A senior Tory MP behind cross-party efforts to block a no-deal Brexit has said parliament has now run out of options for preventing the UK from crashing out of the EU after the defeat of Labour’s motion.
Oliver Letwin, a former cabinet minister, was among the signatories to a Labour-led attempt to tie the next prime minister’s hands by ruling out no deal. It was defeated by 11 votes after eight Labour MPs voted with the government and 13 abstained, cancelling out 10 Conservative rebels who voted with Labour.
The defeat means parliament has now exhausted the options for preventing a no-deal exit, according to Letwin. “We have run out of all the possibilities that any of us can at the moment think of,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The interviewer Nick Robinson pointed out that MPs could not block a no-deal exit happening by default if no legislation was put before parliament.
In a ‘no deal’ scenario, the UK would leave the single market and the customs union immediately with no ‘divorce’ arrangement in place. The European Court of Justice would cease to have jurisdiction over the UK, and the country would also leave various other institutions including Euratom and Europol.
The UK would no longer be paying into the EU budget, nor would it hand over the £39bn divorce payment. There would be no transition period. Free movement of people into the UK from the EU27 would stop.
Trade between the UK and the EU would be governed by basic WTO rules. The UK government has already indicated that it will set low or no tariffs on goods coming into the country. This would lower the price of imports - making it harder for British manufacturers to compete with foreign goods. If the UK sets the tariffs to zero on goods coming in from the EU, under WTO ‘most favoured nation’ rules it must also offer the same zero tariffs to other countries.
WTO rules only cover goods - they do not apply to financial services, a significant part of the UK’s economy. Trading under WTO rules will also require border checks, which could cause delays at ports, and a severe challenge to the peace process in Ireland without alternative arrangements in place to avoid a hard border.
Some ‘No Deal’ supporters have claimed that the UK can use Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) to force the EU to accept a period of up to ten years where there are no tariffs while a free trade agreement (FTA) is negotiated. However, the UK cannot invoke Article 24 unilaterally - the EU would have to agree to it. In previous cases where the article has been used, the two sides had a deal in place, and it has never been used to replicate something of the scale and complexity of the EU and the UK’s trading relationship.
Until some agreements are in place, a ‘no deal’ scenario will place extra overheads on UK businesses - for example the current government advice is that all drivers, including lorries and commercial vehicles, will require extra documentation to be able to drive in Europe after 31 October if there is no deal. Those arguing for a ‘managed’ no deal envisage that a range of smaller sector-by-sector bilateral agreements could be quickly put into place as mutual self-interest between the UK and EU to avoid introducing or rapidly remove this kind of bureaucracy.
Letwin said: “That’s an extremely good summary of the situation, alas.” He added: “If the government doesn’t bring something before parliament, parliament won’t have a chance to take a view on that.”
He played down the prospect of Tory MPs voting down their own government to prevent no deal. Letwin said: “Evidently that’s not something any of us want to do.”
He added: “I’m not confident as things stand that the current Labour leadership would know how to solve this crisis either.”
Letwin said he was not sure if Boris Johnson, the frontrunner for the Conservative leadership, was a “no-deal Brexiteer”. He conceded Johnson was “clearly quite likely” to become the next prime minister.
The former Conservative MP Nick Boles, who flew back to the UK to vote with Labour on Wednesday, also conceded that opponents of a no-deal departure were fast running out of options, apart from a confidence vote to bring down the government.
He said: “No-deal Brexit on 31 October is back to being a racing certainty. It is very hard to see where any further legislative opportunities will come from. So it’s now a question of politics – specifically whether a PM pursuing a no-deal Brexit can command and sustain the confidence of the House of Commons.”
