Come what May, Brexit hurts like hell for Britain’s PM

The British leader’s escape route from Europe is one long nightmare.

Theresa May is facing a possible leadership challenge. Picture: AFP

Just for a moment, put yourself in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s position.

Yesterday, EU leaders destroyed her Chequers Brexit plan with a viciousness that leaves her highly vulnerable to a baying Brexiteer mutiny at next weekend’s Conservative party conference.

Not only has her plan, which she pushed through cabinet at her country retreat in July, been ripped to shreds but her political future is even more precariously placed than it was at the start of the week.

May’s mandarins had spent weeks in the EU member states selling her Chequers deal as a via­ble — indeed the only — option on the table. In her favour, paradoxically, was the fact it wasn’t that domestically palatable. She had already watered down several previous “red lines” to find a plan that might be acceptable to the EU.

She has had to keep Northern Ireland inside the UK, yet still satisfy a borderless movement of goods and people to the EU’s Republic of Ireland.

As for the soft Brexit option of trade between the UK and the EU, she proposed a common rule book, keeping mostly UK sovereignty and largely removing the European Court of Justice from affecting British laws.

In recent days it appeared May’s plan was being heard: the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, hinted at some movement from his side. But it was just wishful thinking on Britain’s part.

When the Chequers plan was revealed in July it was howled down as a betrayal of the meaning of Brexit. Brexit secretary David Davis and foreign secretary Boris Johnson resigned in protest. May’s plan proposed making a “common rule book” for goods between the UK and EU, some shared customs arrangements and a joint institutional framework to manage relations. This was seen as a way to avoid the need for border controls between Northern Ireland and Ireland, to reduce the role of the European Court of Justice in the UK and to allow for an independent trade policy.

In addition, critics claimed the plan — indeed, any British plan — would not satisfy the EU’s implacable insistence on its four pillars: the free movement of goods, ser­vices, capital and labour.

Just how May could get the EU to agree to a relaxed trade deal while imposing restrictions on labour was always going to be a significant point.

On Thursday in Salzburg, the EU decided it had played enough with the UK and in a few choice words it killed the Chequers blueprint.

European Commission president Donald Tusk said: “The suggested framework for economic co-operation will not work. It undermines the single market.”

French President Emmanuel Macron bluntly announced his priority was keeping the rest of the EU united and not conceding to the UK. He reminded Britons of the hard choices before them. “Brexit is the choice of the British people, pushed by those who predicted easy solutions … those people are liars,” Macron said. “They left the next day so they didn’t have to manage it.”

Tusk later acknowledged that the thrust and parry of the negotiations were part of the process, noting that both sides use “tough communications” in the middle of really difficult negotiations, which means “it’s a tough game”.

May has said the criticism of Chequers is deliberate and meant to throw her off track. But Westminster insiders complain that while the Chequers plan had some flaws, it was a concessionary offer to the EU, and the EU failed to reciprocate in kind. Instead of some relaxation of EU demands, it has been a one-way flow of criticism, leaving May humiliated.

The EU tactics may well be to put as much pressure as possible on May to concede much more before October 18, when the final plan — if there is one — is meant to be thrashed out.

Tusk tweeted much the same message, taking a cryptically funny dig at the UK wanting to have their Brexit cake with the cherry of concessions on top.

Underneath a photo of himself passing a plain iced Austrian dessert to May, Tusk has written “a piece of cake perhaps? sorry no cherries”.

The EU is known for laboriously slow decision-making that comes together in a last-minute compromise, yet there still appears to be a desire to punish the UK for having the temerity to leave.

Incredibly, a “blind Brexit” — where the UK agrees to pay the hefty divorce bill for an undefined transition period that could delay the difficult Irish question yet give almost complete control of talks to Brussels — has surfaced as an ­option.

Tusk said he would call a November meeting only to ratify the October decision, and warned he would not hold an emergency session later in the year if the deal couldn’t be struck next month.

The EU needs the time before Brexit Day — March 29 next year — to allow time for various EU countries and the EU parliament to put a deal to a series of parliamentary votes. Westminster, too, will vote, and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party seems intent on trying to scuttle any deal to force a general election. Polls put the Tories and Labour neck and neck.

Yet the problem for the EU is that it may have overplayed its hand this week, especially if the end goal is to achieve some sort of trade deal and keep German carmakers and Dutch tulip growers satisfied. Or maybe the EU figures the economic cost of carving out a special economic place for Britain and its supply chains, estimated to be about 1 per cent of EU gross domestic product, is too great a price to keep its troublesome neighbour close.

There is also an increasing sense in the Conservative party that perhaps it’s not worth trying to make such a watered-down deal with the EU, which will restrict its ­trade with non-EU nations, and it would be better taking back the £39 billion ($71bn) divorce bill to be able to negotiate its own trade deals, including with Australia.

May must front a four-day Conservative Party conference in Birmingham next weekend where her leadership could well be challenged. Arch Brexiteers have set up an alternative party conference to pressure her to drop the Chequers proposal.

After the events of the past two days, May won’t need much persuasion to tear up her conference speech and prepare a Chequers-lite plan. Such a plan will need to mollify the Tories with sufficient weight to pass a parliamentary vote as well as achieve the impossible by keeping Britain outside the EU but with some of the benefits of being inside it.

Thorny issues such as what to do about the border between Ireland and the UK in Northern Ireland, and Spain’s demands that the UK must agree to an EU taxation deal in Gibraltar, have no easy or immediate solutions.

The most ardent Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg, says: “I doubt even the Downing Street cat is any longer backing the Chequers plan.”

Some believe the EU’s end goal is to test the noises coming out of Britain in support of a second referendum. If an agreement is not formulated next month, some insiders say there will be a big push by the EU to delay Brexit. This would allow both sides to ease into the no-deal chasm and, importantly, it would allow enough flexibility in the ensuing political chaos for a dramatic backflip.

Malta’s Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, said as much this week: “We would like the almost impossible to happen … that the UK has another referendum.”

The momentum for a second vote, even with the destabilisation it would create, is gathering pace in Britain but MPs have yet to agree. The People’s Vote campaign says there could be another referendum in the event of no deal, a poor deal or a deal that May cannot get through parliament, or indeed if there is a snap election.

Last month, a YouGov poll showed that for the first time, more people in Britain wanted another Brexit vote than those who didn’t, but the results were close.

Another vote may not necessarily bring the clarity that Remainers — and the EU — want.

More immediately, if the Brexiteers in the Conservative party enact their backstop plan to push for a no-confidence motion in May’s leadership on the back of her failed dealings with Brussels, particularly if there is a sense she will forgo any financial bargaining chips by agreeing to a blind Brexit, there will be a rocky contest for control.

How May manoeuvres to stay in power will be critical.

Should she steer a route for the UK to remain in the customs union, she angers the Brexiteers. If she accepts the EU’s customs border in the Irish Sea, she upsets Northern Ireland’s dominant Democratic Unionist Party.

Or has the intransigence of the EU emboldened her to pursue a no deal?

For May, no matter which way she turns, the options are difficult.