Brexit’s latest drama

DAVID DAVIS’ RESIGNATION AND WHAT COULD FOLLOW

THE David is gone, long live the Dominic. There’s nothing the media likes better than a good resig­nation. Especially one over the biggest issue of our times.

All of which is great fun, but none of which really gets to the heart of what the Brexit secretary’s resig­nation means for Brexit. And the truth – sorry to disappoint you – is that it’s really hard to tell.

So what has happened, and what does it mean? David Davis resigned as Brexit secretary, as far as we can tell, partly out of a weary sense of fatigue with being constantly overruled by Number 10 (most notably on the sequencing of the talks, on the so-called Northern Ireland backstop).

Partly too, and more importantly as far as the fu­ture is concerned, he quit because the British gov­ernment had reached a turning point and turned the wrong way. Which requires a little explanation.

For months now, prime minister Theresa May has insisted she can negotiate a uniquely deep and am­bitious deal with the EU that goes beyond what exist­ing non-members have managed to secure. The EU, for its part, has insisted no such deal is on the table.

In recent weeks, debates within government have – reluctantly – come to accept this fact. And so ministers have been confronted with two choices: what we call a “Canada minus” arrangement, or what might be called a “Norway plus” outcome.

The first of these seems to adhere more faithfully to the key political themes of the Leave Campaign. Canada means a traditional trade deal that reduces tariffs. It does not imply either payments to the EU, or the UK being under the jurisdiction of the EU’s court, or the need to accept free movement.

However – and this is why a number of busi­nesses have spoken out in recent weeks – Canada means a significant short-term economic hit be­cause it essentially means the imposition of a load of barriers on trade between the UK and the EU.

Norway plus, on the other hand, reverses this logic. Britain would remain in the single market and in some form of customs union. But this would mean accepting the court, accepting free move­ment, paying some kind of membership fee and not being able to sign our own trade deals.

The flip side, however, is that trade with the EU would continue pretty much as it does now.

So there, in condensed form, is the choice. At chequers last Friday (6) the prime minister presented her cabinet with a plan. And it was a plan that, so to speak, leant towards the soft (Norway) rather than the hard (Canada). Government had listened to busi­nesses and tried to take their concerns into account.

It is this that was the final straw for Davis. He ar­gued, not without reason, that this was not the kind of Brexit he had signed up for. The whole point of leaving, he argued, was to be free of EU law and able to strike our own trade deals.

So why did he resign now rather than stay and fight his corner? Partly, it has to be said, because he thought he had lost. Partly too, because he knows the real fight is yet to come. The crucial – and con­fusing – thing about the government’s new plan is that the EU cannot accept it.

While it moves us towards Norway, it retains a number of Canadian elements – the government refuses to accept free movement, or the jurisdiction of the EU court and so on. What it is, in other words, is an opening gambit.

Davis’s resignation is thus an attempt to shut down this attempt to soften Brexit. He knows the prime minister is heading to Norway and wants to stop her. And he’s calculated that resigning now is the best way to alert his fellow Brexiters and goad them into action.

What this latter group do now is anyone’s guess, but Davis has rung the bell on yet another round of vi­cious Tory infighting on the European Union.

n Anand Menon is director of The UK in a Chang­ing Europe (www.ukandeu.ac.uk) and Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings Col­lege London. www.UKandEU.ac.uk