Team Brexit go to Chequers: who will survive Theresa’s away-day from hell?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/22/theresa-may-brexit-talks-chequers

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Oh to be a fly on the wall at Chequers at the lock-in from hell. Has any inner cabinet in history detested each other with such undying ferocity? These 11 are destined to disagree into eternity on the most momentous question of their lifetime.

Some day the political playwright James Graham may do justice to the scene, where white-gloved military personnel will serve the meals and may need to step in and keep the peace. Like the Bourbons, Theresa May learns nothing and forgets nothing, limitless in her political ineptitude. What made her construct this doomed crunch moment when the cabinet “must” agree – when they can’t and won’t? Her speech next week is being billed as the long-awaited revelation of what she wants, plans and expects from Brexit. It is supposed to draw on this meeting. Yet her cabinet cannot converge on an answer to the key question: how far should the UK stay converged with the EU?

Imagine them skipping out merrily together into the Buckinghamshire night, Boris linking arms with Amber, Phil slinging his arm round Liam, all a little merrier from the Chequers’ excellent cellar. Peace in our time! But if some anodyne memorandum emerges from this team-building away-day suggesting agreement, then it can only be more fudge, cake-and-eat-it and can-kicking. They can agree a menu of desirable contradictions – frictionless trade, deep partnership, no European court of justice, no customs union, a soft Irish border. If so they will have ignored the realities laid out by British ambassadors to the EU, Paris and Berlin, designed to keep their discussions within the realms of the possible.

It will mean that yet again the prime minister has avoided laying down the law, making a decision, declaring where, if anywhere, she stands. And her speech next Thursday will be as vacuous as ever. But if she finally takes her prime ministerial baton and knocks sense into the Brexiteers growing daily more extreme, she risks … well, what exactly? The “ransom note” from the 60 Rees-Moggites oddly exposes their weakness.

As their bluster takes them deeper into the political wilderness, the easier it should be for May to cut them off. If she has any red lines, surely the Brextremists crossed the most mortal one this week when they threw the Good Friday agreement under their chariot wheels. Enough, she could have cried! Jeopardising a 20-year peace deal sends the Brexitry of Mogg, Hannan, IDS and Paterson into the political wastelands. Their problem is that they can’t accept victory: they don’t know how to live without fighting a lifelong war against Europe.

Wednesday’s row about how long the transition should last reveals the real crunch point. Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote yesterday that any lengthened transition would be “a perversion of democracy”, vassalage prolonged. Never mind that the far simpler Canada-EU trade deal took five years, Japan took five years, even Georgia took four years, we must be long gone by the Tories’ real deadline: May 2022, the general election. From farming to pharma, medicines to migration, atoms, data, security and all else, a proper trade deal can’t possibly be done by then. Both UK and EU negotiators know it, so a little flexibility was left open – but the Tories have only the one date, worth jettisoning anything to reach.

Easy to see why. Voters veer away from extremists. The more they see of Moggite fanaticism, the less likely they are to vote for a hard Brexit, especially if it has crashed the Irish border. That’s why the Tory party will sacrifice anything to stop an ongoing Brexit negotiation defining the next election. They want it all over – though even once the deal is done, there will be no “moving on” as brutal Brexit realities keep unfolding, their party forever to blame. UK growth was revised down again on Thursday, back to the bottom of the G7 we topped before the referendum.

Jeremy Corbyn is now genuinely frightening them as he plays grandmothers’ footsteps, taking one step at a time closer towards an ever-softer Brexit: this week his giant step backed a customs union. That alarmed May so much that she is delaying the customs and trade bills where enough Tory rebels combined with Labour, SNP and others could vote to impose a customs union. With each step Corbyn takes, Labour looks closer to winning an election. Those 60 Moggites are a lot less threatening to May than that.

When the cabinet emerges tonight, will Liam Fox still have a job? A customs union puts a quick stop to his fantasy that faraway places could ever replace cross-channel trade. Will Boris Johnson have re-ratted, reckoning he could extract more political capital by going soft as surprise peacemaker? Might a funereal Philip Hammond be ready to walk if they have opted for economic suicide? Will anyone stagger out with a black eye? If no one is damaged and all are gorged on fudge and cake, expect no more than the empty sound of a tin can echoing down a country lane, where May will have kicked it yet again.