Cometh the hour, cometh the plan? Today, the government and Labour sit down to resume Brexit talks with both Theresa May’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s local election reactions (‘the public want us to get on with it’ etc) ringing in their ears. the expectations are higher than ever. Over the weekend, some No.10 sources even described today as ‘the moment of truth’.
It’s certainly true that if anyone is likely to find a reasoned compromise on this big issue of our times, David Lidington and Keir Starmer are the best candidates. If progress is made today, May and Corbyn could themselves meet as early as tomorrow afternoon, if not later this week. Yet when Lidington and Starmer and their colleagues sit down for ‘plenary’ negotiations, the odds are still stacked against them.
The immediate main obstacle is this idea of a ‘temporary’ customs union offer, with Starmer and John McDonnell resolute that a permanent union is the only viable solution. The idea of anything ‘temporary’ raises suspicions that the lack of ‘entrenchment’ (Labour’s favourite word to describe ways to avoid a Johnson/Raab Tory leadership tearing up any deal reached) will make the whole talks pointless.
McDonnell this weekend also raised a fresh bar, declaring that the whole idea of ‘an independent trade policy’ was a Tory threat to jobs. “We believe better trade deals can be struck if we are part of a customs union, part of a bloc alongside 27 other countries,” he said. The detail of how the UK could influence such deals while outside the EU remains sketchy to say the least, but Labour clearly thinks it has had some nods and winks from Brussels. Jeremy Hunt is digging in, telling Today that: “I’m not a believer in a customs union as a sustainable long-term solution”.
Of course, the bigger problem for Corbyn is the demand from his members and MPs for a second referendum. As I wrote exactly a week ago, ‘at some point, Theresa May will have to deal with the fact that roughly two thirds of Labour MPs won’t back any deal without a confirmatory ballot’. That two-thirds figure was pushed hard in the Guardian splash yesterday, and McDonnell said “if a deal is going to go through there might be a large number of MPs who will want a public vote”.
Remember that even if Corbyn is allowed to sell any compromise as a ‘Labour deal’, the legislation would still be government legislation. And many MPs will point out (as Momentum’s Jon Lansman has) that their party’s conference policy is explicit: “If the Government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from, they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.”
Yes, Corbyn wants to move on to make the next election about austerity, not Brexit. But many in the party (on the Left and centre) are warning darkly that the next election will definitely be about Brexit if their leader breaks the habit of a lifetime and ‘collaborates’ (a word already being used) with the Tories on the issue.
All this talk of a Labour-Tory deal on Brexit is certainly not helping calm May’s backbench critics. As leading young rebel Lee Rowley put it on Twitter this weekend: “People didn’t vote for you to do a deal with a Marxist.” Sir Graham Brady has a meeting with the PM today, at which he is expected to again ask for a clearer ‘roadmap’ and timetable for her departure, as requested by the 1922 Committee nearly a fortnight ago.
The 1922 Committee meets again tomorrow and you can bet there will be a push to get May to offer more ‘clarity’, probably tied to the week after the European elections. Senior executive member Geoffrey Clilfton-Brown told the BBC: “They [the MEP elections] are going to happen. And, I would have thought that fairly soon after that would be time for her to think about setting a schedule to find her successor.”
Yet it’s clear May’s stance remains unflappable on this issue - she will quit once the first stage of Brexit is done. Some of her allies point out that even this unprecedented offer wasn’t enough to get her party to back her in the third ‘meaningful vote’, so it’s unclear whether any other stronger offer would work too. A specific date is unthinkable for those around her. With delivery of Brexit now her only legacy left, to quit regardless of getting a deal through Parliament seems out of the question.
As for whether the Tories would indeed split over any compromise with Labour, Brady himself wrote this weekend in the Sunday Telegraph of a potential ‘catrastrophic’ schism. New Cabinet minister Rory Stewart told me on Radio 5Live’s John Pienaar a small split would be a price worth paying. But the reaction from Brexiteers was scathing. Steve Baker asked “But where would Rory Stewart go?’, while Marcus Fysh said: “Rory mate, seek help.”
Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party is certainly on a roll and it’s worth pausing to take in its remarkable growth from a standing start. It now has 85,000 registered supporters, just weeks after launch. The party has a big event at Westminster ahead of a rally in Peterborough, and Farage is expected to unveil his candidate for the coming by-election (which will come hot on the heels of the Euro elections), the Tel’s Christopher Hope reports.
But the fact that Farage isn’t standing himself betrays yet another lack of nerve, his critics feel. And it remains the case that he has failed repeatedly to get elected to Westminster. It’s no wonder that he looks ruefully over the Atlantic, where a Presidential system shows an outsider can come from nowhere to win power. The latest Gallup poll gives Trump his highest personal rating since coming to office (46% overall, 91% among Republicans and even 12% among Democrats), off the back of some healthy economic figures.
Speaking of which, the Guardian has dug up some worrying footage of Farage’s interviews with American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In his most recent interview Farage said the EU is “the prototype for the new world order”, and “globalists have wanted to have some form of conflict with Russia as an argument for us all to surrender our national sovereignty and give it up to a higher global level”. In another interview, Farage raises the idea that the Bilderberg Group “genuinely believe in this concept of global government”.
A spokesman for the Board of Deputies for British Jews says: “It is vital that our politicians distance themselves from conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, including those who trade in antisemitic tropes. We would call on Nigel Farage to repudiate these ideas and to commit not to dignify oddball nasties like Alex Jones with his presence again.” As it happens, plans for a new Holocaust memorial centre to be built beside Parliament have won the backing today of Theresa May, David Cameron, Tony Blair and John Major.
Watch Remy pull an ace move while playing Jenga. Remy is a dog.
It was so nice to wake up to some good news this morning as it emerged that the two Reuters journalists, jailed in Myanmar for their reporting on murders by the military of 10 Rohingya men, had been freed. Wa Lone, 33 and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29 were released after a presidential amnesty from Aung San Suu Kyi. Jeremy Hunt has said: “The United Kingdom stands ready to offer further support to the Burmese civilian government to improve the rule of law in the country.”
The launch of a new ‘Wives of Westminster’ website (run by the wife of Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen and spotted by the Sun’s Hugo Gye) has certainly got people talking. Many people would say it would have benefitted from being called something more progressive (Parliamentary Partners, perhaps?), especially as the PM has a husband, not a wife. Johnny Mercer’s wife features on the site, prompting suspicions he’s joining Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab in parading their spouses as a way of boosting their leadership credentials.
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