The image of a confident Theresa May arriving in Downing Street on 13 July 2016, having swept aside other Conservative hopefuls, now seems to belong to another age. “As we leave the European Union, we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world, and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us,” May promised.
Fine words, but the lost opportunity between that speech and her address to her party conference less than three months later is the root cause of so much of the troubles and divisions that have beset the Brexit process ever since. There is time for the course of Brexit to be altered. It may be that – this week in Salzburg, perhaps later – the EU will make a genuine attempt to save May’s bacon. It may be that some of the ideas from Chequers will eventually be built into the political declaration forming the basis of the future trade deal, which will be negotiated only after we leave on 29 March 2019. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring what went wrong at the start of May’s premiership to ask how a country that prided itself on having a strong, functioning civil service, a history of pragmatism and huge experience in international relations can have mishandled the approach to Brexit so badly.
What is so remarkable is that the government’s first attempt to put the UK’s position on the table in respect of the future deal did not emerge until that Chequers meeting in July 2018. Given that it was always known that there would be only two years in this process once article 50 was triggered, the question remains: what, beyond an obsession with internal faction-fighting among Tory MPs, was going on during the previous two years?
New prime ministers know that the space to set a bold course is never so great as in the immediate aftermath of victory. The window of opportunity was wide open for May that summer. The paramount need was to find a way to unite the nation after the referendum – to create a country that works for every one of us, as she said. Sheltering behind the temporarily useful banality of “Brexit means Brexit”, the government could have moved swiftly to gather all the talents to consider the options. A royal commission would probably have been ruled out as too slow and cumbersome, but some less formal vehicle could have been engineered for the purpose.
The time – indeed more time, but for the unnecessary rush to trigger article 50 – could have been used to scout the territory ahead, all the while talking to the EU, making plans to avoid the obvious traps and to seek a path to a successful outcome. Instead, the prime minster allowed her small team of close advisers to dictate the way ahead. The result was heard at the Tory conference that October, in a speech that included red lines on migration (“ending free movement”), sovereignty (“taking back control of our laws”) and ending the jurisdiction of the court of justice. Those red lines, repeated in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, have hamstrung the UK ever since, while failing to quell the storms within the Conservative ranks.
Those speeches made clear to the EU, if not the UK as a whole, that our path was heading straight towards Canada. And “Canada dry” at that: a narrowly focused free trade agreement concentrating on movement of goods. Even where such an arrangement is not in the UK’s interest, as with the loss of access to the Schengen Information System – an intelligence database used 539m times last year by British authorities to look up suspects and vehicles – and the European arrest warrant, so recently used by the UK to put out an alert on the men wanted in connection with the Salisbury attacks.
Is there anything to be salvaged as the deadline of 29 March 2019 approaches? First, May must come out of the bunker and talk to real people – business people, employers and their workers – in real places, not simply those staged for the benefit of TV. She must invite in advisers from outside who know how borders actually work, or what applying a visa regime means in practice. Look at the multitude of blogs with policy offerings. At least show some signs of listening to, and engaging with, the other side, rather than driving through a hard Brexit that can only ever suit barely half the country.
Second, she should use the window between now and the end of March 2019 to set up that royal commission to work out what the UK wants from that future UK/EU free trade deal. The Brexit select committee already provides one template – but its membership should be expanded to include more devolved representation and civil society.
And most of all, it’s time to front up with the public over the real trade-offs now in play. The closer we get to Canada, the more sovereignty is returned, but the greater the economic hit. Spell out clearly that what’s sauce for the British goose is sauce, too, for the EU gander. Applying a visa regime to EU nationals means a visa regime will be also applied to British nationals. Failure, even at this late stage, to engage with all sides will create a generation of the disengaged and discontented. That would hardly be the unifying legacy that the prime minister promised two summers ago.
• Catherine Barnard is a professor of EU Law at the University of Cambridge and a senior fellow for The UK in a Changing Europe
