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Daniel Hannan writing in the Telegraph.
Sunday, according to gleeful Remainers, is the day that Brexit fantasies collide with cold reality. Leavers, they claim, have been in a trance, dreaming of some unachievable Brexit peddled by charlatans during the referendum campaign. In Brussels, those Leavers will supposedly be jolted back to their senses by the harsh withdrawal terms agreed by Theresa May and her 27 fellow heads of government. You will read variants of that analysis in almost every Europhile medium. You will hear it repeated across the Continent. The deal, as one Italian newspaper puts it, represents “a resounding victory for the EU over Her Majesty’s subjects”. Yet there was nothing inevitable about this climbdown. On the contrary, there is something extraordinary, awe-inspiring even, about the slow-witted cowardice that led British negotiators to this point.
Their first error was to trigger Article 50, not only before any contingency preparations had been made, but before the government had any sense of what it wanted. During the referendum campaign, Vote Leave had said that Article 50 should be moved only when there was a clear understanding of what trade agreement Britain would have with the EU or, failing that, of what it would do in the event of no deal. But, to the astonishment of her advisers, Mrs May announced a date for Article 50 for no better purpose, if accounts are to be believed, than to have something to say in her 2016 party conference speech. She thus initiated a count-down against herself with no clear idea of what to do next. Then came the disastrous acceptance of the EU’s sequencing, which meant that all British leverage, including the exaggerated financial contributions, would be tossed away before the EU even began to discuss trade.
That was followed by the general election, whose result meant that any faction able to muster a dozen MPs now had an effective veto on the outcome. The EU grasped the implications, and toughened its stance accordingly, but the British side plodded on dully. Most calamitous of all was the acceptance of the Irish backstop a year ago, from no higher motive than wanting to be able to declare that progress was being made. Can you blame Eurocrats for gloating? They sensed right at the start that they were dealing with a defeated and dispirited British team, whose only objective was to come back with something – anything – that could be described as a technical fulfilment of the referendum mandate. Getting a deal had become an end in itself rather than a means to an end. Like Alec Guinness’s character in The Bridge on the River Kwai, our leaders had confused ends and means. Early in this process, I had a depressing conversation with one of our key officials. “If the EU wants to shaft us, it will,” he told me. “We have to persuade it not to want to”. His was, of course, a self-fulfilling attitude.
Sure enough, we have ended up with the sort of deal that a defeated nation signs under duress. Britain will be subject to all the costs and obligations of EU membership with no vote, no voice and no veto. That extraordinary arrangement was first mooted as an “implementation period” during which the long-term trading relationship would be put in place. In the event, though, talks on that relationship have not begun, and we now know that the “implementation period” will be strung out until it is replaced by something every bit as bad: a “backstop” that keeps us in the customs union. Unbelievably, Britain has given the EU a veto over whether it can leave these arrangements: unlike EU membership itself, we have no right to walk away.
Brussels will run our trade policy, our economy, even elements of our taxation for as long as it likes. As the usually Euro-fanatical Bloomberg asked incredulously last week, “Once Britain has acceded to this, what reason is there for the EU to agree to any other kind of deal?” British spokesmen point half-heartedly to clauses in the (non-binding) Political Declaration that accompanies the (binding) Withdrawal Agreement, vaguely committing both sides to find a trade deal. But, from the EU’s point of view, what could be better than keeping Britain as a non-voting member, its vast home market gripped in the vice of the customs union for the convenience of Continental exporters, its weight in global trade talks used solely to benefit to the remaining 27? Are we supposed to believe that the EU will offer us a better deal out of generosity? Have we not heard the repeated declarations by Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and others that Brexit must carry, and must be seen to carry, a penalty?
“You broke it you own it,” say some British Europhiles, unable to hide their excitement at our national humiliation. But Leavers never did “own” this process. From the start, it has been controlled by those who wished it wasn’t happening, and who defined success as salvaging as much as they could of the old dispensation. The most significant aspect of the government resignations since June is the departing ministers’ portfolios. Boris Johnson, David Davis, Steve Baker, Dominic Raab and Suella Braverman were all directly involved in the disengagement process, either through the Foreign Office or through the Brexit ministry. They were not dealing in fantasies. They knew exactly what the EU was prepared to accept, and were eventually driven to resign because British negotiators wouldn’t ask for it.