Brexit wars
The Tories’ latest titanic battle over Europe
JAMES FORSYTHlosing the internal argument. By contrast,
the cabinet ministers pushing for EEA-
minus (who voted Remain) are upbeat.
One predicts: ‘That’s where we’ll end up.
Not in but very close.’ They believe that civil
servant Olly Robbins’s move from the Brex-
it department to No. 10 should help secure
that shift. One senior Brexit department
figure tells me: ‘Olly Robbins and Treas-
ury civil servants are in favour of EEA-lite’.
That’s why those pushing for this course are
so delighted that Robbins is working for
May. They believe his presence, and his close
relationship with the Prime Minister (they
worked together at the Home Office), will
help steer her down this path.
The EEA-minus crowd hope that the
Florence speech will advance their agenda.
One says this is a ‘crunch week’. They believe
that if Boris Johnson goes to Florence ‘he’s
dipped his hand in the blood’ and it will be
impossible for him to resign over Brexit
— at least with any credibility. But those
close to the Foreign Secretary believe that
his very public intervention against EEA-
minus, in the form of his 4,000-word article
for the Daily Telegraph a week ago, will have
helped constrain the Prime Minister. His
declaration that Britain should not pay for
access to the single market and should enjoy
‘regulatory freedom’ after Brexit, is seen by
his allies as making it ‘harder for him... but
it also makes it harder for her to go as far as
Hammond wants’.
Boris had become fed up at being cut out
of the picture: not invited to key meetings
and not allowed to use his talents properly.
The last straw was what one source close to
him describes as a ‘sneak attack’ while he
was out of the country earlier this month.
On Monday 11 September, No. 10 emailed
various cabinet ministers asking them to
hold a time two days later for a meeting with
the Prime Minister without saying what the
meeting was about. The Foreign Office said
Boris would not attend, as he would be in
the Caribbean inspecting hurricane dam-
age. Then No.10 said the meeting was about
Brexit. But still no indication was given
about its crucial importance.
Michael Gove was invited. But, as No.
would have known, he is much more relaxed
about the terms of transition than the For-
eign Secretary. Unlike Boris, he’s been
comfortable for a while about making mem-T
he time for choosing is fast approach-
ing for Theresa May. Soon she must
make a decision that will define
her premiership and her country’s future.
The past few days have shown how hard,
if not impossible, it will be for her to keep
her entire cabinet on board with whatever
EU deal she signs. It is imperative that she
now picks what kind of Brexit she wants.
But doing so will risk alienating — or even
losing — various cabinet members. She has
been trying to blur the lines for months,
but as one of those closely involved in this
drama warns: ‘She can’t fudge this forev-
er.’ Another participant in the struggle says:
‘She’s got to decide who she wants sitting
round the cabinet table.’
Mrs May had planned to reveal the
next part of her Brexit plan in her speech
in Florence, but the political tussle started
long before she left for Italy. We have seen
the Foreign Secretary defying his boss, then
being attacked by the Home Secretary,
while Brexiteer cabinet ministers were
forced to deny that they had agreed to
resign en masse. Yet these are merely the
opening skirmishes in the latest battle of the
Tories’ 50-odd-year civil war over Europe.
The Brexit referendum did not settle this
question; it just redefined it. This battle now
threatens to be the bloodiest.
The cabinet is split between those who
want to stay as close as possible to the EU
single market, copying regulations and
transposing European Court judgments
where necessary, and those who want to
chart a more independent course and go for
a free-trade agreement with the EU based
on the one recently struck by Canada. A
basic (and reasonable) question hangs in the
air: what does Britain want? Yet the govern-
ment has managed three rounds of Brexit
talks with the EU without saying which is its
preferred option.
This is not a clever negotiating tactic
borne out of a desire to keep Brussels guess-
ing. Rather, it is a consequence of the gov-
ernment not knowing the answer. It might
seem remarkable, incredible even, that more
than a year after the referendum and almost
six months after Article 50 was triggered, the
cabinet cannot agree. But it is true. Barely
a week ago a ministerial meeting about the
Florence speech broke up without agree-
ment because Michael Gove had concerns
about the ‘end state’ that it indicated. No
one in the cabinet disputes that Britain must
leave the EU single market. Free movement
of people — the price of single market mem-
bership — is out of the question after the
Brexit vote. But a close second to single
market membership is being proposed. This
would involve Britain ending free move-
ment, but doing everything else it can to stay
in regulatory alignment with the EU’s inter-
nal market: what one cabinet minister calls
EEA-minus (meaning European Economic
Area). Britain would have something close
to internal market membership on condition
that it would not diverge from the EU on an
issue without prior agreement.
To Brexiteers inside government, this
removes one of the main points of leaving:
the chance to chart a different course on
issues such as the economy and techno-
logical and medical research. One laments:‘They’ll have us over a barrel for ever more.
It is the opposite of taking back control.’
Critics complain that this plan ‘is coming
from a place of trying to keep everything
the same as far as possible’. They fear Brexit
might not mean Brexit after all.
But the EEA-minus crowd — led by
Chancellor Philip Hammond and Cabinet
Secretary Jeremy Heywood (one thing that
Brexit should explode is the myth that the
civil service are impartial actors) — are
the ones with their tails up. Talking to keen
Brexiteers in the past few days I have sensed
an immense nervousness about where things
are going. There is a general feeling that they
are being successfully cast as zealots and areMore than a year after the referendum
the cabinet cannot agree what kind
of deal they want with the EU