Deep, special and ambitious managed divergence

Cabinet members arrive (at some speed) at the Chequers
front gate

War cabinet is a snappier name than European Union Exit and Trade (Strategy and Negotiations) Subcommittee but a depressing one nonetheless ("dreamy nickname" anybody?) Who's supposed to like the short name? People who think about Brexit in World War 2 terms? Who's not supposed to like it? EU27 heads of government who think of the EU partly in terms of preventing war? Who invented the term? The idiot Boris Johnson who still seems to think at least partly in headlines, or somebody in the media who at least is supposed to? More interestingly, are people aware that those people on the other side of the table actually read our papers?

T

Olly Robbins Europe Adviser to the Prime Minister

The subcommittee gathered at Theresa May's prime ministerial retreat last Thursday to work out what Brexit might mean, what kind of future relationship to seek in the remaining eight months of negotiation. According to Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times, the plan they came up with (which was the plan May went in with, though she gave it to her top Brexit civil servant Olly Robbins to present), the position that has led to so much manoeuvring and low-level blood-letting in recent weeks is to

• Demand mutual recognition of standards for goods traded between the UK and the EU
• Make a public commitment that British standards will remain as high as those of the EU
• Pledge to keep rules and regulations “substantially similar”
• Insist upon the creation of a dispute mechanism to oversee areas where the UK wants to diverge from EU regulations — and that the European Court of Justice would have no role in it

To which I can only say, Is that it? Isn't that just a restatement of the three baskets idea which the EU side has rejected as cherry picking?  A narrative description of this "ambitious managed divergence" is more telling: "We are going to be associate members of various agencies on things like aviation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and then we get [EU] market access and don’t need to have our products checked in more than one jurisdiction. We can decide at any time, in the full knowledge that there are consequences, that we don’t want to be regulated in this way" which seems just a little naive and/or presumptuous.

One particular disagreement Shipman mentions was between Greg Clark, the business secretary, and Boris Johnson, still astonishingly our foreign secretary. Clark "gave a presentation on the consequences of divergence for the car industry" and Johnson stressed that "divergence was essential to ensure innovation".

Honda's plant in Swindon

I'd normally refer to Nissan on the subject of Brexit and the automotive industry, but let's talk Honda for a change. Patrick Keating, Government Affairs Manager for Honda Motor Europe, told the Commons business select committee last November that the company "would need clarity" by March this year on "what happens to the customs border". It would be "a year-long process between deciding we need to invest in additional warehousing and going through zoning, planning and investment" plus "internal decision-making procedures and the need to get clearance from Japan".

In addition, Honda is concerned about "regulation, and particularly type approvals". Talking to the EU Commission, said Mr Keating "there is a real risk that, as the UK leaves the single market, the type approvals issued by the... UK Vehicle Certification Agency, will either no longer hold validity or not be able to be extended". As we've heard recently this is a real problem - at Brexit "the United Kingdom approval authority [VCA] will cease to be an EU type-approval authority".

The Japanese ambassador to the UK accompanied a party of Japanese businessmen to No 10 on 8 February and was "unusually candid" afterwards in the view of several commentators: "If there is no profitability of continuing operations in the UK - not Japanese only - then no private company can continue operations. It is as simple as that. This is all high stakes that all of us, I think, need to keep in mind." Days later, Honda's management in Swindon stressed that the company "remains committed to our operations in the UK and Europe" and declared "we are working closely with the government to ensure the best conditions for our business following the UK’s exit from the European Union".

Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Business,
Energy and Industrial Strategy 

Honda don't want to have to build new warehousing or relocate their type approval people, and neither do they want to move production, not least because they have no similar plant elsewhere in the EU. Any of these things would cost money that's not in their current plans. They will be making full use of their contacts in London and Brussels to get some of that precious clarity by the end of next month - the EU Council meeting on 22-23 March might be the target date.

That kind of mundane stuff was no doubt part of Greg Clark's presentation, but Johnson countered with his characteristic bluntness. As Shipman puts it, "Johnson interrupted to say divergence was essential to ensure innovation. He cited the way EU rules had stopped him changing the design of lorries in London while he was mayor to make conditions safer for cyclists".

