As Politics Home reports this morning:
The Telegraph reports that the 60 members of the arch-eurosceptic European Research Group - chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg - have handed a 30-page dossier to the Prime Minister setting out their objections to plans for a so-called “customs partnership”.
One ERG source told the paper: “We have swallowed everything so far — but this is it. If they don't have confidence in Brexit we don't have confidence in them. The Prime Minister will not have a majority if she does not kill off the NCP [New Customs Partnership].”
They add:
Eurosceptics want to see Mrs May instead opt for the "maximum facilitation" option, which would see Britain accept the need for customs borders and rely on a technology-backed “trusted trader” scheme to try keep customs checks to a minimum.
But critics warn that plan - which has also been dismissed by Brussels - will do little to avoid imposing a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Standing back it is very hard to make any sense of this unless you realise that what a minority - about 20% of Tory MPs - are saying is that, come what may, they insist that the UK must have a hard Brexit that is intended to create maximum disruption for the UK and massive division in Ireland, and that if they do not get this they will pull down their own government.
In a sense there is merit in their having said this. We know where their lines are drawn.
Now May has to decide, which is something she is not good at.
Will she go with the majority of her party, and the majority in the country? Or will she go with this minority?
That is her choice. She really only has one option. And either way the Tories will, finally, be torn apart by Europe.
But maybe, just maybe, this is the point where the climb back to sanity begins because it's now clear that what the ERG want is simply undeliverable, and that no compromise with them or it on it is possible. There is therefore only one way to go, and that is in the direction of finding the best possible compromise with the EU having ignored what the ERG want. By being so blunt the ERG have made May's life easier: when there is no choice left it's easier to see what the right thing to do is.
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I hope your right, but when has logic played ant part in this soap opera
The trouble is that May is entirely spineless and the rest of the Tory party has convinced itself that Corbyn is a threat to its collective livelihood… so the tail of the rabid Tory dog may yet end up wagging all of us.
Mogg was interviewed on the bbc news at 08 30 ish,love him or loath him he always talks sense,his point was “the gov said we are leaving the customs union ect” and that is what is required,may is squirming from one position to another,they lack backbone.
I would have to disagree about JRM always talking sense, I would say the exact opposite. I think he is right about the “customs partnership”, but even a stopped clock is right two time a day.
I have examined his recent statements re Ireland as part of my recent Progressive Pulse article http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/will-sabre-rattling-towards-ireland-work
he does not come out of it as the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Sean Danahar
“[Rees Mogg] does not come out of it as the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
Possibly because he’s only half a pair of scissors ?
Who lacks backbone? The Government does not have a policy; beyond a kind of limping, un-dead, zombie survival. If Rees-Mogg has the backbone, let him pull the Government down. What then? Then tell me what he is going to inherit? A Government? A Party? A job? Anything?
The man holding this Government from self-destruction isn’t Rees-Mogg. It is Jeremy Corbyn. If he had a coherent policy, led a Party that would actually follow him in the House, and wanted to execute his responsibility to oppose the Government; or wanted to represent 48% of the electorate (who have effectively been disenfranchised, and nobody cares), the Government would fall; probably within 24 hours.
Exactly. I now know what abandonment feels like.
“… technology-backed “trusted trader” scheme to try keep customs checks to a minimum……”
What could possibly go wrong…..?
Nothing…nothing at all…
This may come down to a vote of confidence – one wonders which way Labour will jump. On a related note: I wonder if May has the capacity to deal with all the on-going tory-made crises – the Windrush affair will keep going (I made a guess at the cost: £100 million to £1 billion – depending), other problems need to be dealt with, schools (lacking of funding) & the NHS (lack of funding) are two examples of many. I’d also suggest that Davies fulfills the same role as Dudd – a shield/firebreak. How long he will last is another question.
If it comes to a vote of confidence, I can’t see Labour supporting a minority Tory government, even if bringing down the government does not improves their position in the following general election. (I suspect there would be yet another hung Parliament, but who knows.)
The risk with this sort of political dislocation is that we could run out of time to negotiate a smooth Brexit, and just fall out without a deal (there is good chance that might happen anyway, as thing are going). On the other hand, this is the only scenario I can see in which Brexit could be avoided, with a new government deciding to abandon it.
But it won’t come to that. I can’t see enough Tory rebels willing to vote against their own party. Rees-Mogg has said he won’t.
So signage they saying they will pull it down?
Ha ha ha. Bring it on. The EU are not going to accept the no customs union option because of Ireland and parliament are not going to accept a hard brexit.
I agree
Bye bye Moggy, Moggy bye bye could be a Bay City Rollers reissue
“….about 20% of Tory MPs – are saying is that, come what may, they insist that the UK must have a hard Brexit….”
Think of the chaos that would have been averted if they had just joined UKIP instead of hiding in the Conservative party to hold onto their seats.
What would have enabled them to do that is a sensible proportional representation electoral system. Which they almost certainly, to a man and woman, did their utmost to scupper.
With luck they will pay for that deception. They certainly deserve to.
