“We need a system that gives Parliament real power over ministers, enough time to scrutinise new EU laws and the transparency to restore public trust in the process.”
Theresa May wrote these words in a pamphlet she published in 2007, Restoring Parliamentary Authority: EU Laws and British Scrutiny. So it’s curious that now, on the brink of the biggest change to our country since WW2, the same Theresa May is attempting to stampede through our exit from the EU in a way that shuts out Parliament and will hide from us the implications of what she is doing until it is too late.
Theresa May has stated that in her view “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain” and, since she is placing herself in charge, we must assume this is how she will frame the negotiations ahead. She is prepared to crash out of the EU with no deal whatsoever rather than accept a bad one.
This leads to one immediate question. Just how bad do your negotiators have to be for them to make a deal that is worse than crashing out of the EU? Worse than having no sort of trading arrangement with the EU, a position worse than any other major industrialised nation? Worse than having no agreements in place over the regulation of every aspect of business – in food and fishing, medicine, financial services, aviation and nuclear power? Worse than having no customs arrangements or co-operation over crime or terrorism? Worse than losing permission for our airlines to fly to EU destinations, and possibly the US as well? Worse than the 1 million UK citizens living in the EU losing their right to medical treatment? Worse than the flight of UK businesses and jobs, started by Ford and BMW, turning into a stampede? Worse than the loss of more than a million jobs and hundreds of billions in investments? Worse than the end of the NHS? Getting a worse deal than this would be like trying to negotiate a discount on your new car and somehow ending up paying more than the sticker price. And yet still getting no car.
No, leaving the EU without a deal is the worst of all possible options, and if we are seriously moving towards it then it is only through incompetence or a deliberate move against the national interest. But the PM does appear to be considering it, and she and her ministers seem to be terrified of any curtailment of her freedom to follow that route if she chooses.
It’s not at all clear at this stage that a meaningful vote on the final deal is even possible. Many people think that, once we trigger Article 50, we are out of the EU after two years whether we want to be or not, however bad the deal we are offered by the other 27 nations. Even if this is true, there is still a point to giving Parliament oversight of the negotiations, because there will be trade-offs between competing interests to be made. Which is more important – cheap lamb imports or the protection of sheep farming? Which is more important – early access to new medicines or the separation of our drugs regulations from those of the EU? Who should be in charge of resolving these questions – our elected representatives or unelected ones? The Maastricht Treaty was twice voted on by Parliament – once to give a mandate for the negotiation, and again to vote on the deal that had been reached.
But ministers don’t want Parliament to take a hand this time, and one of the chief reasons is the suspicion that – rather than trying to get the best deal possible – they’d be prepared to try to halt Brexit entirely. As we’ve seen, there’s no certainty this is even possible, but if it is possible, ministers further fear that if the UK is able to withdraw from negotiations and stay in the EU, then the other EU nations will try to force us to do exactly that, by offering such a bad exit deal that we’ll give up on leaving.
It has to be said that there may be some substance to this argument. It’s now admitted by pretty much everybody involved in the process, both inside and outside the UK, leavers and remainers, that Brexit is going to leave all nations worse off, and the harder the Brexit the worse it is going to be. The EU27 are more clear-eyed than us on this, and less emotionally invested in the result. They know the best position for them as well as us is for the UK to remain in the EU or as close to it as possible. Brexit campaigners are also coming to the realisation that it is not all going to be as simple as once they claimed. One time Vote Leave chairman Lord Lawson has changed his upbeat claims of a free trade deal to a much more pessimistic “Sadly, and it is sad, a bad agreement is all that is likely to be on offer.” The best complexion Foreign Secretary and zipwiring buffoon Boris Johnson can put on matters is that the consequences of leaving with no deal are by no means “apocalyptic.” If his support for Brexit had been any fainter, even the Hubble telescope would have been unable to make it out. We know now it’s going to be bad; we may ultimately decide that it’s so bad that we want to stay in the EU after all.
So it’s theoretically possible, if we have an escape route, for the EU27 to decide to make leaving too horrible to contemplate, in order to tip us into using that escape route. However, by deliberately blocking off the escape route ourselves, we turn a theoretical weakness into a real one, of having to accept whatever deal we’re offered.
It’s a fundamental of negotiating strength to be able to walk away from the negotiation if we don’t like the deal being offered. But what Theresa May is about to do is drive a reliable, working car down to the car dealer, set fire to it right there on his forecourt, and then say to him “You have to sell me a car, or else I’m walking home.” It’s a nonsensical position to adopt, and it almost beggars belief that we could actually choose to put ourselves in this position.
At his first press conference after being elected President, Donald Trump displayed a table piled high with manila folders which contained, so he claimed, documents proving he was transferring all his business interests away from his control, so he couldn’t be accused of any conflicts of interest as President. Unfortunately, none of the assembled press were allowed to look at them, and the documents actually seemed to be just blank white paper.
Theresa May had her own white paper moment two weeks later. Having been tipped into publishing her plans for Brexit as a condition for Parliament’s support for her triggering Article 50, she released a 77 page Brexit “white paper.” Partly because it was still being worked on at 4am on the day of publication, perhaps, this was riddled with errors and almost as empty of useful content as Donald Trump’s manila folders. There was no detailed description of any of the negotiating options, no estimate of the costs, no acknowledgement of the breadth and scale of the hurdles to be overcome.
With groups lining up on all sides to highlight the dangers of the process we are about to undertake, including MPs and our own Treasury, it is clear that we still have no concrete plan, just a set of contradictory and implausible wishes, which at best will lead us to a settlement a lot worse than what we currently have.
But this does not appear to matter to Theresa May. It is looking increasingly likely that she is deliberately leading us towards a situation where she will walk away from negotiations with the EU27, crash us out of the EU, and then recast the UK as a low-regulation, low-wage, low-rights tax haven. When this destroys thousands of businesses and millions of jobs, she will blame the EU for being intractable, rather than look to her own impossible and contradictory demands. The best we can hope is that this is all an elaborate double-bluff, designed to soften us up to be glad of the bad deal she must now know is the best she is going to get.
Theresa May MP, Restoring Parliamentary Authority: EU Laws and British Scrutiny, 2007
Despite the courts intervening twice to remind her that Parliament is supposed to be in charge of Brexit, our unelected PM has taken this responsibility entirely upon herself. Abetted by a supportive “Opposition” leader and a largely quiescent party, she looks set to pass a bill giving her alone the ability to trigger Article 50, and remove all Parliamentary scrutiny from the process. This has not been without cost – her government is in turmoil, with the ministers most closely associated with the Brexit process in disarray, issuing contradictory statements, and with backbenchers and peers openly critical of her actions. But ultimately the decision, and therefore the blame, will be hers alone.
We are stampeding towards a cliff edge, on an incredibly tight timetable imposed by Theresa May, with that timetable being used to justify why Parliament cannot have a meaningful vote, why we cannot see detailed costings, or any analysis of the impact of Brexit. We have little idea what is going to happen once Article 50 is triggered, and our Government is trying to prevent anybody knowing in advance, or having any say in the process, for fear we may change our minds.
While the Brexiters are trying to hustle us off the cliff in support of an ideal of Britain they can barely articulate, let alone explain how they are going to achieve, millions of us are going to get hurt.