It's one of his favourite moans about EU regulation, but it has the disadvantage of being untrue. Johnson wants changes like wrap-round windows and mirrors to eliminate blind spots which have killed cyclists and the new features are likely to be with us soon. As Euractiv reported in 2014, member states held out against a series of changes to lorry design standards under pressure from their own manufacturers (and the Financial Times suggests the UK was one of them). It takes a long time to redesign a lorry, or a new set of standards, so there's constant to-ing and fro-ing between manufacturers, politicians and regulators. In the end the delay was reduced and“We did manage to force EU governments to agree to the introduction of a new and safer lorry-cab design, although only as of 2019,” said Keith Taylor, transport spokesman for the Greens in the European Parliament.

Political nitty-gritty too intruded into Chequers' panelled rooms, with chief whip Julian Smith warning of the "real, real danger" of Tory rebels voting with Labour to keep Britain in the customs union while David Davis pointed to hardliners threatening to force a leadership election if May drops her opposition to a customs union. Rees-Mogg's position at the head of the European Research Group "is a sign that they are militarising and have tanks on our lawn," said one of Shipman's sources.

Karen Bradley

Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland secretary, told May she could not be sure her DUP allies would "turn up" for key votes. There was even talk of Sinn Fein’s seven MPs taking their seats if the UK fails to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic.

Some Eurosceptics outside the cabinet put little faith in May and her team holding their fragile truce together in the face of "intransigence" in Brussels. "Cabinet continues to live in a parallel universe," one is reported to have said. "The DD-May plan is doomed. Barnier will smash DD [David Davis] over the head and No 10 will fold as always." And remember, even after May's next speech, scheduled for Friday 1 May, the full cabinet will never have discussed and approved the approach. They will simply be expected to go along with it.

Unicorns all the way - Is May lying to herself?

On Wednesday 25 October, at prime minister's questions, Theresa May fell in behind her Brexit secretary and repeated the deluded mantra that she would achieve a trade deal with the EU to be signed the moment after Brexit. Yet the previous Sunday she was reported to have put off discussions of a trade deal in her cabinet until some time in 2018, after the EU have "stated their terms". As an unidentified minister supposedly told the Sun's Tom Newton-Dunn, "Theresa’s fear is the moment we do, half of us walk out. We just don’t know which half will yet". But the EU won't "state their terms" any more than they already have, since Article 50 is not concerned with trade, and Barnier will only ever be allowed to negotiate under the terms of Article 50.

An hour or so after PMQs Ivan Rogers, the UK's Permanent Representative to the EU until the beginning of this year, told the treasury select committee that May's red lines put us too far out of the EU to get anything more than a DCTA (deep and comprehensive trade agreement) like Canada's. He (and other contributors) also reminded us, though who but the cabinet needs reminding, that the talks May hopes will start after the December EU Council summit are not trade talks.

A few of Rogers' words, from the transcript of the meeting, tell us in no uncertain terms, "I stand by every word of what I said, and I used to say it when I was in Government, and it also what I hear in every capital now and from Brussels and Strasbourg now.  What we are talking about going into the new year are not trade talks; they are talks about the future partnership and the framework for that future partnership, and that is what is specified in Article 50.  Those are not trade talks.  I can understand why the press keeps on talking about them as trade talks.  Obviously they get into the whole structure, ambit and scope of the future relationship, which goes to trade, but the trade talks will only begin after we have left the European Union".

Which of course is the way the EU sees it. Here is paragraph 5 of their negotiating guidelines: "While an agreement on a future relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom as such can only be finalised and concluded once the United Kingdom has become a third country, Article 50 TEU [Treaty on European Union] requires to take account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union in the arrangements for withdrawal. To this end, an overall understanding on the framework for the future relationship should be identified during a second phase of the negotiations under Article 50 TEU. We stand ready to engage in preliminary and preparatory discussions to this end in the context of negotiations under Article 50 TEU, as soon as the European Council decides that sufficient progress has been made in the first phase towards reaching a satisfactory agreement on the arrangements for an orderly withdrawal".

And as the Guardian reported on Tuesday 24 October, "Barnier said he could envision a short transition period being agreed between the EU and the UK before March 2019 to ease the UK’s exit from the bloc, but it would require the British government accepting the continuation of EU law and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice. A future trade deal, however, would have to be negotiated over “several years” and “will be very different” from the status quo, Barnier told a group of European newspapers".

The whole evidence session can be viewed on the parliamentary website. You will also hear Rogers try to explain that No Deal doesn't actually mean no deal, because the country would collapse without "mini" deals on specific sectors. And Professor Catherine Barnard (Professor of EU Law, University of Cambridge) points out that many of our current arrangements with the EU - the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) for example - depend on reciprocity, which can't be enforced by a piece of UK law like the EU withdrawal bill.

