Cross-party talks: Labour risk painting themselves into a corner on a customs union
It seems we are still some way from a cross-party agreement on Brexit, with the thorny question of customs and trade policy remaining the biggest obstacle. The Government’s latest offer – a temporary customs union until the next scheduled general election in 2022 – has been trashed by a series of hostile Labour briefings in the media. The Times, for example, quotes a Labour source as saying, “Lidington tried to sell it as a big shiny offer, but a lot of it is already government policy… It is a million miles away from a compromise that could win the support of Labour MPs.”
On one level, Labour are right – a temporary customs union until the next election is substantively very similar to the existing deal (which is precisely why it should not be seen as a disaster from a Conservative point of view). The transition period, which includes a customs union, lasts until at least December 2020, with the option to extend until December 2022. If the UK did leave the transition before 2022, it would in all likelihood enter the backstop – which also contains a customs union. Given that Labour’s stated policy is for a ‘permanent’ customs union, it is hard to see why they would simply sign up to what is already in the deal plus a few extra months.
On the other hand, it is difficult to see what more the Government could feasibly offer Labour. As I have written elsewhere, the idea of guaranteeing a “permanent” customs union at this stage of Brexit has always been a red herring. May and Corbyn could agree on the addition of a customs union into the political declaration; they could even write this as a guarantee into domestic law. But they cannot bind future parliaments, and they cannot pre-determine negotiations with the EU that haven’t happened yet. A rewritten political declaration will not be binding, and commitments in domestic law can be amended in the future. A future Government with a majority would always have the ability to seek to negotiate a free trade agreement instead of a customs union – that is how our parliamentary democracy works.
Given all this, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Labour have painted themselves into a corner. By repeatedly attacking the deal as a “botched Brexit” and a “bad Tory deal”, despite the fact it was very similar to what they say they want, they have constrained their room to manoeuvre and agree a compromise. May’s reported offer may not be very different to the existing deal package – but neither is Labour’s own policy, when you look at what it would actually mean in practice.
Labour’s political capacity to agree a deal is also constrained by the ongoing speculation over the Conservative Party leadership. They worry that, if they do a deal with May, she will likely be replaced soon by a Brexiter who would tear up any Labour-Tory deal in favour of a hard, ‘Canada-style’ Brexit. For this reason, there has been much talk of ‘Boris-proofing’ any deal – which rather misses the point. Given that no Parliament can bind its successors, a May-Corbyn deal could never be a binding constraint on a future Tory Prime Minister. The real obstacle to the short-term pursuit of a ‘hard Brexit’ outside a customs union is already in the deal – while the UK can leave the backstop arrangements, it can only do so if it can produce viable “alternative arrangements” for the Irish border.
Ultimately, the fundamental problem is that the two sides are close on substance, but far apart on politics – which makes it easy to use the inevitably cosmetic nature of any policy concessions as justification for not agreeing a deal. Yet the idea of deciding the customs decision at the 2022 election is a sensible compromise – it postpones a difficult question which does not actually need to be addressed at this stage, and keeps both sides’ preferred options on the table. If the opportunity to win an election on a platform of remaining in a customs union isn’t enough for Labour, it is difficult to see what else the Conservatives can meaningfully offer them.
