To be fair, to a degree May’s government did start to get real this year, most tangibly with the Chequers Proposal. Not because that was remotely realistic, but because it did finally attempt to garner cabinet agreement on something that might begin to be the basis for negotiation. It was far too little, far too late but, even so, provoked David Davis and Boris Johnson to return to the Brexiter comfort zone of blame and betrayal. More surprisingly, it brought Dominic Raab into government despite the direction of travel already being clear – only to resign a few months later, as if unaware that this was so.
May: the pretence of a consensual compromise
That direction of travel was realistic in the limited, but by no means unimportant, sense that it led to an agreement – May’s deal – being made in the form that we have now seen. But May remains wholly unrealistic in, now, presenting it as a ‘compromise’ between leave and remain positions which she expects both sides to ‘get behind’. By first tacking so hard towards the Brexit Ultras, and dismissing remainers, and then partly rowing back, she has created a version of Brexit which pleases almost no one.
That simply can’t be covered over by repeating, as she did when opening the debate, what against stiff competition is one of the most egregious lies told in the Brexit process. That is the proposition that since both main parties at the 2017 General Election endorsed not just Brexit but the hard Brexit of no single market membership, and since 80% of voters voted for one of these parties, this ‘proves’ there is overwhelming support for both Brexit and hard Brexit. It is manifestly nonsense, as is shown not least by the hallowed result of the 2016 Referendum. It is simply a pretence to claim anything other than that the country, like the House of Commons, is bitterly and more or less equally divided.
Corbyn: incoherence and opportunism
Nor was there any realism to be found in Jeremy Corbyn’s opening contribution. His position on Brexit remains completely incoherent – to miraculously renegotiate his meaningless “strong single market deal”. On the other hand his criticisms of May’s deal are blatantly opportunistic, rehearsing the Brexiter objections that there is no end to the backstop (see below) and no completed trade deal. Whilst he could legitimately point to false claims made in the past by the government and many Brexiters that such a deal could be ready now he is not doing so: rather, he is repeating their fantasy that there could have been.
A prime illustration of this opportunism is his criticism of May for compromising her red line on ECJ involvement, again one he takes from the Brexiter playbook. But if he is saying she was wrong to abandon it, then how would he negotiate a better deal whilst keeping it (given not just the ‘strong single market’ blather but his apparent desire to remain within various EU agencies)? Or is he saying that she should never have had any such red line at all, in which case her sin is not in compromising it but in not abandoning it all together.
He doesn’t say, or perhaps doesn’t know. Either way, it is a complete dereliction of political leadership – and in marked contrast to the well-informed, clear and articulate critiques of May’s deal made by numerous Labour backbenchers, most strikingly (from those that I heard) those of Yvette Cooper and Margaret Beckett. The latter in particular made a withering assessment both of the government and of the promises of Brexiters.
Both parties playing out their European civil wars
In a sense, what we are seeing is the playing out of decades of internal party political dynamics. Within the Tory Party, it’s the beginning of the end game of their long European civil war, with at least three sides. There is a pragmatic, pro-business, one nation and internationalist group, and a highly ideological, uncompromising albeit internally incoherent amalgam of English nationalists and scorched earth neo-liberal globalists. Between them stands May, the latest of those Tory leaders to think that she can appease the unappeasables and who is pushing the precarious umbrella that holds these two factions together to the point where it is likely to turn inside-out in the gale.
Meanwhile, Labour have managed to resurrect their own European civil war from the 1970s and early 1980s, with a Parliamentary party that has largely recognized the EU as the best regional response to globalization, and the best bulwark against the extremes of both nationalism and neo-liberalism but a leadership shaped by and still committed to the Bennite critique of the EU that arose in the pre-globalization, pre-neo-liberal era. Hence the absurd nonsense of the ‘Lexiter’ position that proposes to end austerity by collapsing the economy, improve public services by destroying the tax base, and to ensure that working class people are denied the rights of international mobility enjoyed by the wealthy and by capital.
If Labour’s civil war is slightly more muted than that of the Tories it is only for two reasons. One is that, on the EU, the membership is closer to the backbenchers than to the leadership. The other is that it’s always easier to paper over divisions when in opposition than when in government.