One of the most stunning pieces of evidence for me, though, is that 80% of Ireland's exports go either to the UK or through the UK by truck. Ireland is our hostage.

Persuading yourself is the first thing

It came as a surprise to some when the government white paper The United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union included the line "Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that".

As the Independent reported in February 2017, this "completely contradicts a key argument for Brexit".  We are of course sovereign in that we can trigger article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and - if that's what the people the referendum dumped this thing on decide - just twiddle our thumbs and drop out.

While we are members, we have shared sovereignty in areas covered by the treaty.  We are part of the decision making process, through ministers of the UK government, a commissioner, civil servants and of course our elected members of the EU parliament. Over the most fundamental decisions we have a veto, but we have entered a collective process.

Brexit involves withdrawal from that shared sovereignty, "taking back control" by pulling back from that collective process, but also incorporating the vast majority of EU law into the UK (and eventually the devolved administrations') statute book.  This is because it's currently our law, and we'd cease to function without it.  I would lay a pointlessly large bet on a major part of it still being in place in 50 years time.

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During the election, as I noted in my blog post at the time, Jeremy Paxman asked Theresa May "When did  you change your mind on the biggest issue of the day?", referring obviously to Brexit, then "Are you trying to achieve something that you think is bad for us?", since she had been a less than ardent but occasionally visible campaigner to Remain.  (The wording of the questions is taken from notes, but I think it's fair.)

On 29 May she wouldn't say that she had changed her mind on Brexit, or that she actually believed in it now, only that she believed in "making a success of it".  She must have had a good think about that (or somebody must have had a word), because by 3 June the line was "You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit".

"You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit," says Theresa May pic.twitter.com/dDgK4plbkE

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) 1 June 2017

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To wrap up this probably rather strange burrowing into parts of the mind of May I turn to the Florence speech of 22 September, in which she said "The strength of feeling that the British people have about this need for control and the direct accountability of their politicians is one reason why, throughout its membership, the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home being in the European Union".

That reminds me of her foreword to the white paper I began with, where she wrote:  "But one of the reasons that Britain’s democracy has been such a success for so many years is that the strength of our identity as one nation, the respect we show to one another as fellow citizens, and the importance we attach to our institutions means that when a vote has been held we all respect the result. The victors have the responsibility to act magnanimously. The losers have the responsibility to respect the legitimacy of the outcome. And the country comes together".

There's some sense and some truth in both passages. but they also both suggest an oversimplification, a detachment from the real world.  There are obviously people who have felt at home in the EU.  I bet there are more who hadn't given it much thought until they were put on the spot.  And we have negotiated our own relationship with it, as have Denmark and Ireland, and Sweden and probably every member state, whether it's a small part of a protocol (such as the "list of conventions and protocols to which Bulgaria and Romania accede upon accession") or a major reservation (like the UK's opt-out of the euro).

The country has not come together, other than in resignation ("Sod 'em, let them get on with it").  A significant minority feel Brexit as a personal attack, on themselves, their families, their rights and their view of their country.  And, at least in the unrepresentative echoings of Twitter I encounter anything but magnanimity from some "victors".

May's own party is not united.  Jacob Rees Mogg has expressed his opposition to the proposed transition period and Iain Duncan Smith seems likely to object very strongly when he discovers that his latest repetition of "we will no longer be subject to the EU’s laws or to its court [as of 29 March 2019]" is unlikely to be true.

And it really is pushing it for May to call on the "strength of feeling that the British people have about... direct accountability of... politicians".  This is the woman who wasted an extra two months on a supreme court hearing to prevent elected MPs having a say on the triggering of Article 50.  To say nothing of her Henry VIII complex.

I'm not persuaded.  Is she?

Multilateral relations, rules-based systems and international frameworks. Of a sort

May going into No 10 - from @PoliticalPics (I would have used his actual tweet if he let ordinary people access them)

Theresa May is in a cabinet meeting as I begin this, her aim to achieve unanimous agreement on the speech she will give in Florence tomorrow.  The story is that she practically stepped off the plane and into No 10, which means last night's supposed mini-summit with Boris Johnson over the Atlantic came to very little.  Adam Boulton on Sky reports that she told him she needed some sleep.

