07/01/2018
One wonders what the
Observer thinks it's doing,
telling us that 20 British MEPs want Theresa May to "seek full membership of the European single market and customs union".
Real news (if it could even be considered as such) would be finding that less than twenty of our current batch of 73 MEPs did not want Single Market and customs union membership, bearing in mind that the majority of non-UKIP MEPs probably want to stay in the EU.
But if there is one thing consistent about British politics, it is the irrelevance of MEPs in the general domestic debate. Apart from Nigel Farage and one or two others, most people would be hard put to it to name any of them.
This current group of MEPs comprises three Tories and twelve from Labour. But that hardly poses, as the newspaper avers, either a challenge for the prime minister or for Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn" When we get to 29 March next year, these people will be without a job. Even now, their voices are largely unheard.
Ironically, this is actually something they have in common with most of us. As Pete
points out, an almost defining characteristic of this government is that it isn't listening. It's not even listening to its own party, much less the media and the self-important "Brexitologists" who provide so much of their copy.
Even if these particular MEPs were to make some impact on public opinion, their influence would doubtless be set against that of a
different group who claim that there is "huge support" for reverting to WTO rules.
Along with Farage, this group is to meet Michel Barnier in Brussels next week to acquaint him its views, a group that includes Steven Woolfe, a former UKP MEP and one-time leadership favourite,
last seen prostrate on a walkway in the European Parliament after an altercation with Mike Hookem, the party's then defence spokesman.
Another prominent member is former CBI head, Lord Digby Jones. He's the one who, at the
2013 Ukip conference, argued against the use of Article 50 and for the immediate repeal of the European Communities Act. On the basis of European businesses selling more to us than we sell to them, he asserted that a trade agreement could be in place within 24 hours of our leaving the EU.
This towering intellect is joined by Labour Leave chairman, John Mills â a man who has consistently retained
fixed views on the WTO option - and former British Chamber of Commerce chief John Longworth. He holds
somewhat similar views.
What emerges from this is that people who have fixed views on Brexit are expressing those fixed views. Some of them have held the same views, unchanged, for many years. Even if the government was in the consultation business, therefore â and sought advice from the broader community â all it would get is what we're seeing in the media. People with fixed positions, reiterating their fixed views.
Separately, as Pete observes, we have a "space race" between various think-tanks and academics. They are concerned to own their little corners of the argument, positioning themselves for greater influence in the bubble and thereby profiting from their elevated ranking and media exposure.
The futility of this is self-evident. Even to the meanest of intellects, the determination of the government to plough its own furrow is transparently obvious. Be they the most eminent "experts" in the field, they might as well be talking to themselves.
The degeneration of the discussion into the political equivalent of trench warfare raises questions as to whether it is possible to have a genuine political debate in this country, or in any so-called democracy in the developed western world.
What we can't actually do is dignify this discussion with the title of debate. That process is that one starts with an original position (in classical terms the hypothesis). One challenges it (with the antithesis) and from the ensuing engagement, a final position emerges (the synthesis).
Up to press, that process has never been played out. It is frozen in time and shows no signs of going any further. But now we have a more
sinister development.
This is explored by John Rentoul who introduces us to the so-called "ABC campaign" to keep us in the European Union, led by Adonis, Blair and Cable.
They are mooting the use of the Norway option, to press for the UK to stay in the EU Single Market after Brexit, although they clearly don't seem to have been listening to Stephen Kinnock. While he has come to terms with Article 112, which allows modification of free movement, these three imagine that that staying in the EEA means accepting free movement of people.
However, they do seem to have latched on to the idea that free movement is going to continue for at least 21 months after Brexit, during the transition period. And although it is accepted that the precise terms are to be negotiated, the transition period is seen as "the next weak point" in the Brexit defences.
That the transition should come to an end in December 2020 is an EU proposal â which makes sense as coincides with the close of the current multi-annual financial framework (MFF) period. The question for the ABC grouping, therefore, is whether the period can be extended beyond that date.
Here, there is some hope that the EU position is not as firm as it appears. The Irish government might favour a longer arrangement and, it is said, other national leaders could see a flexible period as being in their interests. Cynically, says Rentoul, they might even regard Britain in the Single Market - and paying for the privilege but excluded from troublemaking in EU Councils - as a perfect outcome, lodging the UK as a semi-permanent vassal state.
This, then, seems to be the shape of the battle to come. We can see the "remainers" playing down attempts to leave the EU, instead supporting a "soft Brexit" with an extended transition period. Adonis, Blair and Cable could say that, if we're not ready for the economic shock of a Canada-style trading deal, let us take our time about it.
Should this lodge as the core issue, any such move would transform the fight, moving the "hard" and the "soft" Brexit to opposite sides of the divide. It would destroy the "confusing" middle ground, and redefine Brexit.
All of a sudden, it would become exactly that which the media prefers â a binary issue that fuels its love of biff-bam politics. Those in the no-man's land in the middle would get shelled by both sides.
Delay in ending the transition also works for the "federalist" tendency within the Union â the Andrew Duffs of this world. They would use the time to promote a new treaty that brings with it a form of associate membership. A prolonged period as a "vassal state" would make such an alternative look quite attractive.
Faced with indecision in Whitehall and the prospect of yet another cliff edge at the end of the currently proposed transition period, free-trade "ultras" will be on the back foot. They will have to confront exactly the same "project fear" rhetoric that was been working against them for so long.
As we get closer and closer to the cliff edge, and more and more people realise what a basic free trade agreement (FTA) involves (or doesn't), the resistance will stiffen and the so-called "bregretters" could tilt the balance in favour of maintaining a form of EU membership. What is dismissed as "fear" now becomes tomorrow's reality.
Transition, therefore, says Rentoul, could be the battle of 2018: not (overtly) to stop Brexit, but to allow the possibility of a prolonged soft Brexit. For remainers, this offers the chance of getting stuck in a halfway house, and after a few years people might either decide it is fine or that we should rejoin (perhaps as associate members).
Such a glum prognosis is by no means unrealistic (it never has been). But what makes it so plausible now is the inability of leavers to coalesce around a realistic exit plan. As Eurosceptics, we were fragmented before the referendum. We are just as divided now, if not more so. Cummings and his determination not to resolve our differences, casts a long shadow.
Even worse, there is very little time to head off a situation which could end any chance of Brexit as we know it. Strident demands for a fixed end to the transition period, when all we have to replace it is a basic FTA, or pressure to adopt the WTO option, will simply strengthen the case for an extension.
For those who want a rational Brexit, this is a lose-lose scenario. Given that the Efta/EEA(Single Market) option has been so comprehensively ruled out, the one chance we have is the development of a comprehensive post-Brexit strategy that gives us more than just the thin gruel of the basic FTA.
And this is where we need that debate, the one that hasn't even started yet.
