EU Referendum


Booker: election manifesto whiffle


28/05/2017




In his column this week, Booker's main focus is what he calls the "climate change whiffle" in the Conservative Party Manifesto.

That manifesto, it has been observed, is long on grandiloquent assertions and pious aspirations, but short on detail – and nowhere is this more obvious than on one of the potentially most disastrous problems confronting us: our hopelessly skewed energy policy, and how we can keep our lights on.

However, never let it be said that energy and Brexit are competing for the title of the most hopelessly skewed policy. At best, it's first amongst equals, in which case it hardly matters which one takes the top slot.

With that in mind, we thought it might be a good idea to carve parallel tracks. While Booker does "climate/energy" and the manifesto, I would revisit the manifesto's offering on Brexit, adding to my earlier piece.

Coincidentally, though, we have Matthew Parris in The Times, who writes under the headline: "May won't say it but Brexit is all that matters". Looking at the manifesto, and then Parris, it seems to me, would make for a useful commentary.

Turning to the manifesto, it certainly starts well, with a personal message from Mrs May. She states that: "The next five years are the most challenging that Britain has faced in my lifetime", then adding:
Brexit will define us: our place in the world, our economic security and our future prosperity. So now more than ever, Britain needs a strong and stable government to get the best Brexit deal for our country and its people. Now more than ever, Britain needs strong and stable leadership to make the most of the opportunities Brexit brings for hardworking families. Now more than ever, Britain needs a clear plan.
Yet, for all that, Brexit is offered only as number two of "five giant challenges", the first being the need for a strong economy. But, with "Brexit and a changing world", we are told that we need "to deliver a smooth and orderly departure from the European Union and forge a deep and special partnership with our friends and allies across Europe".

As for the detail, in the 560 words awarded, you might have thought that, since Mrs May had stressed the need for a "clear plan", some space might have been given to defining the Conservative version. This was not to be.

We are told that only the Conservative Party, under Theresa May's "strong and stable leadership", can negotiate the best possible deal for our country. We are reminded of the "twelve principles" the prime minister laid out her Lancaster House Speech, and of her intent to seek "a new deep and special partnership with the European Union".

Of this partnership, it is claimed that it will benefit both the European Union and the United Kingdom. We are told that the negotiations will undoubtedly be tough, and there will be give and take on both sides. And "we continue to believe that no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK".

The Government, we are assured, will enter the negotiations in a spirit of sincere cooperation and committed to getting the best deal for Britain, and it will make sure we have "certainty and clarity" over our future, control of our own laws, and a more unified, strengthened United Kingdom.

As one might expect, the manifesto pledges to control immigration and secure the entitlements of EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU. We will, it says, maintain the Common Travel Area and maintain as frictionless a border as possible for people, goods and services between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

When it then comes to the so-called "divorce bill", there is even a flash of realism, with an acknowledgement that "there may be specific European programmes in which we might want to participate and if so, it will be reasonable that we make a contribution.

We will, says the manifesto, determine a fair settlement of the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, in accordance with the law and in the spirit of the UK's continuing partnership with the EU. But, it adds, the principle is clear: "the days of Britain making vast annual contributions to the European Union will end".

However, if at this late stage, the manifesto was beginning to drift vaguely in the direction of reality, in its closing statement – after an appeal for "fair, orderly negotiations, minimising disruption and giving as much certainty as possible" – it veered sharply away and headed at warp speed for an alternate universe.

"We believe it is necessary", it concluded, "to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside our withdrawal, reaching agreement on both within the two years allowed by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union".

That Theresa May's Conservatives believe that we can, in effect, conclude a free trade agreement within the period left under Article 50 is nothing short of fantasy – pure, unmitigated fantasy, with not the slightest concession to the real world. And, as befits this entirely imaginary construct, there is not the faintest whiff of a plan.

At this point, we can bring in Matthew Parris, the former MP with a reputation for writing self-serving drivel, but with the capacity occasionally to write with a flash of insight.

Displaying that increasingly rare insight, he notes that, while "we sail almost silently onward towards the biggest, hardest negotiation our country has faced in my lifetime", nobody speaks on Brexit. Theresa May, Parris says, is all but struck dumb. The Labour Party is muted, trying to avoid an argument about whether it even wants this to happen. The Lib Dems, led by a glorified bingo caller, duck behind the cover of a hoped-for second referendum.

"Will nobody talk about Brexit?", he asks. "Are we to enter the polling booths in 12 days with the biggest question all but undiscussed, still hanging above our country? It would be like conducting a British general election in 1938 without mentioning the Third Reich".

Whether Leaver or Remainer, surely we can both agree on the need to examine what we should now be aiming for. There are questions such as, what's to happen to farming? Parris continues:
Will there still be subsidy, and how targeted? Food imports: is protecting our farmers a red line in trade deals we hope to negotiate with food-exporting nations? The City? Is getting a special deal on equivalence in financial rules a priority? How about immigration once we've taken back control? We make country-by-country rules, and will for the EU as a bloc. Any thoughts, Amber Rudd? Don't business, the City and farming need to know before they vote? What analysis has been done (or planned) of the costs to our economy of migration limits?
It's not enough, Parris adds, "for Theresa May to say we'll keep the 'soft' border with the Republic of Ireland. How? This is desperately important". If we want to stay with Europol, the European arrest warrant, the Schengen information system, how do we reconcile this with the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction? Does the Manchester atrocity affect priorities? Have we assessed the costs of setting up new bureaucracies if we leave EU regulatory agencies on medicines, competition, aviation safety and the like?

These and many other questions are capable of discussion now, Parris avers. Of course the British government can't fully "reveal its negotiating hand" but major insistences (leaving the single market and customs union) and major concessions (paying our fair share of the bill for divorce) have already been announced. These have consequences.

Then, in the key "money quote", he writes: "Both major parties owe the electorate a look-in on their thinking about how to approach them".

Thus does the man conclude that "we're being infantilised as a democracy". May needs to break out of an impression of haplessness that can only feed itself if she goes silent. How better, twelve days before this country's last chance to vote on Brexit, than by a fireside chat in which she trusts us with her thoughts? Or, Parris ventures, "is the cupboard bare? People will begin to wonder".

In that final statement though does he reveal his own narrowness of vision. There are those in the community – many of them to be found here – who already suspect that the cupboard is bare. Parris and the rest of the country are beginning to catch up.

And on that thought, I will promote manifesto whiffle on Brexit to the top slot. However important climate and energy policy might be, Brexit is make-or-break. And the Conservatives seem determined to break the system, taking this country down with it.