The speech is billed as an "open and generous offer" to "break the deadlock" in the Brexit negotiations, but it seems to be the wrong time - the September round of talks has had to be postponed until next week - and possibly the wrong place.

May took her "fair and serious" offer on EU citizens' rights to the EU Council in June, three days after the first round of talks had done little more than set up a few working groups and agree the timetable which May & co had refused to countenance until they screwed up an election.  Some EU leaders greeted it politely as "insufficient" and others as "at least it's something" but they basically told her it would have to wait until the July talks because when they told us the negotiations would be done by Barnier, not heads of state and government, they meant it.

Will choosing her own time and place be seen as a sign of strength or of not taking things seriously?

HR News

The Department for Exiting the EU has announced the renomination of the British judge to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU or ECJ, according to taste).  Christopher Vajda QC, who has done the job since 2012 after 30 years of practice in European Law, should encounter no difficulties as he goes through a scrutiny panel and approval of his appointment by the Member States.

That first nomination in 2012 was announced by the Foreign Office, but all relationships with the EU seem now to be handled by the bunch responsible for getting us out of it.  As the new announcement says, "While we continue to be a Member State, we will honour our rights and obligations, this includes nominating a judge to the Court of Justice".

Saboteurs department

Before she addressed the United Nations General Assembly (or at least a few of them) on her ideas of multilateral cooperation Theresa May spent a day in Canada, emerging with an agreement that "Canada's free trade deal with the European Union will form the basis for a swift transition to a post-Brexit trading relationship between Canada and the U.K."

A UK-Canada working group will be established to work on a "seamless" transition to a new trading relationship when the UK is legally able to agree one.

Note, as Justin Trudeau did, that the word "basis" means "starting point", not the "copy and paste" reported by some of the media.  In Trudeau's words:  "We will be able to move forward in a smooth transition that keeps the essence of CETA applicable to the U.K. in ways that respect the EU's requirements and rules".  Other CBC comment says this is "a shrunken ambition for those who campaigned for Brexit.  After all, breaking free of the EU was supposed to restore a golden age of free trade as countries rushed to renegotiate deals with a Britain free of Eurocratic interference.  The best now on offer, it seems, is to try to hang on to the deals Britain already has under the EU".

This is one of thousands of things we will have to keep an eye open for.

Stop press!

The cabinet meeting hasn't finished yet.

In search of certainty

"I want to return to the crucial question of leadership," #MrsMe told us on Monday, three days before the election, "because that's what this election is about."  That turned out well.

"Give me a mandate to lead Britain, give me a mandate to speak for Britain, give me a mandate to fight for Britain and give me a mandate to deliver for Britain,” has been part of that speech, delivered two or three times a day over the weeks in a standardised setting of Me And My Team backdrop and dragooned, vetted workers and/or local party members.  Total control.

Terribly controlling that Tory press officers, as at today's Boris Johnson event, won't let reporters hold the mike pic.twitter.com/ioNWxGIAGY

— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) June 6, 2017

And now?  I don't like talking about people's looks and choice of clothes - it's petty - but it's hard not to sometimes.  #MrsMe's wardrobe during the campaign has been on the tweedy side of fashionable, and you have to wonder whether it was her own choice or "recommended" by Lynton Crosby.  At her count in the wee small hours of Friday all I could see was the red Red RED battle lipstick.

And to pledge "certainty" in the middle of Downing St (with Mr May at her shoulder rather than a dozen paces away out of any likely camera shot) it was a severe and very Tory blue suit.

Men - political men in particular - have a much more boring palette of symbols to choose from - the boring suit and possibly a "daring" tie.  Pete Wishart (SNP, Perth and North Perthshire, 2017 majority 21) can carry off a dark lilac two-piece, but Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow, 2017 majority 7,031) once chose yellow and drew a lot of catcalls.  Nadhim Zahawi's musical tie and Peter Bone's silly hat drew reprimands from the Commons Speaker.

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Anyway, to certainty, and leadership.  #MrsMe's "strong and stable" mantra took hold with a lot of people if a thousand vox pops are to be believed, but I think I was starting to detect a bit of ridicule along with the repetition, and among real people, not just politics nerds.  And despite all the spending on Facebook attack ads the Tories had got the young wrong, or was it the kippers, or maybe the militant non-voters?