Slightly off-topic (lol) but it’s an opportunity to ask a question: did you have a chance to read Bill Mitchell’s and Thomas Fazi’s recent article in Jacobin: “Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit” – https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/brexit-labour-party-socialist-left-corbyn ? If so, what did you make of it? While I subscribe to his core argument that the UK should break free from neo-liberal shackles asap, I voted ‘Remain’ because I couldn’t see a UK government being elected on an MMT ticket in the foreseeable future; hence staying in the Union was the best pragmatic choice in order to buy time for reform. It was a rare (for me) head over heart moment. But it’s weird to find Rees-Mogg and Mitchell on the same side of the debate, albeit to achieve different objectives. Just shows what a complex issue it is and how the public were so open to manipulation from one camp or the other.
I tend not to read Mitchell: his style alienates me
I agree. It’s like wading through porridge. Similarly listening to his talks. However, I persist because his arguments are always both forensically and logically argued and also I’ve got time on my hands. Thomas Fazi is a lot more digestible.
Time is my rarest commodity
After sleep
The trouble is May has already demonstrated on key issues, she doesn’t know what is ” the right thing ” to do.
Jacob Rees… and a a Remain Tory lady were tearing each other (and the Tory party) apart over the customs partnership (whatever that is) on the Today programme this morning. John Humphries was brilliant in dealing with them – perfect timing for the local elections tomorrow!
Bill Hughes says:
“Jacob Rees… and a a Remain Tory lady …. on the Today programme ….. — perfect timing for the local elections tomorrow!”
Well yes. A bit of a coup to have the debate just between members of your own party thus hogging the agenda so close to elections.
Good old Auntie Beeb.
I didn’t hear it, so maybe they did manage to get some element of the famed ‘balance’ into the rest of the programme.
Share this with slow learners: Katy Hayward’s simplified options for the NI border
http://qpol.qub.ac.uk/brexit-border-4-key-slides/
I can’t help thinking Rees-Mogg and some others have a serious conflict of interest.
Those slides are so useful
May’s solution to cabinet disagreements has always been to create a verbal formula (usually accompanied by ‘I have made this perfectly clear…’), and then delay a decision on the real choices that need to be made. But this strategy empowers the brexiteer minority because all they have to do is wait. After several months of delay, this country will leave the EU with no agreement on trade and hence on brexiteer terms.
This is all so wearisome! It’s as though a collective political dyslexia is in operation whereby when the politicians use the word “Brexit” they really mean “Break-It” the country that is! It’s not as though those politicians opposed to EU membership haven’t had nearly five decades to think up a safe and detailed extraction plan that won’t damage the UK economy!
I agree: deeply wearisome
I even warmed to Chris Patten this afternoon
I am going soft
“I even warmed to Chris Patten this afternoon”
It is a bit disconcerting isn’t it ? He spoke very sensibly on ‘Any Questions’, I think it was, the other week.
I remember fondly him losing his seat in Bath(?). It was to me more significant than the ‘Portillo moment’.
But people do change – he would probably say he hasn’t, but that the whole spectrum has moved to his right. Maybe there’s a bit of both.
Schofield says:
“…when the politicians use the word “Brexit” they really mean ….”
Who knows what they mean ?
One problem with ‘Brexit’ is that we have only one working definition of what it means: “Brexit means Brexit”
It means exactly what the user wants it to mean, and that’s part of the reason we’re in such a collective pickle. Interrogate the sixty ERG members and you’ll get sixty different pictures (but don’t sniff).
“It means exactly what the user wants it to mean”. Succinct, telling and to the point. Hence, “Brexit means Brexit”; a tautology. True by definition, but explaining nothing. It is why Brexiteers know everything about everything, before it happens; and have clear insight into what the electorate voted for, or against, in the referendum; against the Customs Union and against the Single Market, and in spite of the fact that neither issue was on the referendum question paper; because “Brexit means Brexit” means that any chump with an axe to grind is fully qualified authoriatively to arbitrate the final, decisive meaning of every single electors’ vote by ‘a priori’ reasoning, without any evidence whatsoever.
The essential for the Establishment – of which Rees-Mogg is a part – is that the UK is out of the EU before the EU Anti Tax Avoidance Directive (EUATAD) applies to the UK, its Overseas Territories, Dependencies and Protectorates. Membership of the Customs Union, or even a form of Customs Partnership, would put the UK’s and at least 14 of its associated territories’ tax structures in peril. It would apply from the beginning of the 2019 fiscal year, April 2019 in the UK. The UK leaves the UK on the 29th March 2019.
Complying with the EUATAD would cripple the economies of the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, to name just two out of more than a dozen remnants of Empire which have prospered as tax havens created by the British Establishment. Not only that, it would result in significantly higher tax bills for many British financial institutions (such as the one for which the Prime Minister’s husband works) and for many individuals, amongst whom Rees-Mogg may be counted.
The consequence – a hard border in Northern Ireland and all that it implies – is insignificant in financial terms, and may, in brutal economic terms, be beneficial in the short term to the NI economy.
I think you’ll find we have to comply even if it comes in during a transition period