For
the first time in Britain, we have a Prime Minister who intends to
make us poorer
There
is no easy way round the hard choice facing the Prime Minister, her
Government and her country – access to the single market
John Rentoul
@johnrentoul
Saturday 16 July
2016
Ne, nej, nee, no,
ei, non, nein, ochi, nem, le, nie, nao, nu, nej. That is “no” in
the official languages of the European Union, except Irish, which
doesn’t have words for “yes” and “no”. Never say this
column doesn’t do original research. It is what David Davis,
Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, is going to hear a lot over
the next three years.
The negotiations
will be hard. The other countries of the EU are not going to allow
Britain to exclude itself from the free movement of EU workers while
keeping free access to the single market. Something will have to
give.
This will split the
country, but on slightly different lines from the 52-48 per cent
division in the referendum. The Labour Party is already mobilising
the “48 per cent” behind the twin demands of keeping Britain in
the single market and a second referendum.
Read more
Brexit: Theresa
May says Article 50 will not be activated before 'UK approach'
decided
Now she's
announced her cabinet, it's time to admit that having Theresa May as
prime minister is good for feminism
Theresa May’s
Cabinet: New Prime Minister praised for having lowest number of
privately-educated ministers in over 70 years
By the Labour Party
I do not mean Jeremy Corbyn. He demanded that the Government, then
still led by David Cameron, triggered Article 50 – the formal
two-year process for leaving the EU – on the morning after the
referendum.
But most of the
party, being rather more viscerally defensive of Britain’s EU
membership, has gravitated to fighting a rearguard action. Delay
Article 50. Keep us in the single market. Demand a second referendum.
Those are the
positions taken by Owen Smith and Angela Eagle, Corbyn’s two
challengers for the leadership. But also by Chuka Umunna and Alastair
Campbell, organising the campaign to hold the Leave campaign to
account for what they regard as the impossible promises it made
during the referendum.
It is not just
Labour, though. May’s own Government is also divided. Two of her
most senior cabinet ministers, Philip Hammond and Jeremy Hunt, say
that staying in the single market is more important than controlling
immigration. Hammond, three days after the referendum, said: “I
believe that it is essential that we protect our access to the single
European market.” He was Foreign Secretary at the time. Now that he
is Chancellor his words become even more significant: “If we lose
that, I fear we will find ourselves sliding gently down the league
table getting relatively poorer and that is not an outcome I want to
see for this country.”
Read more
What we've learned
about Theresa May from her first Cabinet
Hunt was even more
explicit, in those heady days when he was “seriously considering”
running as a candidate for the Tory leadership. “The first part of
the plan must be clarity that we will remain in the single market,”
he said. “Before setting the clock ticking [on Article 50], we need
to negotiate a deal and put it to the British people, either in a
referendum or through the Conservative manifesto at a fresh general
election.”
It will not be
Hammond or Hunt who negotiate the detail of the Brexit deal, but this
is such an important question that the whole Cabinet will take
collective responsibility for it. May is said to want to “return to
Cabinet government” – they all say that, and it mightily
impresses people who think such a mythical beast ever existed. But
there is no easy way round the hard choice facing the Prime Minister,
her Government and her country.
Theresa May Gives
Maiden Speech Outside Downing Street as new PM
May put the Leavers
– Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson – in charge of the
negotiations so that they take responsibility for them. But this was
not a way of dropping them in it, letting them take the blame while
she sailed serenely on in the wreckage. She needs the negotiations to
succeed as much as they do, because her Government was formed to
carry out the people’s instruction in the referendum.
There may be poetic
justice in seeing Davis, Fox and Johnson’s airy certainties meeting
the reality of complex trade negotiations. They have got their
country back, and it is the country that was used to being told “no”,
mainly in French, by General de Gaulle and the rest of our
continental neighbours.
But it is May’s
country too. And she has made it clear that if there is a choice
between controlling immigration and free trade, she would choose a
reduction in immigration. For the first time in Britain, we have a
Prime Minister who intends to make us poorer. She thinks that is what
the people voted for in the referendum. Her place in history depends
on whether she is right or not.
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