Whatever it was, #MrsMe had succeeded in frittering away her slim majority to achieve a slim minority.  Yet she emerged from the big black door on Friday to promise certainty.  Her words were meant to convey a stiff backbone and "getting to work" but the manner was very tense.  She disappeared inside having thanked nobody and said nothing to the Tories who had lost their seats.  Only later did somebody force a human pill on her, but even then she was sorry for her fallen colleagues, not to anybody.

She claimed "What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons... As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist party in particular".

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Over the course of Saturday #MrsMe was threatened with a leadership challenge unless she got rid of her advisers/chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.  Tories just aren't supposed to do that kind of thing unless they've been out of power for a few years with a Blair to beat and no direction.  Since they still had several fingertips on the prize it was a bit of a surprise.  Nonetheless, by the end of the day she had no special special advisers.

And by the end of the day she had also appointed Gavin Barwell, ex-MP for Croydon Central, ex-housing minister, out of work for perhaps 36 hours since his defeat by the London Labour surge, as chief of staff.  Party sympathisers hailed it as a good appointment, and the man has held several junior minister roles so he must have something about him.  Others criticised her for falling back on an insider who had just been rejected by the popular vote.

Chief of staff is not an elected position, but it has become a very visible one since #MrsMe's selection as leader and prime minister (the question of whether she could legitimately claim that position has emerged again, with observations that she had never been voted in by the party membership as the Tory constitution demands).  Barwell shouldn't be assumed to be such a superhuman that he can do the work of two, so we should expect further appointments.

This brought to mind a conversation with my mother in 1992, when Lynda Chalker was voted out in the Wallasey constituency (replaced by Angela Eagle, sometime would-be Labour leadership hopeful).  That day I was stung by the realisation that I was already more cynical than was good for me, because I expected nothing better, while my mother protested at Thatcher's rejection of the democratic decision and immediate "elevation" to the Lords so that Chalker could could carry on as Minister for Overseas Development with little break.

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The thing on #MrsMe's mind between that strained Maidenhead count and the visit to the palace was obviously survival.  Her brief statement made it clear that she had been on the phone to Belfast and achieved an agreement in principle with her "friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist party".  Three strands of objection opened up immediately.  The first was the party's illiberal reputation, and it wasn't just the right-on brigade who protested.

Tory MPs tell BuzzFeed their inboxes are full of complaints from constituents about the DUP's gay rights record. https://t.co/igAMRsBLy4 pic.twitter.com/D1bAblrMdG

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) June 10, 2017

It didn't help that one man chosen to represent the largest unionist grouping in Northern Irish politics was Nelson McCausland.  He appeared on Radio 4's Money Box (Paul Lewis has been incisive and scrupulously fair in his reporting of money issues during the election) to tell us that not all of the DUP's supporters deserve the labels being bandied about - homophobe, Christian fundamentalist etc.  What he didn't quite say was that the accusations are unjustified in the first place.  (And what many commentators neglected to mention was that other Ulster parties have similar views - the Social Democratic and Labour Party for example, on abortion.)

McCausland and (some) others in his party believe the Ulster Protestants are a lost tribe of Israel. He has claimed that a third of Northern Ireland's population believe in intelligent design or the young-earth creationist view that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago.  As culture minister in the Northern Ireland assembly he demanded that the Ulster Museum should display exhibits based on anti-Darwinian theories as a matter of human rights, to represent that strand of local thought (as opposed to the usual job of a museum to seek after scientific truth).

Then there's the little matter of the DUP's choice of friends.

May will regret those Corbyn terror smears now the Cons are propped up by a party backed by Loyalist paramilitaries https://t.co/sijLkJRgLm

— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) June 10, 2017

Many people wondered what the DUP might want in return.  When ex-Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson suggested that "scientific progress" might make it possible to restrict abortion in ways that might cheer them, alarm bells rang.  They would certainly want the UK government to act to reduce pressure on the province to join the rest of us in the 21st century.

What about Brexit?  The DUP was a strong voice (but lonely, in Northern Ireland) for leaving the EU, but they want the fabled "frictionless" border with the south, which might be hard to reconcile with #MrsMe's "no single market, no customs union, no ECJ" stance.  And they will definitely demand a deal.  No Deal would leave them dangling.

The Financial Times offered a considered view and several writers picked up on demands prepared for the eventuality of a hung parliament in 2015 and the party's normal interest - more money and consideration for their patch, no reduction in any kind of benefits.

May seemed likely to grasp the Ulster influence as a way to soften her perceived attack on the elderly (the deficit and the cost of social care perhaps finding themselves in even longer grass) and Brexiters, as they are wont to do, smelled betrayal.  The wrong sort of soft border might leave us closer to the evil EU than "the people" voted for last June.

