Faiza Shaheen: We’ve been living in a Brexiteer fantasy and, worse, paying for it
There’s a deal! I mean not a “deal” deal, but some draft text on a withdrawal agreement that defines the terms of the interim arrangements while we work out our future relationship with Europe and everyone else. We will hear a lot about how this agreement is in the “national interest”, about the technicalities of leaving the customs union and about the political fallout of a deal that fudges it on Northern Ireland, but nothing about how this agreement will fix a divided and unequal UK.
The Brexit conversations to date have shown how little this government cares about tackling the challenges that led to Brexit in the first place. Alarmingly, inequality and poverty have not been mentioned once in the Brexit white papers to date. Over the next few days business leaders will be briefed at No 10, but trade unions – representing more than six million workers – will not.
As well as demonstrating the priorities of our politicians, this agreement demonstrates how little power we have when negotiating with the EU. This shouldn’t be a surprise: one country versus 27 was never going to be an equal fight. We’ve been living in a fantasy world, and while I believe the Tories have made a particular mess of it, even the best negotiators in the world couldn’t even up this power imbalance.
Focusing on the national interest would involve better policies to address the housing crisis, climate breakdown and reversing the damage done by austerity. The Tories’ Brexit is the biggest waste of time and effort and will ultimately expose just how deluded the Brexiteers are. The biggest injustice is that we all have to pay for their political drama.
• Faiza Shaheen is the director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies
Gina Miller: This passes Keir Starmer’s six tests, so what next for Labour?
The closer we come to the Greek tragedy that is Brexit, the more horrifying it is to behold. Politicians that we had hoped would eventually see sense are playing the roles they are pre-programmed to play.
Jeremy Corbyn affects to be dismayed by Theresa May’s Brexit plan – having all but manoeuvred her into this corner by his steadfast support of Brexit – and the changing will of the people seems to be the last thing on his mind. His support for Brexit has not got the support of 112 Labour constituencies – including his own – or the majority of the trade union movement. Still, he calls for a general election to give the British people a choice between the two main parties offering Brexit or Brexit.
I can’t, however, see an election happening, not least because May’s latest plan does, rather inconveniently, appear to pass the six tests for Brexit that Keir Starmer laid out, crucially, protecting workers’ rights. It is the very sort of Brexit that Corbyn said he would support at the Labour party conference earlier this year.
Corbyn has suddenly also become a champion of parliamentary sovereignty – demanding in a letter, co-signed by the leaders of Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats – that May should allow parliament to express its view on her plan and hold the government to account. Where was Corbyn when I had to take on the government in the courts to uphold parliamentary sovereignty to allow MPs a vote on article 50 in the first place?
Intelligent Tory grandees such as William Hague are, meanwhile, prepared to put their intelligence to one side, and are urging MPs to back an arrangement with the European Union that is infinitely worse than the special deal, due to our membership, that we have now. With no sense of irony, he says that the people will not take kindly to being consulted on the final proposal via a people’s vote – completely missing the fact that poll after poll, including of the 67 marginal Tory seats, shows the majority of the country does want the opportunity to review and ratify the final deal. They understand we would go from being a powerful voice in the EU to a powerless one.
These are all, however, just the games of here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians. Older and wiser heads that have gone before us drew up our constitution and our laws to protect us from ourselves. We may yet have reason to thank them.
• Gina Miller is the founder of the End the Chaos website
Joris Luyendijk: For Brussels, the stakes are huge – this deal is about future damage limitation
From an EU perspective, the draft deal agreed on Tuesday in Brussels with Britain was never a deal. It is an attempt to rein in a country that has gone rogue. In the eyes of European governments as well as the wider Brussels-based diplomatic community, the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland is now part of Trump country. Frivolous, ridiculous and, above all, unreliable.
After over two years of mixed messages, U-turns and eye-watering ineptitude, all trust in Brussels that a British government’s word is worth more than the paper a billionaire-owned tabloid is printed on has evaporated. For this reason the draft deal is above all an exercise in future damage limitation: how to prevent future British governments from cheating their way out of agreed commitments and obligations. The stakes are huge, beginning with peace in Northern Ireland and extending to the rights of EU citizens in the UK and the stability of the eurozone’s financial architecture and the wider EU economy.
One shudders to think what havoc a group of well-prepared and disciplined Brexiteers could have wreaked on the EU. Two years between notification to leave and actual departure is a long time, and the EU is only united over Brexit because the British government could never choose between hard and soft Brexit. Had it done so, unity would have fractured, particularly if the UK had gone about it in a clever way. In spite of savage cuts Britain’s diplomatic corps is still respected and feared around the EU, and for good reason.
Alas, the Brexiteers were always more interested in scoring points in the Brexit press than in fighting actual battles in Brussels and other European capitals. The “exit” brand now poisoned across the EU for at least half a decade, Brussels and EU governments have moved on. From an awkward uncle that was nonetheless part of the European family Britain has turned itself into an unreliable neighbour that is to be contained. As Donald Tusk put it right after the referendum result: we miss you already.
• Joris Luyendijk is a Dutch journalist who used to live in Britain
Henry Newman: This is a backstop-shaped Brexit, and that will limit the UK’s options
I voted to leave the EU, but the parameters of this deal were set long ago. Article 50 is designed to penalise departing members. But more importantly, the UK triggered that exit mechanism without first deciding where it wanted to end up. May began with a slim Commons majority and a split party. She then called an election that lost that majority and weakened her authority at home and in Europe.
Her divisive “citizens of nowhere” rhetoric, and refusal to guarantee EU nationals’ rights, helped crystallise divisions rather than bring people together. And despite consistently claiming that no deal would be better than a bad deal, she did too little too late to prepare for that outcome.
It wasn’t till two years after the referendum that cabinet actually agreed a vision of the post-Brexit relationship. Having been told by officials that this would unlock decisive progress, the main elements of Chequers were instead rejected by the EU at Salzburg.
Meanwhile Brussels has consistently offered the UK a false choice for Brexit. Either a trade deal for just Great Britain, dividing the UK by excluding Northern Ireland, or a relationship closer than Norway’s, which would be politically unsustainable in the medium term, entailing membership’s obligations with fewer benefits.
In December 2017, the UK reluctantly signed up to the concept of a backstop – an Irish-border insurance policy. Since then, partly as a result of the EU’s one-sided interpretation of that joint text, but also because the UK inexplicably failed to articulate what it thought it had agreed, the backstop has become the key stumbling block.
So this is a backstop-shaped Brexit. Unless the final text is very different from what is expected, the backstop will likely substantially limit the range of options for the UK. But what cabinet needs to decide is not whether it would have started from here, but whether it is willing to proceed, given that we are where we are. This doesn’t look like a deal that will pass parliament easily, and although the clock is ticking, we are not yet against a hard deadline. So my decision would be to thank the official negotiators for their work, and then send the Brexit secretary back to Brussels to get clearer safeguards for the UK in any deal.
• Henry Newman is the director of Open Europe
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