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Matthew Parris writing in the Times.
Who killed Cock Robin? Brexit has failed and the only question now is about the ownership of failure. Who wants the blame? In the end few will. Bravely, Jo Johnson yesterday joined those with the principle (and foresight) to say so. But the day is coming when it is those who did not jump ship who will look “brave”. That’s why I doubt Theresa May will get her deal through parliament. Hands up who wants their names printed under aye in the division list in Hansard after the “meaningful vote” on her deal? Who in two years’ time, as we look back on Britain’s ignominious humbling by the European Union, and the battle rages on about our future relationship, and every Brussels-bashing headline in the media reignites the argument about our “vassalage” . . . who wants still to be insisting we did the right thing on March 29, 2019?
That Brexit has failed is now virtually uncontested on either side. Serious Brexiteers within and outside the cabinet are united in their distaste for a deal that leaves the United Kingdom effectively a satellite of the EU. This humbling of one of the great powers, the world’s fifth-largest economy, is not what Leave meant when they campaigned for Britain’s exit; not their guiding vision of a free-wheeling, free-trading “global” Britain. For them there has only ever been one decent argument for swallowing their pride and signing up to this conjectured deal: that once we’re out of the EU we can tear it all up anyway. That is not going to happen. As the government’s legal advice will make clear, Britain will be treaty-bound (indeed, already is, by the Good Friday agreement) to this deal’s “vassalage”. So I absolutely share the Brexit hardliners’ understanding of what Mrs May’s deal will mean. It will be Brexit in name only, “Brino”. We’d be well and truly stuck. Humiliated. In limbo. There have to be at least a score of Tory backbenchers on the Leave side who could not put their names to this.
And Remainers? Dominic Grieve, the closest thing Tory Remainer MPs have to a leader, makes the same point: what does this variety of “soft” Brexit offer our country that we lack today? I know there to be more than a score of Tory backbench Remainers (and a few ministers too) who would be ashamed to see their names on that aye division list. Listen to Mrs May’s proposed deal as it unfolds. Listen to the caveats and exclusions and tortuously worded ambiguities. Listen (as Democratic Unionists now can when they read yesterday’s leak to The Times) to the strangled verbal formulations. And keep repeating this single question: “How is this better than just being in the EU on the terms negotiated by Margaret Thatcher and John Major?” Answer comes there none, nor ever will, because there is no answer and the prime minister knows it. She accepted the instruction to get the best deal available. But it isn’t any good.
So government whips will have their work cut out. Let’s look at the different arguments that in private conversations they’ll press upon Leaver and upon Remainer Tory MPs. The argument that Tory Leaver MPs know they’ll hear will be accompanied by a wink: “Look, we can always renege on this mush after March 29 next year, once we’re out”. That’s why suspicious Leavers are asking to see the legal advice. It will dismay them. The other argument is that if Mrs May’s deal falls at the fence of a Commons vote then we’d either “crash out without a deal” or end up with a new referendum or a general election. But the whips’ problem with such scenarios is that the first is (secretly) attractive to many true-believer Brexiteers, while another election or referendum, even if these knocked Brexit off today’s agenda, would leave their religion unsullied by compromise, and leave them unashamed to fight tomorrow.