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The final problem is the Good Friday Agreement.  Under that national and international agreement a responsibility is placed on the UK government to be neutral in its dealings with the various political parties of the province.  A legal deadline of 29 June this year has been placed on establishing an executive for the devolved Stormont government, and the secretary of state (the uninspiring but ultra-reliable James Brokenshire again, it would appear) should be an honest broker in those talks.  I chose the word referee, and have other tweeters to thank for the news that the new Commons intake includes an experienced whistle-blower.

Ah! A job for Dougie Ross!!! 😒 https://t.co/BrAuZtklMX

— MrsToriesOut (@AyrDelighted) June 11, 2017

This is important in national politics - too much favour shown to one side in Stormont could provide a pretext for blocking demands by the other.  But it is also important to the Brexit negotiations.  #MrsMe's letter triggering the beginning of the Article 50 process said "In particular we must pay attention to the UK's unique relationship with the Republic of Ireland and the importance of the peace process [and] continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement".   The EU27's negotiating directives stress "Nothing in the Agreement should undermine the objectives and commitments set out in the Good Friday Agreement".

All sides of Northern Ireland politics might eventually tolerate a single soft-border proposal, but any hint of partisanship by the UK government (and what could be more partisan than a coalition with one of the parties?) might prejudice its agreement.  Sinn Féin representatives in the EU parliament, and all the MEPs from the island will take a particular interest.  I don't think this is going to be easy.

Has May explained yet why her being propped up by the DUP = stability, but Miliband/Corbyn propped up by the SNP = existential peril?

— The Secret Barrister (@BarristerSecret) June 10, 2017

And then the Sunday Times reports "sources" suggesting that the DUP is pressing for Nigel Farage to be included in the Brexit negotiations.  This was something I was wondering about, what with UKIP-DUP connections and that rather odd purchase of pro-Leave advertising in newspapers which aren't available in Northern Ireland.

pic.twitter.com/dkyE1g3zCV

— Dan Murphy (@Dan_A_Murphy) June 11, 2017

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On Sunday morning neither the Tories nor the DUP could supply a spokesperson for the ordinary news.  When you're really busy...

George Osborne, reviewing the Sunday papers, dubbed #MrsMe a "dead woman walking". while Toby Young told him he was considered by Conservatives the "honourable member for Schadenfreude Central".  Osborne told us the prime minister had told him he "needed to get to know [his] party better" when she sacked him, which could have been pursued rather further after Thursday's result and Friday's coldness from No 10.

Ruth Davidson is today's star of the Conservative party, and a worrying one for some people, since her dozen Scottish Tory MPs might be a force for a softer Brexit (I wonder how David Mundell, #MrsMe's only representative north of the border until this week, and her Scottish secretary, will handle it).

Michael Heseltine came out to raise the possibility of a new EU27 proposal on immigration which would make it possible to stay in the EU but at present it looks rather like wishful thinking, though none of the Tories have ever explained in detail why they didn't use the options open to them under the freedom of movement rules.

Fact Sheets on the European Union - Free movement of personshttps://t.co/QbQUoBD9ji#bbcaq pic.twitter.com/s71odPvVVZ

— Ed Wilson (@eddwilson) February 18, 2017

Michael Fallon, still defence secretary as far as we know, faced a series of horror stories about DUP attitudes with his normal stony face, not so much fending them off as ignoring them completely.  We're not in coalition with them, he argued (though that might have changed again by tomorrow morning), so we don't have to agree with them.  He also dodged the Stormont neutrality question, though at least Marr asked it. 

Jeremy Corbyn was last on Marr, the momentum if not the result giving him pride of place, and he was in full Monsieur Zen mode, ready to open up to anybody in his party who wanted to help.  We'll see how long that lasts.

"I've got youth on my side"... Have you ever seen Jeremy Corbyn more relaxed and confident? #Marr pic.twitter.com/Egi2a92yI6

— EL4C (@EL4JC) June 11, 2017

Saboteurs department

Today's chief saboteur is #MrsMe herself.  Hostages to fortune were plentifiul during the campaign, and it's worth dipping into something issued under her own name.  It starts with "If I lose just six seats I will lose this election, and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of Europe".

And when Boris Johnson tries to help, issuing a call for loyalty which attracts support from Michael Gove and Conor Burns (who?)...

