The Chequers deal for Brexit is dead — so is it this May, that May or the highway?
THE Chequers deal is a dud. It will not deliver Brexit.
David Davis and Boris Johnson showed real leadership and courage in giving up their Cabinet seats after the Prime Minister went back on her commitment that “Brexit means Brexit”.
The pair enjoy much warm support not only on the back benches, but in the country at large for standing up for what the Conservatives promised voters in their manifesto.
Now the Prime Minister finds herself on the horns of a difficult dilemma.
She either has to do another U-turn — and this would not be her first by any means — and get back to what she promised in her Lancaster House speech in January last year.
Her alternative is to rely on support from the Opposition benches to push her Chequers deal through.
Depending on Labour votes will sit very uneasily with her own MPs as well as Conservative voters.
Having accidentally completed a Cabinet reshuffle herself this week, which is now unnecessarily top-heavy with Remainers, it would be a brave Prime Minister who pushes for a Brexit deal even further away from the one she originally promised without the support of her wider party.
A government that depends upon the Opposition to get its business through is like the gingerbread man on the back of the fox crossing the river.
At the end of the journey it gets eaten.
Back during the Lancaster House speech, you will recall Mrs May was clear that she did not want some “half-in, half-out” system.
Alas, her Chequers deal flatly contradicts this, leaving Britain as a rule-taker, rather than a rule-maker.
By accepting what the Europeans call the “Acquis Communautaire” of food and goods we will be tied to the EU’s rulebook.
This is the accumulated body of EU law and obligations from 1958 to date, generally estimated to be around 80,000 items.
This “Acquis” will make it difficult to accept high-quality goods from around the world because of obstruction by bureaucrats.
Another term used in the agreement — the Common Rulebook — is also misleading because our rules will be effectively subject to the European Court of Justice.
We will be in the same position as we are now, having either to impose those rules or be penalised for not doing so.
The customs processes will make us a tax collector for the European Union.
By agreeing to the Chequers deal we will still be sending large sums to the EU and opening ourselves up to enforcement action.
The EU is already threatening to impose a billion euro fine on the UK for not collecting taxes properly on Chinese textiles.
The Prime Minister keeps on promising that freedom of movement will come to an end.
Yet one of the conclusions of the Chequers document seems to be the freedom of movement opening up again.
In her statement on Monday, the Prime Minister was saying: “No, no, no — don’t worry, that’s not what it means.”
Sadly, her track record on promising one thing and doing another makes people concerned.
The 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs gave the Prime Minister a rousing reception on Monday night.
Yet it is delusional to think that sycophantic questions at the meeting are indicative of the mood of the party.
The committee always cheers the Prime Minister... before people go outside afterwards, huddling together and saying how badly things are going. Monday was no exception.
Anybody who trusts cheers from the committee should remember the standing ovations Iain Duncan Smith got at the Tory Party conference three weeks before he left office.
What is more, the meeting of the European Research Group — a body I chair — was the best attended yet this week.
It was impossible to ignore the mood of sadness pervading the room as well as the feeling that a trust had been breached.
There is a view — and I have heard it from Michael Gove — that we should get any form of legal Brexit that we can get, however poorly negotiated, then improve it afterwards. However, this is fanciful because once an international treaty has been signed and is then brought into effect in domestic law, reopening it again is not going to be of interest to the European Union or to Parliament.
Some people are saying we would be better with no deal.
Instead, I favour a WTO deal, where we trade with the EU on the same basis we trade with the rest of the world.
WTO trading — under the rules of the World Trade Organisation — is amazingly efficient and would be preferable to the vassal state that Mrs May now appears to want.
The legal building blocks for a WTO deal are already in place because the Withdrawal Act is the law.
Under Article 50, if nothing else happens we will leave the EU on March, 29, 2019, on WTO terms.
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The advantages of Brexit are that we are free to make our own and better rules.
We will be competitive, have a more open economy and will be more prosperous, rather than shackling ourselves to a failed European model that has high unemployment — particularly among young people — in southern Europe.
- Jacob Rees-Mogg is Conservative MP for North East Somerset.