Brexiters: charlatanism, fanaticism and Jacobinism
If May and Corbyn are still, even now, indulging in fantasy, it is no surprise that the Brexit Ultras are now beyond fantasy and inhabit a surreal landscape all of their own. As George Eaton pithily observes in the New Statesman, “their true quarrel is not with the Prime Minister but with reality”. Boris Johnson’s typically stuttering, bumbling contribution showed that well over two years since his ‘conversion’ he has not bothered to master even the most basic facts about Brexit. Repeatedly challenged – from his own benches - to state his alternative to May’s deal he promised a big reveal.
When it came, it was the idea of telling Brussels to drop the backstop and that half of the financial settlement would be withheld until a ‘Super Canada’ trade deal was signed, with a lot of bluster about being tough. It was the epitome of the grotesque charlatanism that has characterised his entire approach and, it seemed to me, the way it was received suggested he is now listened to with very little respect by his fellow MPs.
That motif of ‘drop the backstop’ is now the central one of the Brexit Ultras’ critique of May’s deal, her acceptance of it being one of the ways in which she did, indeed, become realistic. Their critique is absurd. Ever since it was first mooted – and agreed to at the end of the phase 1 talks, although at that point they either did not understand or did not care – it was going to be true by definition that it could not be unilaterally ended by either the UK or the EU. If it could, it would not be a backstop. The prospect of having a withdrawal agreement without some such provision is a non-starter.
That was always known, or should have been, and it certainly didn’t need the release of the Attorney General’s legal advice to tell anyone. What seems to have changed is that Brexiters have finally realised that the backstop is going to end up being used. In the past, they opined that a trade deal and/or technological solutions would solve the Northern Ireland border conundrum. No trade deal will: outside of the single market a border is inevitable. Very well, then, but there are still those technological solutions, and this possibility is written into the future terms framework. If the Brexiters are right, they need have no fear of being stuck in the backstop. If they fear being stuck in the backstop, then it can only show that they know they are not right.
I essayed that point on Twitter this week and the responses were interesting. Many made versions of the argument that the problem was that the EU would not accept claims about the technological solutions and so would quite unnecessarily force the UK to remain in the backstop forever. Quite why the EU would want to do so is not clear but, anyway, it’s irrelevant. The point is that, of course, ‘claims’ about technological solutions aren’t going to end the backstop. But the demonstrable existence of such solutions – either through their adoption in some other part of the world, or through a working prototype or pilot being created by the UK – could hardly be denied by the EU and any attempt to do so would inevitably fall foul of the review mechanism.
Parliament: belatedly taking responsibility?
Will the Brexiters continue to march their troops against May’s deal? Maybe not. There seems to be some recognition amongst them that if the deal falls then so too may Brexit. The passing of the Grieve amendment, along with the early indications of how the ECJ will rule on the right to rescind the Article 50 notice, will probably push some of them to support the government. But there will likely be quite a few Jacobins who either don’t care, or don’t understand, or believe that events will play out so as to deliver ‘no deal’, and will continue their opposition. And it only takes a few, plus some remainers opposing the deal for the same reason, with or without the DUP, for the vote to be lost.
Then, we are in unknown territory, as described in my previous post. But note that the ‘ultra Ultras’ are right in one respect. Parliament cannot stop ‘no deal’ just by saying they don’t want it. It will happen by default, by virtue of Article 50, unless they agree, positively, on an alternative course of action. That will probably be as hard as it has been to get agreement on anything else about Brexit. But if they do, it’s also worth saying that the present mood music of ‘parliament good, government bad’ – most obvious in relation to the ‘contempt’ vote – is not very well-founded.
As I noted at the time they did it, it was to MP’s shame that they voted, overwhelmingly, to trigger Article 50, not knowing how to do Brexit but, for the most part, knowing that however it was done it would be bad for the country. That they did so is still used by Theresa May and the Brexiters as a stick to beat them with. From that cowardly squandering of the opportunity given them by Gina Miller’s court action all this mess has flown. If, at this late date, they minimise – because that’s the very most it will be - the damage it will only underscore the folly and irresponsibility of what they set in train with that vote.
Addenda
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