Post by racingteatray on Dec 5, 2020 10:00:43 GMT
So, will there be a deal?
Should there be a deal?
Thought-provoking piece by Matthew Parris in The Times today:
"Anti-Brexiteers should go down fighting
If an EU trade deal is struck, it won’t impoverish Britain but it’s still an act of national self-harm that fills me with shame.
Nothing in politics is ever more than 70 per cent certain. It may (and does) look to me as though we British are about to get a draft free trade agreement with the European Union, but prophecy here is a mug’s game. And besides, deal or no-deal, we’ll soon be trading with the EU as a “third country”: from outside their club. This is inevitable. It’s how the wind blows.
When is it right to shout against the wind? And for how long? And should that shout go out if the agreed deal is put to MPs next week?
I only know from my own life that there have been important things that could not be stopped but in which I should be ashamed to have acquiesced. “It must needs be,” say the Gospels, “that offences come: but woe to that man through whom the offence comes.” So with fierce determination millions of us — and I include Sir Keir Starmer and many in the Labour Party — resisted Brexit until at least the electorate were consulted a second time. We failed.
Slowly since then we have been backed into a corner: subjected to a sort of hard-cop/soft-cop routine where “no-deal” was brandished as a fearsome possibility, while softer cops whispered that this could be avoided if we pulled together for some kind of a deal. Now we must wonder whether to support it, or go down fighting. With a Commons vote coming next week, Labour in particular must decide this weekend whether to vote for whatever draft deal is announced, however unsatisfactory, or instead refuse to have anything to do with it.
There’s an issue of high principle here but for Labour there also exist low, opportunist arguments of political advantage. They pull both ways. “Support the Tories,” say objectors, “and Labour links itself to the impoverishment of the whole country: we become collaborators.”
“Fail to back the deal,” counters the other side, “and we kick the shins of working-class voters in marginal seats who share the Tories’ Brexit ambitions and whose support for Labour has been wavering.”
Sometimes those who argue on high principle have heads in the clouds, while scheming pragmatists are more in touch with reality. But here I think it’s the schemers who are out of touch. I’ll give you two reasons why.
First, voters will fast cease to care how Labour MPs voted in December 2020. I can remember no great political decision in recent history where the previous voting patterns of MPs stuck long in voters’ minds. I’ve had to look up whether Labour voted for or against a Brexit referendum. How many Daily Mail readers bother that the Tories, along with their newspaper, were in favour of appeasing Hitler until late in the day? Politicians and editorialisers flatter ourselves if we think the rest of Britain is taking notes.
So those who want Labour to back the government, and those who don’t, can both lay mere calculation aside. “Red wall” voters won’t be spluttering into their Rice Krispies, one way or the other. Nor will future Labour MPs be remotely inhibited from blaming Brexit on the Tories, whatever Labour does next week.
Second, I doubt that the moment will ever come when all agree that Brexit was a mistake and we argue about who voted which way in 2020. Details of this rumoured thousand-page document are still hazy, but it’s likely to be a thin thing, while bringing much irritating form-filling for cross-border trade and a continuing problem about Northern Ireland. Non-tariff barriers do hamper trade, and given the incompetence of the British state, we may expect trouble at the outset, and perhaps some lorry-jams. But these things have a habit of settling down and by this time next year we’ll just be a “third country” like much of the world, trading with the EU.
We’ll be a bit poorer, that’s all. Investment will be reduced, some businesses will move away, jobs will be lost, financial services may suffer, some openings will close and we won’t travel so freely. And the “great new trade deals” that “global Britain” was to strike will fade. But I doubt this will amount to a traumatic shock. You never do hit rock-bottom, and the wag who remarked that “there’s an awful lot of ruin in a country” spoke true. We’ll have to lower our sights somewhat but we’ll trudge on.
In its secret imagination, Remain as a political faith has harboured guilty half-thoughts of economic disaster and a gratifying opportunity for chorusing “We told you so”. I doubt this I-told-you-so moment will ever materialise. So Labour needn’t worry about queering that pitch by supporting the Tories next week.
Which leaves the opposition — and me, and many fellow former Remainers — with the issue not of consequences but of principle, as we weigh up how to meet a big approaching moment.
I have no doubt how to respond. I’m proud of our campaign for a second referendum. Brexit was always a bad idea: bad not only for our livelihoods and national wealth, but bad because, in a world racked by insecurity and division, we British forsook one of modern history’s great and noble experiments in bringing nations together; and it fills me with shame.
This draft free trade agreement would be the real Brexit. So far we only have a notional one. Now comes what is at the same time a point in history and a fiddly damage-limitation exercise for a nasty case of self-inflicted harm. And oh, I know the arguments, and MPs will hear them. “Look, it could have been so much worse. This avoids what you feared most. Isn’t that a good thing? Everyone’s sick of Brexit. This will make it go away” . . . and I see the logic.
Then I think “Don’t let go of what you believe: our country is about to lurch in the wrong direction. You know that. How can you vote for it? How can you look yourself in the eye?”. And I do wonder whether being an opposition that can look itself in the eye might not, in the end, register more with voters than long-forgotten divisions at Second Reading.
Yes, we did lose in our bid for a second referendum; and, yes, the government will win in the division lobbies next week. So, no, there’s nothing we can do to stop this. But I’m damned if we should roll over and support it.
Invited by our prime minister to salute his agreement, my right arm stays rigidly by my side. Starmer and his team must make their own choices.