NEW: @itvnews has seen WhatsApp messages sent by Boris Johnson to Tory MPs urging them "to calm down and get behind the Prime Minister". pic.twitter.com/43oizi2ZE7

— Daniel Hewitt (@DanielHewittITV) June 11, 2017

and (as is his habit) gets it all wrong, he really doesn't help..

The first of Boris's points is factually wrong (Major got more in 1992); the second indicates that Boris can't remember 1983. https://t.co/WGJEV1DS8c

— Philip Cowley (@philipjcowley) June 11, 2017

And in response to Julia Hartley-Brewer and the many other pundits telling us that 80% or more of the votes went to parties with "pro-Brexit" manifestos, the manifestos are far from detailed and specific and, most important, parties can be held to a manifesto to some extent. Voters can't.

The "If we get Brexit wrong the consequences would be dire" election - day 44

Labour devoted the day to campaigning on the NHS and other public services, but apparently today was going to be another one based on Brexit and leadership for the Tories.  May's afternoon speech in Bath seemed little different from any of the other versions of "that speech" I've subjected myself to, but the main media topic was sparked by Jeremy Corbyn's announcement that he would after all be at the BBC debate in the evening.

A bad deal is worse than no deal?

"Nobody voted for Brexit to make themselves poorer" is a mantra I hear frequently, but it's not exactly true. A survey last December (by YouGov for Open Britain) suggested that some people expect to be worse off, and many Leave voters are prepared to lose significant amounts of money (and, of course, for everyone else to lose money as well).

Asked "What impact do you expect the UK’s departure from the European Union to have on your personal finances, taking account of income, taxes and prices?" Leave and Remain voters at the 2016 referendum replied:

The subset who confirmed that they would vote to Leave when asked again in December 2016 were then asked "What is the maximum amount of money, taking account of income, taxes and prices, you would personally be willing to be worse off by in order for the UK to leave the European Union – or would you not be willing to lose any money at all?" and replied:

More than 300 people in this sample appear to have voted to Leave, not in order to be poorer perhaps but certainly prepared to be poorer.

[Update ( 01/06/17):  Of course, you can read these numbers to say that few people who think they know expect to lose very much and around 80% are not prepared to lose more than £20 a month if anything at all, so we'd better make Brexit as close as possible to what we have today.  This is the way the commissioners of the study interpreted it.]

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#MrsME suggests the effects of "not getting Brexit right" would be "dire", and all the estimates I've heard recently (including one from Andrew Lilico, a Brexit supporter) are that the economy would shrink after Brexit, but the question of individuals and families actually losing money isn't a live issue in the election.

She makes great play of the idea that "in eleven days" it will be either Strong And Stable™ #MrsME or chaotic Corbyn sitting down at the table across from the bloody foreigners, and at a time when the Labour leader would be desperately trying to pull together a cabinet from his disparate and sniping ragbag of support.  In fact it would be the likes of David Davis or Keir Starmer, with a gang of civil servants, taking the Eurostar, and #MrsME would also have recently been engaged in cabinet making.

As I noted yesterday, Jeremy Paxman couldn't persuade #MrsME to say that she's changed her mind on Brexit, or that she actually believes in it now, only that she believes in "making a success of it".  And the idea of coming away with no deal at all is everywhere at the moment, which to her could be classed as a success if the alternative was that undefined horror, the "bad deal".

What does "no deal" even mean?  To start with, we're looking at at least two deals, one covering withdrawal from the EU (which is what the Article 50 process is actually about) and one or more on trade and other aspects of our future relationship.

The Tories would do their damnedest to negotiate a new trade relationship in parallel with Article 50 (Labour haven't really indicated how they would approach this, but they have rejected the "no deal" option) but I've yet to hear anybody serious suggest that this negotiation (as opposed to the one in their head, which might be fine and dandy but doesn't start with the world and people as they are) could be finalised in two years.

Presumably #MrsME is threatening to walk out of any set of talks at any time, because "you need to have that option in negotiations".  But what does walking out actually mean?

Abandoning trade talks would result in everything remaining as it was at the time.  If we were still inside the EU at that point we would be working exactly as we do now but we would have decided to move to "WTO terms" at the moment of leaving (let's call it 29 March 2019).  And then negotiations would start on what those terms actually would be, to be agreed by all 164 WTO members, including the EU.  (That work would have to be done on leaving the EU in any case, to define our relationship with the rest of the world, regardless of ongoing negotiation/transition/implementation work on a UK-EU agreement.)

