At last, Labour has wrested the
Brexit debate from the Tories
Zoe Williams
The Conservatives’ internal divisions
were wreaking havoc on the UK. Keir Starmer’s intervention has brought this
period to an end
‘In
laying out a forthright and practical alternative to the Tories’ cliff-edge
transition, Labour has effectively restored Brexit to the grasp of
parliamentary politics.’
Sunday 27 August 2017 18.27 BST Last modified on Sunday 27
August 2017 22.00 BST
So an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman all walk into a
pub. Then the Englishman wants to leave for no reason, and they all have to. My
kid told me that joke. Between laconic Brexiteries and a whole new
constellation of insults around the name and concept of Donald Trump, I have
reluctantly concluded that I preferred life when children at primary school had
less political awareness. Didn’t dream about the third world war. Didn’t do
roleplays where one of them is a wall and the other a Mexican. Things just felt
a bit more stable.
Gallows humour brings the chilly intimation that we have
started to resign ourselves to the inevitable. The six stages of political
grief are protesting, protesting some more, raging against Boris Johnson,
picking over the carcass of the decision and pointing out the rotten bits that
make it unfit to eat, maybe one more protest for good measure (a planned pro-EU
rally is to coincide with the Tory party conference) and, finally, making jokes
about it.
It is perhaps reaching the end of this trajectory that has
spurred a new line from the Labour party. Political disasters are by definition
manmade, and only politics can unmake them. Keeping a careful inventory of
Conservative chaos while delighting in the Tories’ lack of dignity worked
brilliantly for a snap election but would not, in the long term, have made the
Labour party feel mature, responsible or proud.
Keir Starmer’s new terms are remarkable mainly for their
sobriety: the shadow Brexit secretary wants a transition period that is as
short as possible but as long as necessary. During this time, the single market
and the customs union remain in place – the alternative to which is a ruinous
descent into trading limbo, where businesses’ only certainty is that everything
would be harder and more expensive.
Starmer’s suggestion is hardly radical – let’s try not to
get too much poorer, too fast – and his proposals thereafter are distinctive
mainly because it is unbelievable, even in the dishevelment of post-Brexit
politics, that they should need to be said. We need to find a deal of
partnership, not membership, based on shared values and history, not just
mutual interest; it must cover areas beyond trade and security, encompassing
science, education, technology, medicine and culture. This edges towards the
most optimistic take on Brexit: that intelligent, receptive, non-adversarial
negotiations could do more than simply avert disaster.
This is by no means a blueprint for what a Labour
negotiating position would look like, but it is the beginning of something
vital: a clear set of differences between Labour Brexit and Conservative
Brexit, without which Theresa May’s government has been hurtling cluelessly
along, as unopposed and wild as a log crashing through a flume.
If Starmer’s priority was to establish clear differences
between the government and its opposition, that is not all that’s been
achieved. A pall of impotence has been deadening debate ever since Liam Fox and
Philip Hammond spelled out their joint vision a fortnight ago. However long the
transition period turned out to be, they said, from March 2019 we would be
outside the single market and customs union. Voices opposed to this – whether
students, unions, businesses or some novel collaboration between all three –
could campaign for a change of government as much as they liked, but a new
government when it came would be left steering a ship the Conservatives had
already hulled.
Parliamentary politics has been like fighting over the
steering wheel when you’re in the middle of a game of chicken
It is very easy to imagine the divisions this would cause
within Labour, between those who want to stay in the single market perpetually
– whose campaign Heidi Alexander and Alison McGovern launched this weekend –
and those who consider leaving it axiomatic to the Brexit project, yet are
committed to leaving constructively.
It is hard to imagine a united and purposeful Labour party
weathering that inherited storm if it had to start from the bottom of the cliff
edge. Without staunch opposition to Fox and Hammond’s first move, the Labour
project seemed amorphous and not unreasonably trepidatious.
Parliamentary politics, such as it has been since the
general election, has been like fighting over the steering wheel when you’re
already in the middle of a game of chicken. Do you really want to be in charge
when the British and EU cars collide? Labour has often seemed so petrified by
the oncoming negotiations that it has found it easier to commentate than to
oppose.
In laying out a forthright and practical alternative to the
Tories’ cliff-edge transition, Labour has effectively restored Brexit to the
grasp of parliamentary politics, one in which MPs can vote as their reason and
consciences determine. Where previously the plan swung like a pendulum between
Tory factions, announced categorically one day and briefed against the next, it
is now fixed. In seeking clarity for its own position, Labour has surely forced
clarity from the government.
Tory Europhiles could at any point find themselves in the
ascendant again, and seek a more measured, single market-tolerant exit period
for the sake of stability. But that territory now belongs to the opposition,
and they will have to forswear it or defect. The scandalously long period when
the internal divisions of the Conservative party could wreak havoc on the
country yet force no bravery or conviction from the party’s own MPs has come to
an end. Labour has finally appropriated the Tories’ wriggle room, and started
to build on it.
The details of the UK’s EU exit have yet to be even
hypothetically resolved; the Labour party, plainly, has its own internal
divisions, many yet to be said out loud. There is as yet no way of telling
whether or not this consensus will hold, that Brexit is the overwhelming will
of the people and must be performed at all costs. A decision built on unknowns
and falsehoods is not one to which the label of democracy very durably sticks.
Yet the opposition has bought itself some time (as short as
possible, as long as necessary), taken the territory of common sense for the
transition period (which many remain Tories will envy), and written the opening
bars of a progressive overture in which their divisions can be harmonised
gradually, rather than having to be silenced by the cacophony of the
Conservatives. The new distinction is not between hard Brexit and soft Brexit:
it is between infantile Brexit and grownup Brexit.
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