We have endured the EU’s insolence for too long: time to walk

It is time to put an end to the farce of Brexit negotiations and embrace the only realistic option of No Deal. From day one it was evident the EU was not negotiating in good faith. In the early days some optimists hoped that Michel Barnier’s extravagant behaviour was an opening gambit, a preliminary skirmish to test Britain’s resolve, after which Brussels would adopt a more statesmanlike posture and get down to the serious business of agreeing a workable settlement. There is now not the remotest prospect of that ever happening.

The complementary delusion was that stage two, the formal discussions of future trade relationships, by its very nature would be more practical and substantial. Instead, the EU has opened this supposedly realistic stage of the negotiations by publishing five detailed chapters of a draft treaty outlining its plans to usurp the governance of Northern Ireland, effectively detaching it from the United Kingdom and turning it into an exclave of the EU, subject to the Single Market, Customs Union, European Court of Justice and other arms of the acquis communautaire, with Dublin as its local seat of government and a frontier with Britain running down the Irish Sea.

Barnier has taken over the role formerly occupied by Sinn Fein/IRA in imposing Irish reunification by coercion. He clearly foresaw the outraged reaction his provocation would arouse in Westminster and Belfast, but from his point of view he was in a win/win situation. If the Brits rejected the effective surrender of Northern Ireland against the wishes of its majority electorate, and considering the nerdish “technical” solution to the Irish border had been shrugged off by most people, then he hoped to herd the British negotiators into the corral of a continued UK membership of the Customs Union and, beyond that, the Single Market.

For a hardened Brussels enforcer there is something almost endearingly naïf about entertaining the delusion that the British public would allow itself to be denied its forcefully expressed will to restore sovereignty for the altruistic purpose of saving Irish farmers the inconvenience of border checks. The Irish are engaging neighbours and Britain has a shameful historical past in its treatment of them; but because present-day Britons’ remote ancestors robbed the Irish of sovereignty is not sufficient reason for Britain now, in the 21st century, to surrender its own sovereignty to the EU in defiance of the referendum verdict of 17.4 million voters.

Even the most sanguine Leaver, while optimistic about the massive opportunities for a United Kingdom restored to full autonomy, recognizes that the early stages of independence could present many challenges and demand some sacrifices. In that context, a return along the Irish border to what was the normal routine between 1922 and 1973 cannot plausibly be presented to the British public as an apocalyptic event or sufficient cause to abandon the national interest of the United Kingdom.

The Irish, for their part, are being cynically manipulated by Brussels. They should listen to dissenting voices such as that of Ray Bassett, Ireland’s former ambassador to Canada and adviser to several past prime ministers in Dublin. Last month he said the Republic was making “a very big mistake in backing team EU” in Brexit negotiations and was “now in a diplomatic cul-de-sac”.

He is right. Brussels’ faux consideration for Ireland – a country it once contemptuously compelled to re-run a referendum that delivered the “wrong” result – is hypocritical, designed purely to undermine Britain. Of Ireland’s annual €60bn of exports to the EU, one quarter comes to Britain, including half of its exported beef and 42 per cent of food and drink. The UK is not a trading partner it is sensible for Ireland to alienate.

In the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum result, the last-ditch Remainers suddenly elevated the Irish border to extravagant and fictitious significance, prophesying renewed terrorist warfare and every manner of calamity. They have fetishized the Good Friday Agreement, a Tony Blair confection (remember: “This is no time for soundbites – I feel the hand of History on our shoulders”) that set a dubious constitutional precedent of giving a foreign government some role in the affairs of part of the United Kingdom. That unwise concession is now being ruthlessly exploited by Brussels.

The Irish border is a non-issue: a red herring dredged up to impede Brexit. It is just one of innumerable distractions being deployed for that purpose. The time has come to sweep them away. From the start, the so-called Brexit negotiations have been conducted not as conversations between equals but in the style of a post-war treaty being dictated by the victors. In that charade Britain has played the role of a vanquished nation – a role absurdly accepted by Government and negotiators.

The extent to which supine acquiescence has swollen the sense of entitlement of Brussels was finally demonstrated in the draft treaty handed down by Michel Barnier, a treaty that actually presumes to reconfigure the territory and constitution of the United Kingdom. Such presumption has been encouraged by the Remain fifth column in Britain, so many of whose members have given vocal aid and comfort to Brussels that most people supposed they had all by now given tongue. They were wrong: one final loser from the dismal past has just said his piece.

Sir John Major (“Oh, yes!”) has emerged from the obscurity to which he is so well suited to deliver an anti-Brexit speech of pretended objectivity, dripping with venom and personal allusions. He chose to do so at the appropriate venue of the Creative Industries Federation, 96 per cent of whose members in a recent survey opposed Brexit. “I am neither a Europhile nor a Eurosceptic,” he claimed. So, pretty middle-of-the-road, then, Sir John – on roughly the scale of, say, Jean-Claude Juncker.

There followed a catalogue of tired Remainer myths, half-truths and bitterness inadequately camouflaged in more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger mode. The most blatantly disingenuous suggestion came at the end. “But, to minimise divisions in our country – and between and within the political parties – I believe the Government should take a brave and bold decision. They should invite Parliament to accept or reject the final outcome on a free vote.”

In other words, every Tory Remainer MP should be encouraged to tip the balance against Brexit, in an already unrepresentative House of Commons, without fear of incurring sanctions. Michael Howard, former Tory leader and Home Secretary under Major, responded scathingly on BBC’s Newsnight to Baldrick’s cunning plan: “He certainly wasn’t very keen on free votes when he was prime minister, no question about that.”

The key observation in Major’s speech was: “Of course, the ‘will of the people’ can’t be ignored, but Parliament has a duty also to consider the ‘wellbeing of the people’.” So, to hell with the referendum, the political class knows best. Such thinking has dominated the bogus Brexit negotiations. Britain is being humiliated and globally discredited. This indulgence in masochism must be ended. We should walk away from the pseudo-negotiations, bite the bullet of WTO trade rules and exit the malevolent European Union without further delay.