You had to admire the sang-froid. Just 24 hours after returning from the Brexit negotiations in Brussels where he’d spent the entire working dinner being asked: “Are you having a laugh?” and “What planet are you on?” in a variety of European languages, Geoffrey Cox was back in the Commons looking entirely unruffled to face attorney general questions. Top lawyers have to get used to winning and losing. The secret is being able to dress up the losses as successes. Something at which Cox is a dab hand.
If Cox was bewildered that the EU had proved resistant to his baritone – normally he only has to open his mouth to have people eating out of his hand – he didn’t show it. Rather he settled straight into his familiar patter. He was only here to serve. Though sadly, it broke his heart to say this, that he was bound by legal convention to be unhelpful.
But he was committed – he dabbed away a tear at this point – to giving the house what it needed. In so far as he could. For now, all he could say was that it was a shame Johnny Foreigner had so far been disobliging. Not to have been offered even the smallest sweetener was the very height of rudeness. The sort of thing that had caused major wars in the past. Cox took a deep breath. Duty called. Noblesse oblige. So he would return to Brussels shortly to continue discussions.
Challenged by Labour’s Helen Goodman to say whether he was still trying to reopen the withdrawal agreement or just hoping to get some minor form of soothing words that might allow him to revise his legal opinion on the binding nature of the Northern Ireland backstop, Cox was indignant. “It’s come to be called ‘Cox’s Codpiece’,” he said, to nervous laughter. “What I am concerned to ensure is that what’s inside the codpiece is in full working order.” Brexit reduced to a series of knob jokes.
This didn’t entirely answer the question. Were the contents of the codpiece too small to be seen except under a microscope? Or were they largely a load of balls? The SNP’s Patrick Grady was far from convinced, observing that as the attorney general wasn’t going to be able to change a word of the withdrawal agreement there didn’t appear to be much hope of Theresa May’s Brexit deal getting voted through second time round.
The plans for the vote were not his to decide, Cox declared loftily. But as far as he was concerned the proposals he had been discussing were careful and coherent. As clear as day. He just couldn’t understand why the EU were being so wilfully unreasonable. It was perfectly obvious that if the UK was not prepared to break its own red lines then the EU would have to abandon theirs. What could be more straightforward than that?
These were difficult times, he conceded. But cometh the hour, cometh the Cox. And he was happy to lead his country in its time of peril. He very much hoped he would one day soon be in a position to change his legal opinion to the government’s advantage, but that time had not yet come. But if it did, he would pleased to come back to the house to update it. He sounded like a barrister who was expecting his client to get a long prison sentence.
Brexiter Mark Francois still wasn’t happy. Then he never is. Neither was the shadow solicitor general, Nick Thomas-Symonds. Given the attorney general was now leading the negotiations and would then be pronouncing on their legal implications, wasn’t this the equivalent of marking his own homework? “The law is the law,” he boomed. And besides he could see which way the wind was blowing. Brexit was such a shambles that a Chilcot-style enquiry was sure to follow, and he wasn’t about to sacrifice his reputation just to get the prime minister’s second-rate deal over the line. No matter how much she begged.
Still the questions came in. Labour’s Hilary Benn, chair of the Brexit select committee, tried to discover whether the government was also proposing to change the existing arbitration mechanisms for the backstop. “Ah!”, Cox nodded. That was entirely dependent on what question one wanted to ask of the arbitration mechanism, because the question asked might very well determine if the protocol was effective. Everyone looked blank. It was the kind of non-answer lawyers are paid a fortune to give.
After briefly lamenting the stupidity of cabinet colleagues Karen Bradley and Chris Grayling – he would leave them to their own legal scrapes – Cox brought the proceedings to a close. He once more regretted he was legally bound to be unhelpful, but if it were to emerge that he could be helpful in a way that was also helpful to him then he might break with legal convention. We’d all just have to wait and see. Cox sighed. This pro bono work for the government might be good for the soul, but it was a lot more trouble than it was worth. Note to self. Don’t answer the phone the next time the prime minister rings.
