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Theresa May
‘Mrs May’s statement to MPs was wishful thinking.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
‘Mrs May’s statement to MPs was wishful thinking.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian view on the Tory truce over Brexit: the war goes on

This article is more than 6 years old
When Conservative MPs as different as Kenneth Clarke, Bill Cash, Nicky Morgan and Iain Duncan Smith agree, it can only mean their unity will not survive for long

Conservative MPs of every ideological hue queued up to praise Theresa May’s interim agreement with the European Union on Brexit on Monday. That in itself ought to make any sensible person wary about what was taking place. For when Kenneth Clarke, Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Bill Cash and Nicky Morgan all say they are united about Brexit policy, it can only mean one thing: that the thing they claim to agree about is worth very little. For these MPs are not comrades but enemies. They combined for an afternoon to produce the political equivalent of a Christmas truce on the western front in the first world war. All that can be said with confidence is that this truce, like the one on the western front, will not last.

The strikingly different ways in which the MPs expressed their praise for Mrs May underlined their wide range of motives. After Mrs May had produced her report from Brussels, ending with the remarkable claim that it would be welcomed by those who voted leave in 2016 as much as by those who voted remain, MPs came up with an array of reasons for congratulating her. Mr Clarke, who was first up, welcomed the fact that the open border with Ireland will require regulatory alignment. Mr Duncan Smith celebrated the fact that UK rules would begin to change as soon as the transitional period began. Mr Cash said there were still plenty of issues to disagree about. Ms Morgan was cheered by the fact that Mrs May had resisted calls to walk away from the table. Monday’s parade of prime ministerial ring kissing by the various different wings of the Conservative party had all the credibility of a protestation of undying affection and loyalty by rival family bosses at a mafia wedding.

Still, from Mrs May’s point of view it was undoubtedly better that her MPs came to praise her than to bury her. Last week, when the DUP pulled the plug, a funeral had seemed an increasingly likely possibility for the prime minister. But last week’s Brussels deal gets her across the crucial threshold of “sufficient progress” in the Brexit talks. This week’s Brussels summit, which could now seem a bit of an anti-climax, will sign off on the beginning of talks about the future EU-UK relationship. Mrs May will be able to enjoy a second Christmas in Downing Street, an outcome that seemed in the balance after the general election result in June.

Yet the argument about Brexit remains more unresolved at the end of 2017 approaches than it was at the beginning of the year. Mrs May’s Panglossian claim that leavers and remainers will welcome last week’s agreement does not withstand serious scrutiny. She said that leavers had worried that the process was getting bogged down and Brexit would not happen. Yet the hard leavers are still worried. They don’t like soft borders, regulatory alignment, a role for the European court of justice and payments to the EU lasting long years. All are in the joint EU-UK document. This is why Michael Gove said it could all be changed later on. Mrs May repeats ad nauseam that the UK is leaving the single market and the customs union, but the hard leavers aren’t sure.

She also said that remainers will be pleased because last week’s agreement shows that Britain won’t now crash out without a deal. But this is not guaranteed either. A crash-out could still happen. Remainers may hope the EU-UK document tilts the likely outcome towards closer links with the EU, perhaps even in the shape of an Efta-type deal. But Mrs May’s rhetoric gives little reason to believe it. She still talks the language of hard Brexit, though some parts of the agreement point in a softer direction.

Mrs May’s statement to MPs was wishful thinking. The argument between hard and soft Brexit is not over. The cabinet is not united behind her, nor her party, nor the country. There is none of the new sense of optimism of which she spoke. There are only the realities that none of the key decisions has been agreed and that the ticking clock, not Mrs May, is shaping the future of Britain.

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