The Guardian view on the Brexit white paper: encouraging delusions
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Version 0 of 1. The government’s much anticipated white paper on Brexit tells the country nothing and everything about the most important foreign policy decision to face Britain for decades. Most of what is in its 77-pages is a souped up version of Theresa May’s speech last month. It retails the idea that a trade deal could be swiftly done which grants the UK all the benefits of EU membership with few of the costs. The white paper is so full of platitudes and empty rhetoric that it contains a passage that states Britain in Europe remained sovereign, but it did not always feel that way. That might call for national therapy sessions rather than the electroshock treatment prescribed by Brexit. Contained within the document is a bigger truth: that government is engaging in a troubling form of politics, where ministers can pursue their interest without compromise. The executive has revealed nothing but contempt for institutional parliamentary forms. The white paper offers no scrutiny, no mechanisms to hold ministers to account, no ways of influencing the Brexit process. Such is the dizzying madness of these times that parliamentarians quote, to knowing laughs, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Another line from that book that comes to mind is “here it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. Next week MPs get a chance to amend the bill to trigger article 50. It’s a parliamentary affair that to some extent is choreography. The mood music suggests that rebels will get to tango a little. Ministers, it is said, will give assurances over European Union citizens’ right to stay in Britain. Another distinct possibility is that ministers will return, at a time that suits them, to the Commons to update MPs on Brexit negotiations. What the government seeks to avoid is a confrontation in which Tory rebels find common cause with Labour. In this ministers are lucky in having a Labour party that is depressingly dissolving into squabbling factions. The party leadership says it will not block article 50. That means little: this week shadow cabinet ministers voted against the whip but were not sacked. Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary and leadership loyalist, didn’t turn up for the key vote, saying she was ill. The party’s chief whip plainly has no authority in the parliamentary party – he can hardly discipline MPs, let alone his own whips who voted against Labour’s leadership. Three times now Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn on three key issues – Syria, Trident and Brexit – has been unable to get his troops behind him. To be fair, cutting the gordian knot of Brexit would involve devising a parliamentary strategy that can satisfy simultaneously remain Labour voters in the big cities and leave Labour voters in the north. Labour has to go beyond the standard repertoire of arguments, which comes across as nothing but an apology for the status quo. For this the party needs a new moral language about Britain’s departure from Europe. Mr Corbyn should recall the sage advice of cricket legend David Gower, who noted: “You can make plans, but if the opposition plays well, then all your plans become worthless.” This may be beyond Mr Corbyn or it may suit his own political position. At the moment Mr Corbyn has ended up backing Mrs May’s position of exiting Europe by leaving the single market. He differs only that he appears to be more welcoming to immigrants than she is. If Mr Corbyn is still above the fray, but not in it next week, then he risks obsolescence. The leaderless revolt over the bill will grow on Labour’s benches. There are many Labour MPs, like the shadow business secretary, Clive Lewis, who threaten to rebel if the proposed amendments – to hold the government to account for Brexit’s economic vandalism – do not satisfy them. Britain’s departure from the EU is being driven by what Labour’s Angela Eagle correctly describes as the “most hallucinatory of the Eurosceptic nostalgics in the Tory party (who) dream of a frictionless divorce with no real consequences”. Mrs May is in thrall to her own headbangers. That is why the white paper talks about a vote on the terms of a final Brexit deal but leaves open the question: what if there is no deal? This allows Tory Brexiters to indulge the magical thinking of a Britain unchained from Europe by a hard Brexit. The government peddles the fantasy of a tax haven, regulation-lite British lion prowling global markets. It’s a delusion encouraged by ministers who suggest Europe is secretly terrified of dealing with such a beast. Labour and Tory rebels should not fall for this circus – and should profitably join hands over the issue. Else they face endorsing a disaster brought about by government distraction and hubris. |