Brexit: things seem slightly less hopeless today

The mistake was putting a Remainer, someone whom David Cameron described as more Europhile than him or George Osborne, in charge of Brexit. 

For this mistake I blame Michael Gove, the only Leave candidate who could have led the country out of the EU when Cameron resigned. Instead he originally chose not to stand for the leadership but to back Boris Johnson, before deciding that Johnson was not up to the job and stabbing him in the front by standing. He did this to save the country from Johnson rather than in the hope of winning and he looked disloyal, Machiavellian and untrustworthy.

Theresa May did not get to where she is by brains. Nor by eloquence, charisma, likeability or intuition. She got where she is by luck, as most Prime Ministers do (Brown, Eden and Chamberlain were the exceptions in modern times), but mostly by persistence. 

I remember the pornographer David Sullivan saying in an interview that intelligence was
not the secret of success. Plenty of intelligent people sweep the streets. The secret is persistence.  He was right. 

Do not discount Mrs May's persistence. Staying power moves mountains. If the 48 Tory MPs are found to call for a leadership election and she wins, if only by one vote, she will stay. And she probably would win.

Being a woman helped her too. She became Home Secretary because of affirmative action. George Osborne told David Cameron that he ought to appoint a woman to one of the three great offices of state. 

Messrs Osborne and Cameron, who are clever and got on because of it, judge people by how brainy they were and found Theresa May wanting. They humiliated her in cabinet. 

Theresa May is an intellectually insecure woman who came completely under the influence of two Svengali-like advisors, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. They advised her to call the 2016 election. Mr Timothy, who is a Leave supporter, advised her to rule out staying in the customs union or the single market and to reject a deal like the Norwegian or Swiss agreements. 

After the election debacle, the Tory leadership, like indignant barons at the court of King Edward II or King Richard II, insisted that her favourites be banished. Mrs May is probably now under the influence of civil servant Olly Robbins.

Crises always show up structural political problems. This one shows up two vast problems, which were obvious anyway. One is that it is no longer possible to hold a quick election for the Tory (or Labour) leadership among MPs, who are themselves elected and who know the candidates. Letting the Tory party members (described by David Cameron as 'swivel-eyed loons') have the ultimate choice makes the process slower as well as much less democratic. 

However it could be done in three weeks if there is a will.

A bigger problem is the failure of cabinet government - the failure of the cabinet to give orders to and overrule the Prime Minister and civil service. This worked well at the time of the Munich conference, when the cabinet gave Neville Chamberlain very detailed instructions on negotiations with Hitler. Theresa May's cabinet did not give her or civil servant Olly Robbins similarly narrow instructions on negotiating with Michel Barnier, or any instructions so far as I know.

Two cabinet ministers resigned after the Chequers negotiating strategy was adopted in July, the Secretary of State for Brexit and the Foreign Secretary. They both resigned without having opposed the deal in cabinet, which had been sprang on them. Two more cabinet ministers resigned, including the next Secretary of State for Brexit, after the Cabinet meeting on Thursday, where the Prime Minister revealed the agreement she thought she had reached with the EU negotiators. The Brexit Secretary resigned over the deal he was responsible for, the details about the backstop having been kept from him by the Prime Minister and civil service until the cabinet meeting.

Five more cabinet ministers are said to be considering their positions but using the threat of resignation to try to influence events. Many more members of the cabinet disliked the deal, perhaps the majority for all we know, but they were not permitted to vote on it. 

Esther McVeigh was said to have made an emotional outburst demanded a vote and was told by the Cabinet Secretary (a civil servant) that this was not possible. One anonymous source (Miss McVeigh?) said the Cabinet Secretary shouted at her. Another anonymous person denied this. She was the other cabinet minister to resign.

The Prime Minister brings cabinets and cabinet committees to a conclusion by summing up the collective position. This gives her enormous power to ignore views she finds inconvenient but the putative convention that the cabinet does not vote is a new one. There have been plenty of cabinet votes in the past. Gladstone's cabinet voted, as did Tony Blair's.

It is of course for the cabinet to decide if it wants to vote but the Prime Minister decides what is the will of the cabinet.

But the cabinet, fortunately, does not have the last word. That lies with the House of Commons, assuming the House of Lords (how one misses the hereditary peers, all but 92 of whom have been replaced by quangocrats and time-servers) has the wisdom to accept the will of the lower house. If the House of Lords does not it will be abolished.

And in the House of Commons the will of the people and of the genuine conservative MPs has a chance to win against the civil service, the BBC, the legal establishment, Oxford and Cambridge dons and the bishops.

What alternative is there to the deal Mrs. May presented to the cabinet? 

No deal - which could be, and would I think be, an orderly one which could develop into something like the Canada-EU free trade deal. 

Or the Norwegian or Swiss free trade deals would be good interim solutions, though they would permit free movement of people and in the former case keep us in the customs union. 

No deal or a Canadian deal would mean a hard Irish border. This is not a problem.

Mrs May said on Thursday that a promise was made to the people of Northern Ireland during the referendum campaign that there would be no hard border. Who made this promise? 

David Cameron, who now sits in his luxury shed writing his memoirs. Whom does this promise bind? No-one.

Mrs May very foolishly later gave the same assurance of no hard Irish border and it was used by the EU negotiators and by Eire to lock us into the unacceptable deal that Mrs May now proposes. She should go and her assurance should go with her.

In any case, both the UK and Eire have said that they do not intend to put customs officers along the border. If the EU wants Southern Ireland to collect customs that is a matter for the EU and Southern Ireland, not the UK.