The day the dream died

There is an Indian proverb that says a woman conquers a man by her stillness.

Two women leaders of very different calibres, Angela Merkel, who is a very successful national leader, and Theresa May who is certainly not, illustrate the effectiveness of stillness and slowness in getting them what they want. Each made disastrous mistakes from which they cannot recover when they made uncharacteristically sudden and unheralded decisions (to let in limitless migrants and call the 2017 snap election).

The British cabinet's very long delayed decision about what deal they want with the EU means adopting something rather like the arrangement Norway has with the EU. This enables Norway to escape the common fisheries policy but means she obeys laws she does not help to make. Norway also has to pay vast amounts to trade with the EU and permit free movement by citizens of EU countries, things the British Government hopes optimistically to avoid.  

The very powerful senior civil servants of the Treasury, which is the centre of power in the British government, as I always feared and expected, have persuaded the
politicians to accept what is in effect associate membership of the EU, without any say in EU laws and decisions. 

We propose to leave and yet partly stay in the E.U.

Two years ago this seemed not unreasonable, to many who backed Leave, but after two years to think about it, and after Theresa May fought the 2016 election pledging to take us out of tbe Single Market and end free movement, it does not. It sounds a lot like giving up the idea of honouring the referendum result. 

And, even so, the E.U. are still going to reject the proposal.

At least we are leaving. Perhaps a future government will renegotiate the deal, whatever deal the EU chooses to make. 

Or perhaps we shall remain for decades ruled by the EU and taking no part in the rule-making. 

Importantly, at least outside the economic sphere Britain will be free to make her own decisions. Except that here we are subject to the European Court of Human Rights, not a part of the EU. 

The ECHR may be useful in countries with a weak democratic tradition, like Romania, but protecting human rights does not mean protecting traditional common law freedoms, like the U.S. Constitution does,  but requiring restrictions on freedom. The ECHR certainly does not protect freedom of speech effectively, for example.

Theresa May argued that Britain should leave the ECHR but changed her mind without explanation when she became Prime Minister.

The main points of the agreement the British cabinet agreed, in a twelve-hour meeting on Friday, that it hopes to make with the EU are as follows.

The UK and EU agreeing a "common rulebook for all goods including agri-foods", which will mean accepting EU rules we do not help make. It would make free trade agreements with non-EU countries virtually impossible. 

Why include agricultural produce, which stops free trade agreements with countries like the USA? Turkey has a customs union with the EU for non-agricultural goods and pays nothing for this privilege.

The UK Parliament would be able to choose not to incorporate future EU rules, but in fact would never diverge from rules because to do so 'would have consequences' and would mean a bureaucratic nightmare.

A joint institutional framework to oversee UK-EU agreements, with the UK agreeing to pay "due regard" to EU case law in areas where the common rulebook applies. This would mean accepting the supremacy of EU law and the EU court, the ECJ, in lots of areas.

A "facilitated customs agreement" would remove the need for customs checks at the border by treating the UK and EU "as if a combined customs territory".

The UK would then apply the EU's tariffs and trade policy for goods intended for the bloc but would be able to control its own tariffs and trade for the domestic market. I suspect this would mean copying EU tariffs in general.

The four mistakes that brought us to this sorrowful place were these. 

First, choosing a Remainer as party leader and Prime Minister, and an inept one at that, one whose words do not sing and who loves the nanny state. 

Michael Gove is to blame here as he should have had the self belief to stand from the beginning rather than backing and then betraying Boris Johnson. 

Secondly, Theresa May's unforced and unnecessary decision that we would not have a hard border between Northern and Southern Ireland. 

Ireland was being used by Barnier as a bargaining tool. There is nothing in the Anglo-Irish Agreement that talks about the border and the border is not important. It's not even very important in Northern Ireland, two thirds of whose trade is with the mainland. The hard border worked fine from 1922 to 1965 - it will always be completely porous de facto.

Thirdly, the fatal decision, on which the Treasury cunningly insisted, not to spend money preparing for leaving the EU without a deal. Unless you are prepared not to make a deal you are at the mercy of your counterparty. 

The fourth mistake, of course, was the snap election last year, called without adequate preparation, which robbed the Conservatives of a majority and meant a very small group of extreme pro-EU Conservative MPs would prevent us leaving with no deal.


In fact leaving in an orderly way without a deal was always a highly attractive option, but is now impossible.

At a meeting of the Brexiteer cabinet ministers on Thursday, Michael Gove said, with great regret, that even if the House would pass the legislation leaving with no deal was now impossible for technical reasons, unless we had an interim period in which to get things ready and this the EU would not give us. 

This was accepted and meant the Brexiters had no alternative to offer to the Treasury proposals when they went into the twelve hour cabinet meeting at which they finally agreed a Brexit policy. 

The Treasury civil servants and Olly Robbins, the Europhile Permanent Secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, routed them completely. 

What should have been one of the greatest achievements in British history, unleashing enormous creativity and a benign revolution in thinking, is now a sad exercise in damage limitation.

The EU will not accept this deal but the deal we shall have will presumably be even worse. If Brexiteers in the House of Commons were to rebel they would be defeated or would force an election that the now Marxist Labour Party might win. 

For the first time since the election, thanks to the Brexit decision, Labour is today in a slight lead in the polls. So there will be no rebellion. Checkmate.

Under a leader who thought Brexit a liberation how differently things could have gone. I had thought Boris Johnson not qualified to be Prime Minister two years ago but he would have been infinitely better than Theresa May. Michael Gove was my choice. 

Or better yet, if he gave up his peerage and was given a seat in the Commons, Michael Howard. What this moment needed, of course, was a Margaret Thatcher, whose qualities I did not see in her day but which are now obvious.

If we had not promised that there would be no hard border with Eire, we could have had the same deal that the EU signed - in the end, after years of negotiation - with Canada. 

Enabling us to make trade deals with the world. 

We still can, if we ditch the commitment on the Irish border. Since Theresa May has ditched most of her red lines why not ditch that?