27 March 2018

Fed Trust: Labour's Brexit options: Starmer's step in the right direction

[...]The Labour Party seemed finally to be resolving its studied ambiguity in European policy by a more or less grudging acceptance of Brexit, with occasional attempts to outbid the Conservative government on its nationalist flank.

Perhaps because he was aware that this new clarity was unattractive to many potential and actual Labour supporters, Sir Keir made yesterday an important speech, at the very least reasserting the ambiguity of current Labour policy on Europe and possibly implying considerably more. In his speech to electrical engineers in Birmingham, Sir Keir made it clear that the Labour Party is still hopeful of being able to vote down, in alliance with other Parliamentary parties and a handful of Conservative rebels, any bill on the terms for Brexit that Mrs May is likely to put to the House of Commons later this year. The expression of this hope is not new, but in Birmingham Sir Keir went further, contradicting the apparently plausible claim of the government and its supporters that rejection of Mrs May’s terms for Brexit would simply lead to the UK’s automatically leaving the EU on 29th March, 2019. In the event of such a rejection, Sir Keir believes that Parliament should not allow itself to be bound by the mechanistic deadlines of the Article 50 process.  In his own words, “it would then be for Parliament to say what happens next.” More precisely, the government should not be allowed by Parliament simply to do nothing and passively await the arrival of 29th March, 2019, when by the normal operation of the Lisbon Treaty the UK will leave the European Union.

It is new and welcome that Sir Keir has now drawn attention to the need for Parliament, if it does vote down the government’s terms for Brexit, to have a clear idea of how it wishes to proceed thereafter. There is force in the Eurosceptic argument that the Brexit process, triggered by Mrs May in 2017, now has a legal momentum of its own that cannot simply be ignored. Sir Keir’s proposal and that of the Labour Party is however the disappointing one that Parliament should compel the government to “go back to the negotiating table and secure a better deal that works for Britain.”  It is a great pity that having made a worthwhile advance in clarifying his overall political analysis of the Brexit process, Sir Keir should then deliver himself of such a cloudy and misleading utterance. [...]

The options for Parliament

In reality, Parliament has three viable options for proceeding after a negative vote on the Brexit terms. It can withdraw the Article 50 notification altogether; it can seek to restructure the Brexit negotiations in a way that goes well beyond the populist mantra of seeking a “better deal”; or it can hold a further referendum on the proposed Brexit terms. In his speech yesterday, Sir Keir reiterated the Labour Party’s commitment to “respecting” the result of the referendum in 2016. It will have been a disappointment to many in his Party that he made no reference to increasing doubts about the legitimacy and even legality of many aspects of that referendum. It seems however extremely unlikely that the necessary support could be mobilized in the Labour Party towards the end of this year simply to reverse the Brexit process by withdrawing the Article 50 notification.

There is however an element of Sir Keir’s speech which might be seen as laying the foundations for a restructuring of the whole Brexit negotiation process, the second option for Parliament later this year after a vote against the Brexit terms of the Conservative government.   Particularly in the context of the controversy surrounding the Irish border, Sir Keir stressed Labour’s commitment to maintaining British membership of a Customs Union with the EU and strongly hinted that British withdrawal from the Customs Union might be a ground for Labour to oppose the Brexit terms presented to Parliament. It would be logically and politically open to the Labour Party in the autumn of this year to press for an instruction to be given to the British government not merely generally to renegotiate the Brexit terms, but specifically to incorporate into the divorce agreement British membership of the Customs Union. This change of British stance would certainly be congenial to our European partners. A consensual extension of the Article 50 negotiating period might well become a realistic possibility in those circumstances.

It must be doubted however whether a Conservative government would ever be willing to be part of a Customs Union with the European Union. It is an essential part of the Eurosceptic case in the United Kingdom that unshackled from the European Customs Union the United Kingdom will be free to trade in future more successfully with non-European countries. [...]

Guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens, continuing contributions to the EU budget and the transition period are all propositions which the European Research Group and its sympathizers have been willing reluctantly to accept. Remaining in the Customs Union would certainly be a bridge too far for the Conservative Party as a whole.

There are those in the Labour Party who hope that voting down the Conservative government’s Brexit proposals will inevitably lead to a General Election. This may well be a miscalculation. There are a number of Conservative backbenchers sympathetic to the concept of remaining in the Customs Union, but few if any of them would be prepared to put this cause above that of party loyalty. No Conservative who voted on a European issue in a way leading to the fall of a Conservative government could hope to stand as a Conservative in the succeeding General Election. Only a few Conservative MPs believe it is more important for the UK to remain in the Customs Union than to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister. In any vote of confidence relating to European issues, even if the immediate controversy is the Customs Union, Mrs May would be overwhelmingly likely to retain her majority in the House of Commons. Conservative strategists have good reason for believing that they can weather attempts to bring down their government through a direct assault by Labour on its European policy.

A more insidious, but perhaps more successful line of attack for Labour would be that of the last mentioned option, that of a referendum on the proposed Brexit terms. It would be doubtful whether Mrs May’s government could survive a popular vote against the result of her European negotiations. It would however be much easier for Conservative MPs to support a Labour call for such a referendum than unambiguously to bring about the destruction of their own government. There already appears a crystallization of opinion among the different anti-Brexit groups inside and outside Parliament that the result of the referendum in 2016 can only be reversed by another referendum held on the basis of more precise and realistic options for British withdrawal from the European Union. [...]

Full analysis

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