It was billed as the meeting which would finally unite the Conservative government around a shared vision for Brexit, a vision which very much bore the stamp of Prime Minister Theresa May. She called the meeting at Chequers (the country home of the Prime Minister – think Mar-a-Lago but without the golf and actual work happening) on Friday for all Cabinet Ministers with stern instructions that no one was allowed to leave until agreement had been reached. Reportedly, ministers were told that taxis would be waiting outside for any of them that felt the need to resign. Her aim was to finally agree proposals for Brexit that can be presented to the EU negotiators, following months of deadlock and public wrangling.
The main issues
As set out in my previous blog, there are a number of thorny issues that need to be resolved before Brexit, and ideally before October, to allow the final deal to be drafted and presented to member countries (including the UK) for approval. The EU negotiators are waiting, none too patiently, for a detailed proposal from the UK government which will allow an agreement to be negotiated.
Unfortunately, it’s proven impossible to date for ministers to agree a way forward. ‘Hard’ Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary), David Davis (Secretary of State for Exiting the EU) and Michael Gove (Environment Secretary) insist that the only Brexit which will deliver what the people actually voted for is one in which we leave the customs union, leave the single market and take back control of our borders. A clean break which will enable us to negotiate a future trade deal with the EU based on mutual benefit. Ministers favouring a softer Brexit want a deal which will maintain access to the single market, heeding the increasingly strident concerns from business that any restrictions on free trade would have a catastrophic impact on our economy, not to mention the provision of essentials such as medicine. All agree that a ‘no deal’ scenario would be the worst outcome, and also agree that any deal must avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The meeting
In advance of the Chequers meeting, the Prime Minister distributed a draft of her proposal to the Cabinet. A ‘livid’ Michael Gove apparently physically ripped up the papers, so angry was he that his concerns had not been addressed. So the omens were not good as ministers headed for Chequers on Friday. A day of intense negotiation ensued, and to the surprise of many, ended in an agreement and an intact Cabinet with no taxis required.
The key points of the final agreement are:
- Harmonisation on goods – The UK would maintain a ‘common rulebook’ for goods with the EU, with the UK parliament reserving the right to refuse to apply new rules while accepting any refusal would mean restriction of access to the EU market
- Less harmonisation on services – a looser arrangement, with an acknowledgment that this will involve less mutual access to markets than currently
- A combined customs territory – with the UK applying UK tariffs for goods intended for the UK and EU tariffs for goods intended to travel to the EU. Crucially, this would prevent border disruption while allowing us to still set our own tariffs for trade with the rest of the world and avoid a hard border in Ireland.
- A ‘joint institutional framework’ – so UK courts would theoretically maintain supremacy over UK law, but would have ‘due regard’ to EU caselaw in areas covered by the common rulebook.
The plan received a cautious welcome from business and others concerned about the UK’s future trading relationship with Brussels but Boris Johnson is reported to have claimed that defending the plans was like ‘polishing a turd’. There was also a chorus of protest from the more Eurosceptic MPs, with the plan being described as ‘the worst of all worlds’. Despite that, the Cabinet did appear reluctantly united for once over the weekend. But as we know, a week(end) is a long time in politics…
The end of consensus
Cabinet harmony lasted all the way until Monday morning when David Davies quit as Brexit minister, to return to the back benches as a mere constituency MP (See below for an explanation of how such things work in the UK). In his resignation letter, he expressed his doubts that the plan would return control of UK laws to parliament and claimed that May needed ‘an enthusiastic believer’ rather than a ‘reluctant conscript’ in the job. Two junior ministers followed him out. His exit was swiftly followed by that of Boris Johnson, resigning his post of Foreign Secretary. In his letter, he claimed the Brexit dream was dying, ‘suffocated by needless self-doubt’. He also wrote that at Chequers he had agreed that the government had a ‘song to sing’ to sell the new plan but: ‘I have practiced the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.’
The resignation of two of the four most important government ministers is a major blow to May’s government – the last time it happened was 1982 at the start of the Falklands crisis that saw Britain go to war with Argentina [the penguin war -ED]. The resignations also fuelled speculation regarding the future of the government – would it trigger a leadership challenge? Was this the first round in an attempt by Johnson to take over from May? Could that lead to another snap election?
To date, the spectre of such high drama appears to have receded. The Prime Minister gave an impassioned defence of her plan to Parliament on Monday afternoon and, by all accounts, an equally impassioned defence of her government to the influential 1922 committee of backbench MPs in the evening. She warned them that any challenge to her leadership could end with a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn – a prospect that seemed sufficiently awful to quell any rebellion. For now. May rapidly reshuffled her ministerial team, with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt moving to the Foreign Office while former attorney general Dominic Raab steps up to take charge of Brexit.
The fact that Theresa May is clinging on as Prime Minister, for now, highlights the problems faced by potential mutineers. While there are a vocal minority of MPs strongly opposed to the government’s softer Brexit strategy, they don’t appear to have the support of enough backbench MPs to win a challenge. So, absent an outcry from the public or further resignations, May looks set to soldier on. Her next big challenge will be selling her plan to the EU. If they reject her approach then her position will again be under threat.
In better news, my footballing analogy gets ever weaker as the country rallies behind the England team as they fight through to the semifinals of the World Cup for the first time since 1990. Victories over Columbia and Sweden have set up our showdown with Croatia on Wednesday evening. While final plans to leave the EU look as shaky as ever, the country is convinced that, finally, football is coming home.
Explanation: how the UK government works
Following a general election, the leader of the party with the largest number of elected Members of Parliament (MPs) is invited by the Queen to form a government. This may involve negotiating a coalition or other agreement (as with the current deal between the Conservatives and the DUP) but usually, the main party can govern alone. The leader of the party becomes Prime Minister and selects Secretaries of State to run the 25 government departments and together they comprise the Cabinet. These are almost always MPs and do not need to be experts – so the Secretary of State for Education does not need to have a background in education for example. The necessary expertise is provided by career civil servants in each department. The PM will then appoint more MPs to junior ministerial posts within each department. Ministers are entitled to sit on the front bench in the House of Commons, hence the term ‘frontbenchers’ while rank and file MPs sit behind them (the ‘backbenchers’).
As ministers do not have a particular specialism, they commonly move between departments throughout their political careers; such movements are referred to as cabinet reshuffles. They may also return to the back benches and different MPs can be promoted. The power to bestow, and remove, high profile appointments is a major power in the Prime Minister’s arsenal and is used to both reward loyalty and ability and to head off potential opponents within the party. The old adage certainly is true here – keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
In the end, the Prime Minister only remains in power if they have the support of the backbenchers and each party has a process for triggering a leadership challenge and subsequent election of a new leader and therefore a new Prime Minister. Wise leaders will always try to keep their MPs happy, which is why sending two disgruntled, and influential, former ministers to the back benches where they can potentially foment rebellion could be a problem for Theresa May.
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