declaration.

It is worse than that. The alternative to reaching an agreement with the EU will not be to walk away with no deal, but for the hugely damaging “backstop” to kick in. This will lock the whole UK into slavishly applying EU customs rules and tariffs, preventing us from pursuing an independent trade policy. More seriously, it will gravely damage the UK by requiring Northern Ireland to be permanently subjected to a wide range of EU laws over which neither it nor the UK will have any say.

Given this nightmarish alternative, the UK’s negotiating position is incredibly weak. But in an act of great folly, the Government has contrived to make it even weaker.

The declaration says that the future relationship will be based on “an overarching institutional relationship covering chapters and linked agreements”. This means it must be approved unanimously by every Member State, giving them a legal right of veto over the conclusion of the future UK-EU agreement. Any individual member state will have the power to plunge the UK into the backstop protocol. This means, for example, that the Spanish have no need to get wording put into the declaration to achieve their aims over Gibraltar. They can now wait to plunge the knife in at the point when they will have a legal veto over the UK escaping from the backstop.

Theresa May claims to have negotiated an alternative to the backstop, which would involve “facilitative arrangements and technologies” to enforce the Northern Ireland border. In fact, the declaration just says that this alternative “will be considered”. Not only is this not legally binding, but the EU can say in due course that they have “considered” this alternative and do not find it satisfactory.

It is claimed that the declaration would allow for a Canada-style Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU. It does not. The EU’s agreement with Canada allows each party to pursue its own independent trade policy and set its own tariffs with third countries. This is because it applies zero tariffs to goods “originating in” the EU or Canada, but not to those that enter from third countries and travel between them. This is enforced by “rules of origin” checks.

The declaration provides for zero tariffs between the UK and the EU, but says that it will “build on and improve on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement” – which is a customs union, not a free trade deal – and also that there will be no rules of origin checks.

The EU has a huge (£95billion) surplus in goods trade with the UK. This gives it a big self-interest not only in having tariff-free access for its goods exports to the UK, but also in forcing the UK to maintain the EU’s high tariffs against goods from other countries. This is catastrophically damaging to the UK. Not only does it stop us lowering tariffs if we want, but it kills stone dead the possibility of forging trade deals with fast-growing economies around the world.

Given the fact that if we fall back into the backstop we will have to do it anyway, the EU will be able to insist that the long-term agreement must bind the UK to follow the EU’s external tariffs. As to an independent trade policy, the EU will say that we can still do services-only agreements – but in reality that is practically worthless.

The declaration says that there will be a new fisheries agreement on “access to waters and quota shares”. Mrs May claims victory in resisting wording that explicitly links access by EU boats to UK waters to the trade agreement. But even if the EU were not to insist on it, several individual EU states are likely to use their veto powers to demand continued access to UK waters as the price of a deal. If the UK is pushed into the backstop, it contains clauses designed to damage the UK fishing industry by excluding fish products from free access to the EU market. Mrs May has rolled over before on protecting the fishing industry. Why should anyone believe her assurance that she will not roll over again?

Indeed, it is remarkable that Mrs May’s famous obstinacy now seems entirely directed against those who oppose the series of capitulations she has made to the EU, many of which breach her election manifesto and the promises she has previously made.

When it comes to caving in to EU demands, she is as flexible as a limp lettuce. This pattern of behaviour is continued with this political declaration. By signing the legally binding agreement in advance of entering negotiations, she threw away the UK’s two most powerful cards: making huge payments into the EU budget, which we do not owe under international law, and giving access for EU goods exports to the UK.

Worse still, she has forced her successor to negotiate under the guillotine of the “backstop”. It is nothing less than catastrophically incompetent.

Spain can now wait to plunge the knife in at the point when they will have a legal veto over the UK escaping from the backstop

When it comes to caving in to EU demands, Theresa May is as flexible as a limp lettuce