Author: johnredwood

Since I wrote this piece it has become clear that the EU is not in the business of re-opening the Agreement at all. They have also moved away from offering more formal reassurances which seemed to be on offer in draft. Instead  more of them saying the disagreement between the Commons and the Prime Minister on the Agreement is another reason to need the backstop insurance. The Prime Minister has changed her language back to reassurances from legal  changes.

It is difficult to see the  DUP coming back on b0ard given the lack of any legal text to remove the  backstop. Were there to be a change of heart by the EU in the new year on this matter, there are still considerably  more Conservative MPs than the government  majority with the DUP  who oppose the Agreement for a wide range of reasons including sending them too much money, delaying our exit without a clear end date, and putting us under EU rules for an indeterminate period with no vote or voice on what new burdens and requirements they might impose.

On Wednesday Mrs May gained 63% support from Conservative MPs, or as Jacob Rees Mogg points out lost the support of around 70% of all those MPs who do not have some job granted to them by her. This assumes all those who express public loyalty to her in office voted accordingly. I imagine most of them did. Most of those who could not do so have already resigned.

Earlier in the day it appeared that her team was worried about the vote. She therefore changed her position on two important matters. She told us she no longer planned to lead the party into the next General election, assuming that is in 2022. There were various MPs prepared for her to carry on for a bit longer who were nonetheless saying they wanted a new leader for the election . She also told us she was returning again to the continent to seek legal changes to the Irish backstop arrangement. This was different from previous language, when in line with the EU she was talking about gaining clarifications and reassurances without changing the text of the Withdrawal Agreement.

She did not clarify if she would lead the Conservatives were there to be an earlier election. Nor did she clarify what kind of legal change she was seeking or how she will persuade the EU to re open the text of the Withdrawal Agreement. She also has said that any re opening could re open features of the Agreement like Gibraltar and fishing that some in the EU want to make worse from the UK point of view, so it is an option with risks.

What difference does this make? It has revealed to the  government and public that there are 117 Conservative MPs who lack confidence in the PM, which is largely related to their opposition to the Withdrawal Agreement she has made her own. It is therefore difficult to see how Mrs May can present her Agreement to the Commons and secure support for it. She says she plans to get a change to the Irish backstop. The first test of any new words forthcoming from the EU will be the reaction of the DUP. If the DUP do not accept the revisions as sufficient to banish the Irish backstop, the government will remain with no reliable majority, subject to endless alarms over trying to sustain its position in Commons votes. The DUP have always made clear the whole backstop has to go. Many Conservatives want it out or want a clear legal ability of the UK to cancel it unilaterally, which of course means it is not then the kind of backstop the EU insists on. The significance of the backstop is it would treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK, and would create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. I and others have made clear our opposition to the backstop, but also to several other important features of the Agreement. Even if they could delete the backstop I would still oppose the Agreement.

The Prime Minister needs to rebuild her support amongst Conservative and DUP MPs as an urgent priority. Winning the confidence vote is only a first step. She now has to adopt an EU policy that can command support within her coalition, which the current Agreement lamentably fails to do. Any attempt to find a way of harnessing Labour votes to offset the large slice of Conservative and DUP votes she does not command on this issue is likely to be a fruitless quest, given Labour’s understandable wish to have a General election and unwillingness to name a particular proposal for exit that they can unite to support. Any attempt to woo Labour would also increase the numbers of Conservative MPs who oppose the Prime Minister.

One of the sillier Project Fear scares has been that if we just leave the EU there will be no agreements in place to allow planes to fly to and from the EU  and the UK.

The Transport Secretary has recently reported that  the UK has now concluded all of the third country aviation agreements needed with non EU countries, save four small countries still to  be completed.  Those agreed include the USA, Canada, Switzerland and Israel.

Within the EU the Commission has made clear that in all circumstances including a so called No deal exit there will be an agreement between the UK and EU after Brexit allowing routine aviation to continue as before between the UK and EU.

Individual member states have also expressed a willingness to  put in place any arrangements needed to ensure continuation of air services.

As I have pointed out, leading UK and continental airlines are busy selling tickets for after March29 2019, and have every reason to suppose they will  be able to honour those contracts. People can book their business trips and holidays as normal, and expect the planes to fly subject only to the usual things that might delay or lead to flight cancellations which have nothing to do with Brexit.

Some Remain supporters have been worried that somehow it will be more difficult to travel, to visit the continent, to share cultural events or enjoy each other’s facilities and places of interest. There are no grounds to suppose there will be new restrictions. There were no visas required before we joined the EU, and none are likely to be imposed once we leave. Were the continent to refuse to recognise UK driving licences the Post Office will be able to issue acceptable international permits for £10.