Add this to the 'we can always fall back on the WTO' file https://t.co/N1tIjn6KB1 pic.twitter.com/Y3eMIXqVNY

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 30, 2017

Walking out of the Article 50 talks would be more inconvenient for the EU, and therefore might be thought to be a more powerful tactic.  But we would still be in the EU, we would still be attending EU Council meetings, our MEPs would still be attending Brussels and Strasbourg as often as they do now (eh Mr Farage?).  Under Article 50 there are only two ways to leave the EU:  with a withdrawal agreement, or without on the passing of 29 March 2019.

(Some will protest that we could just cut ourselves off, stop paying the contributions and repeal the 1972 European Communities Act (and that's what we should have done months ago) but at present the government insists that it will do things according to our legal obligations, as David Davis might say.)

At the point of walking out, unless it was already mid-March 2019, parliament would be in the middle of considering the Great Copy And Paste Bill, fighting to shoehorn 42 years worth of EU legislation into UK law and, I hope, fighting to prevent the executive changing too much without parliamentary scrutiny.  It's to be hoped also that we would have begun setting up (staffing, equipping and paying for) all the regulatory bodies which would be needed to duplicate - sorry, replace - all those that do it for the whole EU.  Time-critical IT projects across the board anybody?

And, most important, walking out would not result in no deal.  It would leave many individual deals undone until the date of exit, which would then cripple the UK economy and society, and any attempt to go back and tackle one or two would now be hindered by acrimony, frozen trade, travel gridlock and financial meltdown:

• with Euratom, to make it possible to transport and process nuclear fuel legally
• over air travel, so that flights between the UK and US could continue;  without the EU-US Open Skies agreement they would have no legal basis
• over security and justice arrangements, so that access to EU security databases and arrest warrant cooperation would not be withdrawn
• over customs and tariff arrangements, so that there would be a legal basis on which imports and exports can be made
• over whether banks and services companies could work and sell in the EU
• over whether professional qualifications would still be recognised
• and dozens of other matters

Top of the list would be two problems on which the EU27 are demanding "adequate progress" before Michel Barnier will even be legally allowed to talk future relations.

• that expats in the UK and other EU countries would still not know that their residence and rights were protected
• that the status of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland would still be undefined

Walking out and staying out of the Article 50 negotiations would disadvantage everybody, but most of all the UK.  And we could only countenance "no deal" if we had decided truly to cut ourselves off from the world.

As Stephen Bush concludes in the New Statesman:

"Forget Theresa May’s claim that Britain is ready and willing to walk away from “a bad deal” – as it stands, Britain isn’t even ready for what her government thinks a good deal is. We haven’t staffed up to deal with a greater volume of customs checks when we are outside the customs union. We certainly haven’t prepared for capabilities we might lose, like safety inspections. No deal is better than a bad deal? Don’t believe a word of it."

But still, every Tory allowed out in front of a microphone parrots the "everything depends on a good Brexit" slogan.  No deal could not be a good Brexit, so maintaining both lines is contradictory and ridiculous.  Yet rumours still spread that "no deal" is the preferred option.

1. I've had some information on Brexit from a source close to Number 10. They are well placed and reliable...

— J.J. Patrick (@J_amesp) March 7, 2017

Saboteurs department

As Schona Jolly QC concludes this Twitter thread,  "May called this election. If she wants a mandate, she must answer the questions."

1. Some thoughts on today. May reminds us, w a straight face, Brexit negotiations start on 19/5. Ten days after an election she called.

— Schona Jolly QC (@WomaninHavana) May 30, 2017

The view from India via France

An Indian gvt minister was asked recently whether the Brits had shot themselves in the foot with Brexit. His answer : "in both feet" https://t.co/In6jSXCsbW

— Sylvie Kauffmann (@SylvieKauffmann) May 30, 2017

Agreements with the EU would only be the beginning.  We have the benefit of many deals - large and small - with many countries across the world, and all of them would lapse at Brexit.

The many international treaties and agreements that will need to be renegotiated after Brexit – 759, to be exact https://t.co/36bOwXkzuo pic.twitter.com/JdclUHsJ8j

— Financial Times (@FT) May 30, 2017

The BBC debate will be all over the news when this goes out, so I'll restrict myself to Caroline Lucas's comment on leadership:  "The first rule of leadership is to turn up".