Should there be a deal?
Thought-provoking piece by Matthew Parris in The Times today:
"Anti-Brexiteers should go down fighting
If an EU trade deal is struck, it won’t impoverish Britain but it’s still an act of national self-harm that fills me with shame.
Nothing in politics is ever more than 70 per cent certain. It may (and does) look to me as though we British are about to get a draft free trade agreement with the European Union, but prophecy here is a mug’s game. And besides, deal or no-deal, we’ll soon be trading with the EU as a “third country”: from outside their club. This is inevitable. It’s how the wind blows.
When is it right to shout against the wind? And for how long? And should that shout go out if the agreed deal is put to MPs next week?
I only know from my own life that there have been important things that could not be stopped but in which I should be ashamed to have acquiesced. “It must needs be,” say the Gospels, “that offences come: but woe to that man through whom the offence comes.” So with fierce determination millions of us — and I include Sir Keir Starmer and many in the Labour Party — resisted Brexit until at least the electorate were consulted a second time. We failed.
Slowly since then we have been backed into a corner: subjected to a sort of hard-cop/soft-cop routine where “no-deal” was brandished as a fearsome possibility, while softer cops whispered that this could be avoided if we pulled together for some kind of a deal. Now we must wonder whether to support it, or go down fighting. With a Commons vote coming next week, Labour in particular must decide this weekend whether to vote for whatever draft deal is announced, however unsatisfactory, or instead refuse to have anything to do with it.
There’s an issue of high principle here but for Labour there also exist low, opportunist arguments of political advantage. They pull both ways. “Support the Tories,” say objectors, “and Labour links itself to the impoverishment of the whole country: we become collaborators.”
“Fail to back the deal,” counters the other side, “and we kick the shins of working-class voters in marginal seats who share the Tories’ Brexit ambitions and whose support for Labour has been wavering.”
Sometimes those who argue on high principle have heads in the clouds, while scheming pragmatists are more in touch with reality. But here I think it’s the schemers who are out of touch. I’ll give you two reasons why.
First, voters will fast cease to care how Labour MPs voted in December 2020. I can remember no great political decision in recent history where the previous voting patterns of MPs stuck long in voters’ minds. I’ve had to look up whether Labour voted for or against a Brexit referendum. How many Daily Mail readers bother that the Tories, along with their newspaper, were in favour of appeasing Hitler until late in the day? Politicians and editorialisers flatter ourselves if we think the rest of Britain is taking notes.
So those who want Labour to back the government, and those who don’t, can both lay mere calculation aside. “Red wall” voters won’t be spluttering into their Rice Krispies, one way or the other. Nor will future Labour MPs be remotely inhibited from blaming Brexit on the Tories, whatever Labour does next week.
Second, I doubt that the moment will ever come when all agree that Brexit was a mistake and we argue about who voted which way in 2020. Details of this rumoured thousand-page document are still hazy, but it’s likely to be a thin thing, while bringing much irritating form-filling for cross-border trade and a continuing problem about Northern Ireland. Non-tariff barriers do hamper trade, and given the incompetence of the British state, we may expect trouble at the outset, and perhaps some lorry-jams. But these things have a habit of settling down and by this time next year we’ll just be a “third country” like much of the world, trading with the EU.
We’ll be a bit poorer, that’s all. Investment will be reduced, some businesses will move away, jobs will be lost, financial services may suffer, some openings will close and we won’t travel so freely. And the “great new trade deals” that “global Britain” was to strike will fade. But I doubt this will amount to a traumatic shock. You never do hit rock-bottom, and the wag who remarked that “there’s an awful lot of ruin in a country” spoke true. We’ll have to lower our sights somewhat but we’ll trudge on.
In its secret imagination, Remain as a political faith has harboured guilty half-thoughts of economic disaster and a gratifying opportunity for chorusing “We told you so”. I doubt this I-told-you-so moment will ever materialise. So Labour needn’t worry about queering that pitch by supporting the Tories next week.
Which leaves the opposition — and me, and many fellow former Remainers — with the issue not of consequences but of principle, as we weigh up how to meet a big approaching moment.
I have no doubt how to respond. I’m proud of our campaign for a second referendum. Brexit was always a bad idea: bad not only for our livelihoods and national wealth, but bad because, in a world racked by insecurity and division, we British forsook one of modern history’s great and noble experiments in bringing nations together; and it fills me with shame.
This draft free trade agreement would be the real Brexit. So far we only have a notional one. Now comes what is at the same time a point in history and a fiddly damage-limitation exercise for a nasty case of self-inflicted harm. And oh, I know the arguments, and MPs will hear them. “Look, it could have been so much worse. This avoids what you feared most. Isn’t that a good thing? Everyone’s sick of Brexit. This will make it go away” . . . and I see the logic.
Then I think “Don’t let go of what you believe: our country is about to lurch in the wrong direction. You know that. How can you vote for it? How can you look yourself in the eye?”. And I do wonder whether being an opposition that can look itself in the eye might not, in the end, register more with voters than long-forgotten divisions at Second Reading.
Yes, we did lose in our bid for a second referendum; and, yes, the government will win in the division lobbies next week. So, no, there’s nothing we can do to stop this. But I’m damned if we should roll over and support it.
Invited by our prime minister to salute his agreement, my right arm stays rigidly by my side. Starmer and his team must make their own choices.