Why doesn’t the BBC, keen to highlight every move of sterling as being about Brexit, tell us that the FTSE 100 is up 2.3% since 6 December, presumably because of Brexit, as they think everything else is a reaction to Brexit.

Voters were told we would make the decision on leave or stay. We were told it was a once in a generation opportunity to make this decision. This was all in the government leaflet and in the Hansard record of the Referendum Bill debates. So any second referendum would be a clear violation of past promises, bad for trust in government and politics. No-one thinks the establishment would give a second thought to a second referendum if they had won for Remain. They would have been biting and scornful in turning down any such requests from unhappy Leavers. Many of us would have accepted the result as we did for the prior one we lost where we did not ask for another for the first 20 years or so. It was only when the so called Common Market people voted for had visibly morphed into a monetary union with a planned political union on top that we sought a referendum on this fundamental change of character in the EU.

The most likely outcome of a second referendum is another win for Leave, which would presumably do nothing to appease those who lost last time and now demand another go. Were the second to narrowly reverse the first, then Leave would rightly feel cheated and would ask for best of 3.

Campaigners say we need to vote now we know the terms of exit. The truth is of course we do not have a clue what the terms of an agreed exit will be, and might not know them for 2 or 4 years were something like the Withdrawal Agreement to resurface or were there to be a delay for more talks.

Second voters also cannot agree the question to put. It is insulting to put the same question again, telling 34 million people they did not know what they were doing last time and they have to have another go.
Justine Greening and others propose a three way question – do you want to just leave, or to remain, or to have a negotiated exit. What is the third one? How can this bring the country back together again, when the winning proposal may only have 34% support? That would be a huge invitation for continued unhappiness and more debate over what a three way vote actually meant, and why the majority was thwarted.

Some say they want a vote between some negotiated agreement and remain. That means most Leave voters are disenfranchised because our preferred model is left off. Some say lets have a contest between a negotiated departure and no deal. That is the least offensive one. It is a new question. It cannot take place before there is an agreed option. It would annoy Remain enthusiasts as their option is not on the table, so it is difficult to see the point of it. Meanwhile the law says we leave on 29 March whilst Remain MPs are still trying to thwart Brexit.

I will be writing soon about how this is our best way forward. It is not “crashing out” but cashing in, as we will keep the money the EU wanted to extract via the Withdrawal Agreement.

Yesterday Mrs May at last admitted she could not win the vote. She had to accept the Withdrawal Agreement was disliked by far too many MPs.

It was therefore a curious decision to spend the first half of the campaign rushing round the UK as if appealing to voters in a General Election, and to spend most of the last week-end wooing businesses as if they had some kind of bloc vote.

The Prime Minister did not once approach me about my intentions. Maybe she accepted my view and realised she could not change it. Her Chief of Staff told me I would be invited to a one to one meeting with her which never materialised. Several other MPs I have talked to were also left alone, when the government needed every Conservative to vote with it to give it any chance of winning. They had already lost the support of the DUP.

Stirring the country up did help generate a lot of constituency and nationwide correspondence. I received more messages to oppose her Agreement than to support, and many positive messages about the approach I took in the Parliamentary debate. It also shifted opinion against the Agreement. One recent poll says 62% wanted the Agreement voted down and only 25% support it.

Mrs May implied she can get some reassurances about the Irish backstop and then try again to get it voted through the Commons. That is very unlikely, given the magnitude of the opposition to it.  There should be no doubt that this is a completely unacceptable surrender of powers and money by the UK for no good reason. This is allied to the very worrying treatment of Northern Ireland as some new country called UK (NI), to be treated differently for customs purposes and with different legislation to the rest of the UK. Even if the whole backstop was removed  completely I would not vote for this one sided and unfair Agreement, and nor would a good many other Conservative MPs. What  bargaining power would we have left for a better Future Partnership after signing away powers over laws, borders and money?

Only a large defeat will send a clear message to the EU that a few cosmetic changes to the Agreement will not be sufficient to get Parliament to change its mind, and to get them to understand we will be leaving with no Withdrawal Agreement unless they radically change their approach. The Prime Minister’s decision not to press the vote means there would have been a big defeat.

I have given Mrs May and her team plenty of advice to avoid this outcome which they have ignored. This Agreement is Mrs May’s  Agreement, and this latest Project Fear campaign was her campaign. The more they run Project Fear and the more extreme they make it, the more most of the public shrugs its shoulders and scorns politicians who mouth such nonsense. Mrs May was unclear when she would bring this Agreement back for a vote, and unclear over whether it was even feasible to get changes to the legally binding text of the Withdrawal Agreement as opposed to the less important text of the vague Political Declaration.

Many MPs are asking why Ministers were made to go out and assert that the vote would definitely take place today, and why they had to maintain the fiction they would win. This has removed confidence in Mrs May from some more MPs who used to support her.