The “star chamber” must be taken with a pinch of salt
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In seven days time, Theresa May’s Brexit deal will face its final test in the Commons. If it fails to pass, Parliament will vote the following day on delivering Brexit on 29th March without a deal. If Parliament votes that down (which it will) MPs will decide on extending Article 50. If they turn out to be in favour of an extension and the EU27 agree to it, we are left in in a strange kind of limbo. The only negotiated deal will be history, but no deal, too, will be off the table. A second referendum – and with it the possibility of no Brexit at all – will loom large again, and this time, with Labour’s official backing, it might just end up happening.
After nearly three years of Brexit madness, it is now being said that the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU will come down to whether the so-called “star chamber” – made up of eight eurosceptic lawyers, led by Bill Cash – decides that Geoffrey Cox’s amendments to the Irish backstop (which are being negotiated as I write) are acceptable. If Cox can satisfy these MPs that the backstop is not forever, the thinking goes, then the rebel ERG Brexiteer MPs will be converted to May loyalism, and her deal will pass. If not, it won’t.
But will Conservative MPs, who’ve spent the last years thinking seriously and deeply about the Europe question, really be so easily influenced?
Of course, the words of a lawyer have gravitas, but as Paul Goodman points out on Conservative Home today, the group are politicians first, lawyers second. Two can claim to have serious engagement with constitutional law – Howe and Cash, and the latter is primarily a politician. As are the remaining six: Jones, for example (as Goodman points out) has never been a senior lawyer, but he was certainly a senior politician. What’s more, the question of whether or not some form of backstop is acceptable has always really been a political, not a legal one.
The “star chamber”, populated by some of the most ardently eurosceptic MPs in Parliament, may look like an alarming spectre to Theresa May and her allies, but it may well turn out to be just another PR stunt from a tiny band of hardcore eurosceptic muscle flexers. Bill Cash might like the idea that a united band of Conservative MPs are hanging on his unbiased legal expertise, but the reality is that most of them aren’t quite so gullible.
The noisiest members of the ERG have been known to overplay its hand before (remember the botched vote of No Confidence, anyone?), and it looks like they just might be at it again. When it comes to it, Conservative MPs will use their own judgement when they vote next week, and the “star chamber” won’t get a look in.
