Demonstrators hold placards outside the Houses of Parliament in London. Photo: PA
Theresa May’s puzzlingly “
The Party is at war with itself as Dominic Grieve and Co’s swashbuckling gang of
Their amendment, tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, banned the Treasury from spending on “no deal” preparations, in order to limit the possibility of the UK quitting the EU without the permission of the EU, and on its conditions set out in the Withdrawal Agreement.
Both Labour and Conservatives campaigned in the last general election on supporting Brexit and leaving the EU. This was defined by the Conservative Referendum leaflet as quitting the single market, customs union and ECJ jurisdiction. Mrs May’s Lancaster House “red lines” were accompanied by the slogan “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
For over two years now has been drummed into the nation’s expectations—but now, the rebels have rubbed out May’s reassuring words that the UK would refuse a bad deal. All this is deeply convenient for May. She had presented “no deal” as a kind of project fear option to set against her deal, but yet again, project fear flopped, with the Prime Minister failing to gain the support of either parliament or the public.
May never did bargain with the EU—she just caved in—but now she has a pretext for again insisting that “her deal” is the one way to avoid that apocalyptic “no deal,” which would not only involve “crashing out” over the “cliff edge” but also a parliament unable to properly prepare for what comes next.
So, the UK Parliament could be about to sign us into a kind of ghetto status with the EU controlling much of our national activity with its Joint Committee as the ruling body, and the EU having the final say. For this privilege of being sent, like a failing school, into special measures, the taxpayer will voluntarily pay the EU the £39bn leaving fee for permission to request to leave, with no deal done—another version of “no deal.”
The EU keeps its £90bn trade surplus in goods and decides UK tariffs, keeping a share of them and deciding farming subsidies, likely giving more to their farmers than ours, from our taxes. The bitter pill is worsened by the fisheries being controlled by the EU, the UK share of its own waters being kept as negligible. A UK region will be hived off as separately regulated, the big punishment for the UK quitting. And the MOD has effectively covertly signed up the UK military into the EU army, removing UK capacity to act as an independent state.
But still Gove, Fox, Cark and Hammond urge acceptance of this “deal,” of punitive special measures, as if it were more than a version of the Versailles Treaty imposed on Germany in 1919. This is certainly not “delivering Brexit” whatsoever; in fact, after two years of such degradation the UK will be in a far worse bargaining position than it is now. We know for sure that the EU is hostile to the UK as a competitor state and desperately wants to stop any meaningful Brexit happening.
After the WA system begins and the population sees the Joint Committee ruling the nation with Parliament an obedient lap dog, then we can expect furious reaction from the betrayed victors of the Referendum. It will be worse than the government have told us—the Attorney General was forced to tell Parliament that the “backstop” customs union is permanent if the EU so desires.
Why has Mrs May embraced this fate for us, and why was the Canada plus free trade option killed off arbitrarily when that was the obvious and genuine deal needed to deliver Brexit?
