After the fiasco in Brussels, we had the fantasy in the Commons as David Davis set about explaining the government’s Brexit plan in response to an urgent question from Labour’s Keir Starmer. Though plan might have been putting it too kindly. The whole reason the Brexit secretary found himself in the line of fire was the apparent absence of any plan. With the clock ticking, many MPs are beginning to get visibly nervous about the government’s insistence on making it up as it goes along.
“We are in the middle of an ongoing round,” said Davis, his voice so hoarse from talking to himself – he is increasingly finding that no one else is listening to him – that “round” sounded more like “row”. Which would have had the benefit of being rather more accurate. This round/row hadn’t been concluded – who would have guessed? – but there was much common understanding. Mainly that the UK government was so confused, it was now managing to fall out with people on its own side as well as the EU’s.
Starmer tried to make things as simple as possible for Davis. To save the prime minister any further embarrassment, how about she gave up the pretence that the UK could leave the single market and the customs union and not have some form of hard border with Northern Ireland? And while she was about it, she should think twice about making any further concessions to the DUP. Ian Paisley started ostentatiously flexing his biceps on the DUP benches, just to remind the government who really held the power.
This was all getting very repetitive, Davis observed. He was right about that, at least. We’d been here countless times before with the government being called to explain some part of Brexit that it didn’t fully understand itself.
But the Brexit secretary was determined to be as obliging as possible. When the government had said it was looking for some kind of regulatory alignment to smooth over the Northern Ireland border problem, it had never meant for anyone to think this alignment should apply just to Northern Ireland. Oh no! Irish pigs and cheese would be just as welcome to swim their way to Scotland and England without any need to carry passports.
What everyone had to remember was that alignment did not entail any harmonisation with the EU. That would be convergence, which would be unacceptable. Rather, we would have a number of regulations that would look very much like the EU regulations but would be special British ones. What could possibly go wrong?
Davis sat down to near silence from both his own and the opposition benches. Mainly because no one was quite sure whether to laugh or cry. At best, the Brexit secretary had suggested the UK become a puppet state of the EU, with all the burdens of enforcing regulations that it could play no part in writing.
At worst, he had shown himself to be completely delusional. If alignment didn’t mean harmonisation, why on earth should the EU trust Britain not to diverge at some point in the future?
It wasn’t long, though, before MPs found their voice. Jeremy Corbyn and senior members of the shadow frontbench team might have their doubts about the benefits of the single market and customs union, but almost the entire Labour backbench – with the exception of Kate Hoey – along with Tories Anna Soubry and Antoinette Sandbach don’t. One after the other, they begged the Brexit secretary to do the sensible thing.
Davis shook his head. The British people had voted to leave the single market and the customs union and that was that. Oh no they hadn’t, Luciana Berger and others pointed out. Oh yes they had, David huffed, throwing his papers on to the dispatch box in a fit of pique. And if the country wanted to be worse off, then it was his sacred duty to deliver on their wishes.
Even this wasn’t enough to reassure the hardline Tory Brexiters who repeatedly reminded Davis that no deal was far better than agreeing to one the EU found acceptable. The only good EU was a dead EU. The Brexit secretary retreated grumpily into his shell, becoming ever more monosyllabic. He was fed up with getting flak from both sides. Why couldn’t they understand that although there were loads of fake Father Christmases out there, there was still definitely a real one? In his imagination.
